Winslow, Arizona -- June 8
Woke up in Holbrook and packed up and folded down. We're getting pretty good at this! It takes us 15-30 minutes to pack up clothes and misc. items and transfer them to the Montero, then a good 30 minutes to zip, fold, flip, slide, disconnect, stow and crank down the top on the popup. Learned a little lesson about water pressure today, too. See, up until now we turn off the water faucet, disconnect the hose, and all the excess water pressure in the system bleeds out of the hose end. BUT — we had to get smart and add a quick-connect thingamabob to the side of the trailer. And one thing about quick-connects is that, well, when you DISconnect one side of this connection, the other side seals off. So when we did this today, the trailer water was still under pressure.
So any way, we decided to bleed all the water out of the hot water heater because at 8.3 pounds per gallon, that's about 50 extra pounds to tow around. So I unscrew the drain plug and — wait for it..... — whoosh! Pressurized hot water all over my pants leg. Felt kinda stupid. At least it wasn't TOO hot...
Any way, we finally got on the road and our next stop was Winslow, Arizona. I found an intersection with a street sign, and as a bonus the light pole behind it had a flag/banner with the town name on it. That was the picture I had envisioned. Of course the town is aware of its infamy in song too. Jackson Browne visited in 1971 and wrote a song about it. Glenn Frey finished off one of the verses and the Eagles recorded it and put it on their first album. It became a trademark of their sound, and put Winslow, Arizona on the map for a whole generation. I have to imagine that countless thousands of people stopped here just because of that song. Of course, it didn't hurt that historic Route 66 passed through town, but the vast majority of travelers just zipped on by on I-40.
In the 90's a number of initiatives to revitalize Winslow took shape. One of them involved the famous song. In 1999 the town dedicated the "Standing On The Corner Park" so now you can pose next to a statue of what appears to be Jackson Browne in front of a mural which contains an Eagle, a couple in a window, and a girl in a flat bed ford, all the while being seranaded by Eagles tunes coming from the gift shop next door. So we posed and took pictures like all the other turistas, but I'm glad I got my own separate photo that I consider unique.
But even though that song and that park draw tourists in, the main tourist attraction in town is La Posada. We first heard about this place from the owner of Tinkertown in Albuquerque. She raved about it, and rightly so! This building is amazing. It was the last link in an entire chain of railroad hotels set up by Fred Harvey. His chain brought linen tablecloths and silverware to an otherwise rough old west railroad travel at several major stops on the Santa Fe line. It was immortalized in a movie starring Judy Garland called "The Harvey Girls."
La Posada was designed by renowned Southwest architect Mary Colter. It was open from 1930 to 1957. Santa Fe Railways auctioned off the museum-quality furnishings in 1959 and gutted half of the building for office space in the early 1960's. Several times it was scheduled for demolition, and in 1994 the railway moved out for good, again promising demolition. The current owners obtained it after many years of legal negotiations and began renovations in 1997. Allen Affeldt and his wife Tina Mion have done a miraculous job so far. And the future plans are no less incredible! I could write about this for a long time, but I will spare you and instead refer you to links (below) where you can find out everything there is to know about this wonderful place.
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.234606056556222.82230.197146780302150