"Standing On The Corner in Winslow Arizona"

No sleeping problems again last night. We walked into town and had coffee. The downtown is only a couple blocks long of "active" business' but an interesting mix. It's fun to people watch and there are young, hip, early family age folks (Mini-Cooper?) in this dry little ex-railroad town. I would rate Kingman "used to be dead but coming back alive". Good coffee too. There is a full sized train they restored with a couple cars in the middle of the park, I am guessing a nod to the train history. Most of the town signs around here say they were established in 1880 or so. I am guessing the train came through and all these town along it took seed.
The goal today was to go to Prescott and see Hannah's buddies she lived with there. We went the scenic route of course, which here means a lot of desert. This time of year, anything that can pop any kind of flower is doing so and in the morning we were treated with red, orange, yellow and white flowers from all these desert plants. I go a whiff of creosote and there is also something that smells like and herb I kept getting big whiffs of. There was moderate traffic going southeast on 93 and it is part 2 land and part divided 4 lane with construction crews making more 4 lane.We gassed and watered up in Wickenburg, and then started the long twisty climb up the mountain toward Prescott. The Harley is not made to corner and I had a hard time keeping the footboards from grinding the pavement on the 15 and 20 mph turns. As we climbed, the desert gave way to forests and the temperature dropped, but it felt refreshing after the hot desert air. We put extra layers on and zipped up the jacket air vents and blasted through the high, dry forest. Very little traffic. We pulled into Prescott which is good sized and very vibrant. We took a long walk through the busy park and walked to the house Hannah lived in 15 minutes from the park. Quiet neighborhoods and no grass anywhere. We walked back, got the bike and rode to Bill's Grill where we met 3 of Hannah's friends and a girl from Australia and had a great long lunch and chat. They were all in their mid twenties and doing all kinds of things. Everything ahead of them..
We said goodbyes and decide to push for Winslow.

More gas (the Harley is getting 40-45 mpg) and then more desert and almost no traffic. We came off the hill down into Winslow and the sky was so blue with nice flat little clouds and horizon to horizon views. We idled through Winslow which is fairly run down with lots of empty storefronts. The Eagles song was rattling around my head this morning with the "Standing On The Corner" line in it. Winslow is touting Rt 66, but like a lot of small towns, it's having a hard time. Found a motel by the highway and walked across the street for Mexican food (really good Mexican food). We did about 320 miles which is an honest day and we were both beat. Tomorrow we ride to Albuquerque to see the boy.