Day 2 – 699.6 Miles from Home

KINGMAN, AZ to GALLUP, NM – 368 Miles

Over the last couple of years since buying the Motor Palace, we’ve made the trek between Orange and Winslow about a bazillion times and have explored every fragment of the Mother Road–and I mean literal FRAGMENTS! So this time, since we have new things to explore beyond Arizona, we made a bonsai run from Kingman to Gallup without even stopping in Winslow to visit our building!

Even so, we had a spectacular Route-66-ride from Kingman through Seligman to where it terminates at Crookton Road and the 40. It’s truly one of the finest stretches of Route 66 in the west, cutting through green rolling hills with horses and cows and hawks and crows.

There is one puzzling thing, though, a real head-scratcher. At about the halfway point, there’s a sign signaling pedestrian crossing, yet there are no houses, no buildings, not even any crossroads. Just miles and miles of green. So where are these alleged walking pedestrians coming from or going to? Odd.

 

We stopped for gas In Seligman, and as always when traveling on a bike, met some interesting folks. Like this woman and her chihuahua, who have been riding together since the dog was three weeks old.

And this woman in Winslow, who lectured Brian and I about wearing helmets and said she’d be watching.

We also met Sam wearing a shirt from our pals Deus Ex Machina. You can read more about him on Brian’s blog, www.motorpalace.com.

We’ve been super lucky with weather so far. The extreme, unbearable heat we’d been expecting hasn’t been unbearable at all! In fact, the toughest weather we encountered was in Flagstaff! COLD!! Icy rain that felt like hail, it stung so bad! Like little needles poking into the skin. Luckily It didn’t last long.

Blasting past Winslow felt weird but we wanted to get to Gallup’s historic El Rancho Hotel early enough to go swimming–which we ended up skipping in lieu of dinner. Besides, there were some pretty good storm clouds lurking.

Instead, we took some pics and wrote our blogs… I reckon I’m a tripod now, eh?

Regarding my pie collectible for the night… I got stiffed! We were too full after dinner to partake in the apple pie, but when we came back later, they were out!! Boo!! But at least the El Rancho gave us nice patio parking, so I guess I can’t complain too loudly.

Oh well. There’s always tomorrow for my pie.

And now tomorrow is here. Time to shake the sleep outta my eyes and get riding. Today marks the beginning of my real adventure since I haven’t been on this Rte-66-section since I was a kid.

Until then…

Later Gators