Albuquerque – Holbrook
I have to write this blog entry a day later than normal as the Holiday Inn Express in Holbrook that we stayed at last night that advertised free wifi access did not have any wifi access and it has not worked correctly for the past few weeks, how inconvenient as I not only use it to upload the text and images for this blog but use to plan the next days journey.
Anyway back to what happened today. To be honest it has been pretty boring, it has just seemed that we did not do anything, it started off bad with the sat nav sending us around in circles through Albuquerque. Then once we had left the city on Interstate 40 we kept coming off and trying to meet up with Route 66 only to find that we would follow it for a few miles before loosing it, very frustrating, I definitely think that the New Mexico section of the trip has by far the worst Route 66 signage so far.
The hours past with the same scenery endlessly scrolling past the windows until we finally entered Arizona. Again Route 66 was difficult to follow, at one point we followed it for a good few miles until we came up to a road block and had to go all the way back to the interstate, very, very annoying.
The only thing we did today was visit the Petrified Forest National Park, but to be honest it was as if we paid money to drive down the road with the same scenery we had been experiencing for the past few hours. The only interesting parts were the fossilised remains of some logs next to the road during one section of the 28 mile route.
After we left the park it was a short drive to Holbrook which is where we would be staying. As I mentioned earlier we stopped at the Holiday Inn Express there and was not happy as they did not have any internet service despite adverting it, a few other complaints included it did not have an elevator so I had to carry our cases up the flights of steps and there was no iron despite having an ironing board. To be honest I think it would have been better staying at the motel 6 next door for one third of the price.
One last thing about the hotel, when I was checking in and they asked me for my phone number I started off by saying the dialling code for the UK is +44 then gave my number, the person behind the counter then said what if I was calling someone down the road from my house would I need to use the country code to which my reply was no as it would be in the same country wouldn’t it, some people just make you laugh.
For dinner we went to a Chinese restaurant down the roads were the portions are enormous, we left quite a bit but it tasted good.
As there was no internet to plan the next day I had to break out the maps and do it the old fashioned way.
