No breakfast available at El Trovatore so we wandered back down the hill to town and to the same diner, Mr D'z where we enjoyed blueberry pancakes with bacon. The pancakes defeated Ruth, they were huge, but I managed to finish mine. A walk was now in order, so we visited the Powerhouse, an ex-electricity generating plant, now a tourist information/gift shop/museum.
Back to the motel, pack up, load the car and depart for part of the original Route 66. Kingman decided it was the heart of Route 66, every other bar or restaurant had the name included somewhere in its own name, but we liked the town, it had a good atmosphere and the people were friendly. We drove north and climbed from Kingman's 3,333 feet elevation to 5,225 feet at Seligman where the Route joined Interstate highway 40, the modern replacement.
The drive started through yet more desert, scrubby, but it was cattle ranch country, though there seemed little enough for the cattle to eat. There were vast open areas of 'grazing' and we did see some cattle. We stopped at the famous Hackberry General Store, though we're not quite sure why it should be famous, and then on past Peach Springs.
We stopped at The Grand Canyon Caverns to check about the airwalk over the Grand Canyon but the people there were very dismissive - too expensive, the airwalk was not over the Canyon and overall not worth the money! So, we dismissed the idea and carried on to Seligman. A peculiar town, it celebrated its location at the end of Route 66 at each end of the town with nothing for about a mile in between. It was full of large groups of bikers, people of our age, riding big bikes on an organised tour. It was all pretty tacky really, so we moved on.
At last we came to Williams, elevation 6,800 feet, passing through a forested area, a relief from all the deserts we driven across. Williams is a lovely little town though as with Seligman the Route 66 idea was overdone. Still we bought a few things in an Indian (first people) owned store.
Ruth had discovered there was an eclipse of the moon this evening, so after dark we drove out to a park, Cataract Lake, just outside town to watch the eclipse. A ghostly elk trotted across the road in front of us, first we had seen. The moon was mostly eclipsed when it rose above the trees and we watched until it was fully eclipsed and very faint, a sort of coppery colour. The clouds rolled in so we couldn't see any more, the temperature had dropped to 66F, a real surprise after the high temperatures of our trip so far, and anyway it was time to eat.
After a delicious meal in the Red Raven as we were walking back to our motel we saw the moon almost complete again, some two hours after we last saw it.
