hartnup.net: R66 : Fri 18 August 2000: Farmington, NM

Farmington, NM - Holbrook, AZ

We set straight off for the Four Corners, where Arizona , Colorado, New Mexico and Utah all meet. The fact is we didn't know what to expect and the only reason we've gone out of our way to visit this is the Simpsons episode where they visit the Five Corners. Fortunately, the drive was beautiful, because the Four Corners monument itself isn't much to look at.

There's a marker of course, where people queue to pose for photographs with a limb in each state. The site is in an Indian reservation, and they use the momument as an excuse to run a cluster of little shops selling jewellery, decorative tommahawks, Navaho frybread, that kind of thing.

We went back to Shiprock for a quick lunch at Taco Bell, then headed south towards Gallup, where we would rejoin Route 66. This route took us down Route 666, the setting for Mickey and Mallory Knox's killing spree in National Born Killers.

Frankly we didn't see a great deal of opportunity for indiscriminate slaughter; we barely saw a living thing.

From Gallup we got back to following old Route 66, repeating some of what we'd done last time we crossed into Arizona. This time we stopped at the over the top wigwam shaped trading post on the border.

This time around, we did not bypass the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest near Holbrook. One National Park, two attractions..

If you take the scenic drive through the park you get several views of the painted desert from above, and it looks like a patchwork of reds, yelllows and greens.

The petrified forest is just desert with logs and bits of woodchip scattered all over it -- which turn out to be stone, but you'd never have guessed without touching.

Now we're back in Holbrook, where we stayed in the fantastic Wigwam motel last time around. This time we've been lured by the Star Motel, because it's less than $20 (including tax) a night. We thought it would be fun slumming it for a night, but how wrong we were. First of all the supply pipe to the toilet cistern spontaneously sprung a leak, and we had to move to a different room. The room we're in now stinks, the bed is sagging as are the floorboards, and the bathroom is infested with roaches.