Day 50, August 30...Kingman, AZ to Flagstaff, AZ

I hung around Kingman this morning so I could see the Route 66 Museum, located in the old downtown section and on "Historic Route 66".  I thought the museum was interesting, with a collection of local memorabilia and information about early roads carved through the west in the 19th century.  The museum is housed in an old electric generating station:

One point the displays made is that, as automobiles became more affordable, in the 1910's through the 1930's, there was an organization called "The Good Roads Association" that was quite successful in improving the quality of roads in America, including the opening of Route 66 from Chicago to Santa Monica in 1926:

This was cool.  In the basement, they have an "electric car museum", not very big, but check this out:

Willie Nelson (left) and Merle Haggard (right) golf carts.  This was also cool.  It's an electric-powered race car built by students at Ohio State.  It's called the Buckeye Bullet and in 2009 it set a record of 303 miles per hour:

After visiting the museum, I headed east  on "Historic Route 66" for about 70 miles or so.  In case you've never seen an "Historic" highway, here's what one looks like:

There were a few interesting sights along the way, though.  This is the Frontier Motel and Restaurant in Truxton, AZ:

There was a lot of this.  When I-40 was finally completed in 1984, it bypassed a lot of towns on the old highway, and they have just melted away.

I did stop for lunch along the way, though:

The Possum Stew was really yummie!

Some of us may remember these:

Since it was still early in the day when I got to Flagstaff, I decided to head east on I-40 to Meteor Crater.  Pat and I visited this site in something like 30 plus years ago, and it's pretty impressive.  The crater is 4000 feet in diameter and 560 feet deep and was created some 50,000 years ago when an asteroid about 150 feet in diameter crashed to earth.  The center of the crater is filled with some 700-800 feet of rubble from the explosion.  Here are a couple pictures:

Since the crater was believed to be similar to craters found on the Moon, NASA astronauts trained here from 1962 to 1972.  Pretty interesting...and privately owned.

Tomorrow, I'm headed down to Phoenix to have dinner with Patrick.  Pat is arriving later tomorrow evening, so we're all looking forward to being together for a week or so.  Blogs for the next week may not be every day, but I'll try to keep you informed of what we're up to.

Miles today:  233
Total to Date:  12,550