After leaving Petrified Forest National Park, I drove along US Route 180 through the badlands and grasslands to Holbrook.
This statue made with petrified wood sits on the edge of Holbrook, where US 180 interests with AZ 77.
This was Terrill's Cottage Saloon, also known as Buckets of Blood Saloon. The saloon was built in 1886, and numerous gunfights in the saloon led to people saying that the floor looked like buckets of blood had been poured all over. The street in front now bears the name of the saloon, "Bucket of Blood Street".
I had been in Holbrook before, in a previous trip, so I didn't stop in town.
You can see my photothread of Holbrook here.
As you gradually went up in elevation, the landscape changed from red and closer to desert, to tan and more of a grassland. Hills and mountains that were visible as far away as Petrified Forest National Park get bigger and closer.
I like how Arizona puts up signs when you hit milestone elevations.
Flagstaff sits at over 7,000 feet, which means it sits in the ponderosa forest at the foot of the San Francisco Peaks.
On the east side of town, where US Route 89 intersects with Townsend-Winona Road (the original Route 66 alignment), is the Elden Pueblo. The pueblo was built by the Sinagua people, and was inhabited from around 1070 to 1275.
You can go in some of the old rooms of the old pueblo, which makes it a little bit easier to get a sense of life in the pueblo.
I drove around for a little bit and took some pictures of the new construction. When I was first in Flagstaff in 2014, it was a little run down in some places, but had pontential as a college town with a ton of students from the Phoenix area. That potential was being realized when I was there in 2020, with an explosion of construction and reinvestment in many neighborhoods. There was some construction going on in Downtown, which is north of the train station, but by far the most construction was in the Southside, which is the neighborhood south of the train station and north of Northern Arizona University. The Southside is a hip, young neighborhood!
I stopped in at Mother Road Brewing Company, housed in an old laundry building in the Southside neighborhood, and on the Route 66 alignment. There's a lot of Route 66 buildings in the Southside, which adds a nice historic element to the area.
I then walked around Downtown a little bit. I did a phototour of both Downtown and the Southside, which you can view
here. I also did a phototour of Route 66 east of Downtown, and will have that link in another post.
West of Downtown, there are a few examples of Route 66 neon signs. East Route 66 has more, but this is a taste of a layer of Flagstaff's history.
After Flagstaff, it was a drive at night to my hotel in Tusayan, just outside of Grand Canyon National Park.
Up next, the next morning in Tusayan and Grand Canyon National Park!
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