Peach Springs,AZ to Las Vegas, NV

It was dull and overcast when we got up this morning and the weather got worse as time went on. It rained quite heavily as we drove north towards the Hoover Dam. We later discovered that there was a number of weather alerts for flash floods issued for the area we were driving through that morning.

The Hoover Dam is located between Arizona and Nevada on the Colorado River. Lake Mead, which formed behind the dam is the largest man-made reservoir in the Western Hemisphere.

We accessed the Dam by driving over the O'Callaghan-Tillman Bridge ( see photo below) whose total length is 1905 feet, making it the longest single-arch bridge in North America. At 880 feet over the Colorado River it is the 2nd highest bridge in the USA and the highest concrete-arch bridge anywhere.

During the Depression in the 1930s, thousands of men and their families came to Black Canyon to
build the Hoover Dam and tame the Colorado River. It took them less than 5 years in this harsh and barren land to build the largest dam of the time.

We visited an interactive exhibition about the amazing engineering feat of building this dam. We then walked across the dam in the lashing rain and looked at Lake Mead on one side and the Colorado River hundreds of feet down on the other side.

The weather improved and we resumed our journey to Las Vegas but by the time we checked in to our hotel on the Strip clouds reappeared and it rained for most of the evening. This was not the start - weather-wise we expected to experience in the desert city of Las Vegas.

View from our hotel window.

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Holbrook, AZ to Peach Springs, AZ

We left Holbrook in bright sunshine and continued our drive along Rte 66 which once again had us driving on the Interstate at times. Our first stop was in Winslow made famous when The Eagles recorded "Take It Easy" whose second verse starts with "Standin' on a corner in Winslow Arizona". We then drove on to Flagstaff but didn't stop in the city. Flagstaff has a beautiful forested location high up on the Colorado Plateau and it was a change to be driving on roads lined with tall ponderosa pine trees. We had a picnic lunch off the beaten track in Buckskinner Park, Williams, AZ. We followed a dirt trail to the picnic area which really tested our car's tyres. They survived, thankfully. We soon found ourselves in Seligman (pronounced Sligman), a sleepy town which maintains a lot of its historic character together with a few unexpected twists - eg Santa in a Chevvy outside the wacky Snow Cap Drive-in. Our destination for the night was th

Seattle, WA

We left Everett on Sunday morning and headed south to Seattle, our final stop on this trip. We drove to our hotel and dropped off our cases before we headed to SeaTac to return our car. After the brief stop at the hotel we drove to Kubota Garden, a 20-acre Japanese garden in one of Seattle’s southern neighbourhoods. It was started in 1927 by Fijitaro Kubota, a Japanese immigrant. It is an urban oasis with Japanese and native trees and plants, ponds and waterfalls. It was beautiful with its fall colours. The following morning we headed down to the waterfront to the historic Pike Place Market where Starbucks first opened its doors to the public in 1971. Then we wandered through the market which opened in 1907 and strolled by the numerous stalls of seafood, fresh produce, crafts and flowers. On Tuesday we took the monorail, which was the first commercial monorail in the USA and built in 1962 as an attraction for the 1962 World’s Fair. It still uses the original cars. The monorail

Volcanic Country

On Wednesday morning after breakfast, we headed back to the airport to pick up our car. We got a very nice car, a Ford Edge, fairly large for what is described as a small SUV. Then it was off on the road trip part of the holiday. Our first stop was in a cabin in Ashford, a very small town near the entrance to the Mount Rainier National Park. Thursday morning saw us head to Mount Rainier NP. Mount Rainier at 14,410 ft is the tallest mountain in Washington State. It is an active volcano and is the most glaciated peak in the lower 48 states. We drove up to Paradise which at an elevation of 5,420 ft. is famous for its stunning views. We then walked to Myrtle Falls and the views all round us were just stunning. After lunch we drove to Reflection Lakes along a road with hairpin bends and precipitous drops to the side. While in Ashford, we ate at the quaint Copper Creek Restaurant which opened in 1946 and is the oldest, continuously operating restaurant in Washington State.

On the Road with T and S

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