Route 66 - Arizona

Day 12: We started the day off standing on the corner in Winslow, Arizona and I have to say it was such a fine sight to see - we took it easy for 30 minutes before running down the road trying to loosen our load (that's enough of misusing the lyrics!) and headed for Flagstaff via Two Guns (a derelict staging post/small town) and Twin Arrows (yet another closed down gas station cum trading post). Had lunch in "Flag", as the locals call it, before taking Highway 89 north to Kayenta and Monument Valley. There was some amazing scenery interspersed with long, long, very straight roads. We had a bit of a scare last night when I checked the itinerary and discovered I'd booked our Monument Valley tour for 9am today! I hurriedly made a phone call and managed to change it to 1pm tomorrow, thank goodness. So we have a bit of a lie-in tomorrow morning but it does mean our journey to Page will be late afternoon/early evening. Oh, we have also discovered that we have changed time zones again! Apparently the Navajo nation use New Mexico time so we are back to 7 hours behind. By the time we get to Page tomorrow we will be back to 8 hours behind again. Very confusing! Our hotel in Kayenta is very expensive, because there are so few and they are so popular, but it is not any better than some of the budget hotels we have stayed in. Disappointing really - you would expect a little more than the basics. However, it is only 1 night!

Day 13: We had a leisurely morning at the hotel (not a lot else to do at Kayenta!) and then headed over to Monument Valley about 11am. What a spectacular ride over there! The views were amazing just on the way. We crossed (ver briefly) in to our 8th state, Utah, before returning back in to Arizona to enter the Navajo park. It is possible to do self-guide tours around some of the valley, but not on a motorcycle, so we had booked a guided tour, which also takes you in to areas out of bounds to sel-guide trips. The 3-hour tour around the valley was amazing, awesome even! The only drawback was no toilet breaks, which with my bladder meant something of an endurance event! We then headed back to the hotel, picked up our kit and drove the 100 miles to Page, Az. We had a bit of a problem finding the hotel (again!) but once we found it we were happy. We have the most fantastic view from the room over towards Lake Powell (we can just about see it!) and Glen Canyon Dam and the hotel is very nice. Slightly annoying, especially when you are hot and tired and have been driving around housing estates fruitlessly trying to find a hotel, to find that the Best Western you've eventually found is the wrong bloody one!  We discovered, eventually, that there are 2 Best Westerns, both owned by the same people, one actually just round the corner from the other, both with very similar names and addresses. "Oh, this happens a lot" was the response!  Hopefully we'll have time tomorrow morning to visit a few places locally before heading over to Grand Canyon Village.