8 December 2017
On our way from the Grand Canyon to San Diego, we drove part of the historic Route 66. I never realised that it all started with a movie director in Chicago who needed to finish filming a movie before the end of December one year, otherwise his film wouldn’t be released. The weather in Chicago at the time was too cold to allow filming to continue, so in desperation he called a friend in Los Angeles. The friend told him the weather was great and suggested finishing his filming there — which he did, putting in motion the LA movie industry and Route 66.
We stopped first in Williams, Arizona — a lovely little town with a fantastic all American Diner that we decided to eat at. We all sat up at the counter and soaked in the experience. I really enjoyed the meal there, talking to the waitress and hearing the locals have their conversations. The food was great too.
Then it was on to Seligman, the town that the movie Cars was based on. The town was dying, but a local family fought hard and put up substantial funds to preserve it so that Route 66’s spirit lived on. They’ve done a fantastic job and created a place that everyone should visit.
Our last stop for the day was at Joshua Tree National Park. This is a relatively new National Park, named after the Joshua Trees that grow there. They were named by early Mormon travellers who thought the trees reminded them of a bible story where Joshua holds his hands up in prayer. They aren’t actually trees though, rather belonging to the Yucca family.
From when we entered the Joshua Tree National Park until we left it, our CEO insisted on playing U2’s Joshua Tree album, which has very little to do with the National Park other than they photographed the album cover there and named the album after it. But great music nevertheless.
We explored the Hidden Valley section of the park, which took us just under an hour. It was a fantastic place to explore, with lots of granite formations to climb over. Katelyn said afterwards that this was her favourite part of the whole tour.
Unfortunately we visited in the middle of the day and so the light was very flat for photography. So I decided to do some black and white and was quite happy with the results.
← ← Previous · Contents · Next →