TOUR AMERICA, 2020: WILLIAMS, ARIZONA – THE GRAND CANYON STATE

Places We Have Called Home In 2020

Home Is Where We Park It:  Grand Canyon Railway RV Park, Williams, Arizona 

June 19, 2020

Temperature 78 Degrees

Route 66 in Williams

Ah, what another beautiful day to awake to this morning.  God has surely been good to us these past months and especially these past few days.  The nights in terms of temperature have been perfect for sleeping.  The days, likewise, have been picture perfect.  We’re not looking forward to going back to triple digit temperatures once we leave here.  But, onward we shall go.

Since our stay in Kingman we’ve become Route 66 junkies.  Once we discovered that The Town of Williams was part of the historic route we knew we had to come here to investigate.

Route 66 was commissioned by the Federal Highway Administration on November 11, 1926.

It stretched 2, 451 miles from Chicago to Santa Monica and passed through seven states and numerous town including The Town of Williams.

Two things we’ve noticed wherever we’ve traveled on Route 66 and that was that there were no lack of either gas stations or motels.

The last link of Interstate 40 opened at Williams on October 13, 1984.  For all practical purposed this was – or should have been – the demise of Route 66.

Yet, as we all know one man saved the road for all of us today to enjoy.  That one man was Angel Delgadillo who today is fondly referred to as The Father of the Mother Road, The Guardian Angel of Route 66 and Mayor of the Mother Road.

He rallied local residents to petition the State of Arizona to designate Route 66 as a Historic Highway.  It didn’t happen over night but finally in 1987, Angel’s home town of Seligman became known as the Birthplace of Historic Route 66 and the Historic Route 66 Association of Arizona was formed, inspiring other Route 66 towns to follow the example of Seligman.  A full-throttle Route 66 revival was born.

Time to spend some time cruising Route 66 in Williams.

We started our journey at the Museum and Gift Shop.

Oh, if I could only find diesel today for 13 cents per gallon!

It runs and is used in various parades today in Williams.

This, though, is how it once looked.  It took over four years of intense labor and untold dollars to restore it to its current condition.  Amazing.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, however you want to look at it the Museum and Gift Shop was more Gift Shop than anything else.

There were so many beautiful and exquisite items on display in this alcove.

Items such as this would never make it in a motorhome.  The first bump in the road and that would be it.  Unless, you took the time before each road trip to patiently wrap such items in bubble wrap or something similar.  Oh, but they are so beautiful.

The craftsmanship is fantastic.

Time to call it a night.  Tomorrow we’ll take a trip down Route 66 in Williams and get a glimpse at what it looks like today.

Another day has come to a close on The Road of Retirement.  We had a lazy day just sitting around and relaxing.  But we kept busy.  We spent the day working together on putting our route for 2021 together.  Can you believe some state parks and RV parks are already filled or just about filled to capacity.  Perhaps it really is true, the whole world is going RV’ing.  Lucky us!  One more thing.  I believe I finally figured out why the driver’s side lights on the car would not work when hooked to Elvira.  Today I took the back light off the car and wonder of wonders I found a wire that had worked loose and become disconnected.  Could it be as simple as connecting it again?  I’ll know when we hook up the next time.  Stay tuned and I’ll let you know.

In closing.

Thanks for joining us again today. We always appreciate having you with us and we especially enjoy your comments.  Catch you tomorrow.

These are the voyages of  Elvira and it’s two intrepid travelers.  Our continuing mission: to explore as many new states as possible, to seek out new acquaintances and make new friends, to boldly go where we have never been before.

See you on down the road!