Americans can't count
I‘ve been trying to remember just how we got out of town on that first morning and for the life of me I couldn‘t.
I suppose that I should have made notes like the great travel writer that I am, but I didn‘t. I imagine that I intended to catch up with the writing and stuff as soon as we settled into our night‘s lodgings but I didn‘t. My only excuse is that I was almost certainly tired and fed up. Actually I remember being tired and fed up but that‘s for later.
A check on the map tells me that there was no great mystery to how we left Las Vegas that first morning, Friday 27th April. We just went back onto Flamingo and that in turn put us on I515, Federal Highway93 and Federal Highway95 all at the same time.
For anyone not familiar with America‘s road system, any number of roads can and do join up to form one. In this case I93 came South from the Canadian border, as does I93 but a little further east (They both come through Idaho so they could have travelled together) and then right around Las Vegas they join together, for a few wonderful miles ,with 515 which is just a short stretch of Vegas by-pass. Further south around Boulder city they all go their separate ways. 95 and 93 heading for Mexico and 515 just stopping . The trick is to spot where your chosen road splits off from all the other roads, however, I‘m getting a little ahead of myself.
We woke at some unholy hour due to our systems still being on UK time and thinking that when the little hand was on the five it was one in the afternoon. A quick shower and we were loading the suitcases into the car, then all we had to do was check out . Now where was that darned reception desk.
When we checked in the day before we had, obviously, been directed to our room through the motel. Having found our room, we had gone out through a side door, found the car and moved it to that door to save lugging the cases too far. In the process we‘d lost reception.
This motel is a bit on the big size and we wandered around the outside for a while and then got in the car and drove round the outside. We found it, reception, exactly where we‘d left it. We checked out. We were gone.
After a few miles I515 gives up and leaves it to the other two and then some miles later 95 heads south through the exquisitely named 'Searchlight'. Now if ever there was a town named for visiting it has to be 'Searchlight' and I wish that I had but we were on 93 heading southeast - ish for Kingman and I40 but first there was the small matter of the dam.
Quite suddenly we crossed the Hoover Dam.
It was a bit like that because I‘d figured it to be a lot further down the road and yet there it was.
We stopped and and had a look like the good tourists that we are but due to the suddenness of finding the dam, we were parked way the other side - and it was hot.
It‘s so easy to forget where you are when cruising the highways in a nice air conditioned car. It easy to forget that outside is real heat and even at that fairly early hour, the air seemed to stick in my throat. We decided not to stay, there was always Sunday, on the way back. This was Friday and we had along way to go. We bade farewell to the Hoover Dam and continued on our merry way.
Now with all due respect to Federal Highway 93, it is not the most interesting road in the world. It is, or at least the bit from the dam to where we hit I40, sixty or seventy miles of two lane blacktop passing through a barren waste. It does boast the virtually unnoticable settlement of 'Chloride' but that in no way makes up for missing Searchlight. At any rate 60 odd miles, at the statutory 65 miles per hour, were soon done and we found ourselves at Kingman.
Kingman came as a relief because were both hungry to the point of wondering what the dashboard might taste like. We‘d become used to seeing an eating house or twelve at every place on the highway that looked as though there might occasionally be a pair of humans arriving. FH93 simply didn‘t have places that fit that criteria.
Oh, there were a couple of places that offered food but we are nervous of places that look as though what‘s on the menu might have been the family pet, or the family, so we passed by. At Kingman we found everything that we could need , food and drink for us, gas for the car. The only thing which I could complain about was the lack of shade from the sun.
I rather fancied a few minutes asleep, what with one thing and another, but sitting in the car with the engine running and the air conditioning on, seemed a waste. The only space which was in shade was designated 'Disabled' and worse yet, a car was parked there. I‘ll just bet he had no sticker. We drove on.
On to the interstate and on to Williams.
I40 is a slightly more enjoyable experience than FH93, don‘t ask me why, it just is.
Perhaps it‘s the fact that it‘s four lanes instead of two, because that way you can play dodge the trucks, big time. This is misleading, the trucks seem to play dodge the Ford with two tourists in it .
I felt like Denis Weaver in 'Duel' at times there. I knew that at about the moment that I reached the back end of a truck, it would pull out to pass the truck in front.
It was obviously intentional, simply because of how often it happened. I assumed that one guy on a CB radio would tell the other guy exactly when it was a hoot to pull out, but I may be wrong in that, and if I am let me apologise to every American truck driver.
Deliberate or not, I soon learned to fit my passing of trucks into the periods when they had no-one to overtake. Much less stressful.
Something over a hundred miles of I40 passed without incident (the trucks always missed) and without anything of real interest to tell you about, except the makeshift townships.
There were, are, at odd intervals clusters of dwellings.
These clusters are within easy-ish driving distance of a ramp and seemingly a dirt road is the way to and from.
I wondered how these places 'happened'.
They seemed mostly to be wooden bungalows of the type that comes, in two halves, on the back of an eighteen wheeler. It occurred to me to wonder, are there people travelling the American continent with a house on two trucks looking for a place to bolt the two halves back together. Or does someone see the start of a settlement and arrange to have a brand new house 'delivered by Thursday, please' ?
They really did seem orderly places but even having said that, I can just imagine how such a thing would be greeted if one were to spring up alongside the M1 in North Yorkshire.
Williams has two claims to fame that I know of, in fact I‘ve just looked up the official Williams Website and it has other interesting things but it‘s claims to fame *are* indeed limited to two. One of those isn‘t mentioned, though, so it might be just one.
The one 'claim' that we, me and the website, agree on is that Williams is the Gateway to the Grand Canyon, although lets be fair about this, 'Gateway' seems a bit grandiose.
It‘s got the railway station for the train that goes to the Grand Canyon which is something, but no gate.
The other claim to fame that the website doesn‘t mention, and I may have dreamed but I‘m sure I read somewhere, is that Williams was the last town on Route 66 to be bypassed by I40.
Williams was named after William S.Williams who also has the nearby Bill Williams Mountain named after him.
The town is 59 miles from the South Rim and has a dead loco parked in the rail yard. At least, I figure if they ever want to steam that sucker up again they‘d better put back all the missing nuts and bolts on the boiler casing or she‘s gonna blow.
We wandered Williams in the heat of the afternoon. We checked out the rail depot which was shut.
We never found out if it only opens weekends or whether it shuts after the canyon train leaves, to reopen shortly before it gets back.
It was shut while we were there anyway, so we wandered off again in search of coffee. Eventually, feeling that we‘d 'done' the town we headed back onto the Interstate and headed for Flagstaff.
"Flagstaff - Next four exits." The sign proudly claimed. "OK " I thought , "No worries."
We had the directions in our Super8 guide and on our computer printout.
We counted exits.
One, two, three, four - Oh look there it is .
A Super8 sign rose above the shrubbery like an alien creature with a long thin neck and a very strange face, I turned down the ramp and parked in front of the motel.
The wrong motel. We stopped on the forecourt and deliberated. Hindsight suggests that we should have booked in that one and cancelled the original booking. Actually, hindsight suggests that we should have booked into a motel in Williams but then that‘s hindsight for you. Never there when you need it most.
We went back to the interstate and tried again. We went back as far as that sign and counted over. One, two, three, four. Something wrong here. I looked at the Super 8 book again and checked the junction numbers. The one that we‘d been to on Butler Avenue was off of the fourth exit which was Exit 198. Our motel was on N. Kasper Ave, off at junction 201.
So let me run that by you again. The sign says there are four exits to Flagstaff, the fourth exit is 198, our motel (still in Flagstaff, apparently) is at exit 201. Is your math coping with this? Mine wasn‘t.
We drove on, looking for 201.
It didn‘t take long to find it. Junction 201 off I40 is the very next junction after 198.
So now you know the reason for the title of this piece. Americans can‘t count.
In any other part of the world the junction after 198 would be 199.
In any other part of the world they would employ a junction counter who could use his thumb when counting - so that he didn‘t simply stop at four. Sheesh.
Right, so we were there, at last. Moderately fed up and jolly tired. And hungry, but tired took precedence. We hit the sack.
No creaking bed here, just comfort. We slept like babes - until a train went by.
Yep, you guessed it, the noisy motel thing kicked in, there was a train track just the other side of the road and there was a crossing not too far away from the motel.
So every driver of every train, and let me tell you there were plenty of those, went the whole nine yards with the whistle.
Four long, four short didn‘t make any difference, there was precious little sleep to be had that night .
While we were not sleeping, we timed the intervals.
As often as eighteen minutes apart, and occasionally as far apart as three quarters of an hour.
Wendy says I slept through some of them.
Wendy says I snored through the ones I slept through.
Wendy says she hardly slept at all.
Still, at least we got an early start the next day. So some good came of it.
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