We were up a little before 7 again, but this time after some better sleep. We got packed, then planned for the day. After some back and forth, we pulled the trigger and decided to go via Winslow. We also decided to visit the "Valley of the Gods" near Monument Valley. Since a lot of Monument Valley is closed, we thought this would be a mini-version of that, but open. But because we read that Valley of the Gods is a "step down" in the wow-factor from Monument Valley, we decided to come in from the east, so that we'd see Valley of the Gods before seeing Monument Valley. This added on a good amount of driving, but we had all day to get it done.

In the car, we noticed that PVNRT had done a number on the water bottle. But unlike the case we'd seen plenty of times before (imploding a bit when driving downhill from the mountains), this time it had imploded because the temperature had dropped so precipitously from yesterday afternoon. It was noticeably windier and cooler this morning. We noticed the wind on the road, as we headed down Highway 64 to Williams. Justin noted that the wind wasn't a huge deal, as if it blew us around, it would only take us off the right shoulder. "Yeah, but what about the cars coming at us?" Okay, good point. Thankfully, no cars or trucks drifted into our lane.

At Williams, we got on the 40 headed east towards Flagstaff. There were tons of cops out, and we avoided potentially getting one when a vehicle about a half mile ahead of us got pulled over. This morning we were listening to a podcast about Oaxaca. The food, drink, sights, and vibe of the city sounded great to us. We wondered if it was at high elevation, to temper what would otherwise be some pretty humid weather. If so, we thought we should add it to the list of potential places so move if, for whatever reason, Tenerife doesn't work out. There was a ton of construction going on around Flagstaff. This may have been why so many cops were out handing out tickets. We felt that it was pretty smart to do so much construction when less cars are on the road because of Covid. Frankly, everywhere should be doing as many longstanding construction projects as possible, as many people are looking for jobs and there will never be a time (we hope) with less cars on the road.

Past Flagstaff, the pine trees gave way to...well...nothing. It was empty, and all the cops were seemingly gone as well. When we were about 30 minutes from Winslow, Justin saw a billboard for something called the Meteor Crater. Crystal got really excited, and said we should go. We looked, and it was before Winslow, and not far out of the way, so we added yet another detour to our day of planned detours. Crystal had visited Meteor Crater when she was young, and had fond memories. The crater was in the middle of nowhere, but had a couple dozen vehicles in the parking lot. We bought our tickets, and they wanted us to watch some movie about the crater and how it formed. This would have been of limited interest under any circumstances, but sitting in a movie theater with a bunch of people with Covid all around seemed not so bright. There was a guy in the back that was wearing his mask like a chin diaper, and then started coughing, and we just bolted. We asked one of the employees if we could just look at the crater on our own, and he pointed the way to a different door.

Because we were in the middle of nowhere, it was impossible to get any idea of scale. But then there was a small white-ish area in the middle of the crater, and in that white-ish area there was a fence with a US flag and an astronaut (picture), and we read the astronaut was 6' tall. So that's when we realized this crater was in fact quite large, and way bigger than the gas crater we visited in Turkmenistan. We looked around for maybe 5-10 minutes, then went on our way. With our entry ticket, we got money off of gasoline at the station near the 40, so we filled up. From there, it was a short drive into "downtown" Winslow. There was not a whole lot going on in the city, and it looked like it had definitely seen better days. To our surprise, however, there was actually a fair amount of people at the intersection commemorating "Take It Easy." There was a mural, two statues, one of Jackson Browne and one of Glen Frey, and a flatbed truck. The whole thing was very random, but hey, it brought us into town, and several other people as well.

We had lunch across the street at RelicRoad, a brewpub we'd seen good reviews for this morning. We noticed that, like in Flagstaff, we were on old Route 66 again. But this time we were in the shade, and it was a comfortable temperature, so a much better experience than in Flagstaff two days earlier. We watched dozens of people come and go and get their picture taken at the corner. We each got a beer, an orange blossom beer for Crystal, a mango wheat for Justin. We both ordered a turkey melt, since their sausage platter was out. This worked out well, since the turkey melt was really excellent. At the table one over was Gypsy the dog and her family, who seemed like nice enough people. After lunch, we got our picture taken with Jackson Browne, then went on our way. The plan was to head north on Highway 87, east on 264, north on 191 (going right past Canyon de Chelly, which is currently closed), and then once in Utah coming back on Highway 163 towards Monument Valley.

Crystal was driving, and Justin was navigating this afternoon. As soon as we left Winslow, we left any cell signal. Justin almost immediately screwed up the navigation, and we ended up on an even smaller road than we were supposed to be on. Thankfully it ended up in Dilkon, where we got back on a "main" road, headed out to Indian Wells. We were listening to one of Crystal's podcasts, listening to a "My Favorite Murder" minisode that was pretty enjoyable. After that we listened to the final episode with Bean of the Kevin & Bean morning show. We were listening to these guys when we were in college and also when we lived in and around LA in the late 90s and 2000. Justin had (well, still has) a World Famous KROQ, Kevin & Bean Morning Show t-shirt that he wore on several of our trips over the years. Over the 30 years they were on the air, they helped give rise to the careers of Jimmy Kimmel, Adam Carolla, Ralph Garman, Matt Money Smith, and several others.

Bean's last day was in November 2019, and Justin woke up at 3:30am in Hawaii to listen to it live. He wanted Crystal to listen to it, and saved the podcast version to listen to at a later date. A roadtrip seemed like a good time, but then this trip got delayed by six months, so now it was almost a year after when it was recorded. It was so odd listening to something so recent, but at before so many crazy things (impeachment, Covid, about two dozen other Trump stories, etc.) happened. The craziest, at least as it relates to the show, is that all of the remaining people on the show were unceremoniously let go earlier this year after Covid started wreaking havoc on the economy. So even though this wasn't the last show ever, it now took on sort of that vibe, as the show without Bean never really had the time to get a foothold, and is now gone. It was also interesting listening to Bean, who lived in New Orleans with his wife and their English bulldog Linus, explaining why he was moving out of the country, and silently nodding along. [Sadly, Linus passed away a couple months after they moved to Europe, so hopefully that does not happen with either Avon or Lola.]

On the last show, many people from the show's past called in, and Jimmy and Adam came into the studio, and the whole thing was just one big happy stroll down memory lane. Beefs that were close to 30 years old were squashed. Adam Carolla actually got serious for a minute or two. People called in to share stories about Kevin & Bean indirectly saved their family members from dying on the streets. So there were many laughs and tears along our drive this afternoon. Aside from one brief stop near Round Rock for some drinks and snacks, listening to the podcast got us from Indian Wells all the way into southern Utah. Indeed, it ended about one minute before we got to the east entrance to the Valley of the Gods.

The road in the Valley of the Gods is not paved, but it was well-graded and not any problem for the VW. But there was a lot of dust, which we had to remember every time we stopped to take photos. We saw two cars coming the opposite direction of us about a minute after we got on to the road, but those were the last two cars we'd see driving the rest of the way. So we would just drive until we saw an awesome vantage point, stop, let the dust settle (literally), take some photos, and then get back in the car. There were tons of interesting mesas, both flat on top and also pyramidal. There were also some precariously held together rock formations, thankfully not too close to the road. We could see Monument Valley to the south in the distance, but couldn't tell how much bigger those rock formations were versus what we were seeing.

We would have stayed longer, but the sun was rapidly going down, and we worried a bit about missing sunset at Monument Valley, so we rushed a bit towards the end. Crystal was a good sport about Justin constantly starting and stopping and taking photos. He'd taken over driving duties about 30 seconds after we got onto the unpaved road - she didn't want to drive on that. Justin has a decent amount of experience driving on unpaved roads from Hawaii, and some of the nurseries he visits there. The car didn't seem to care that it was being driven off road, but at some point we had to get all the dust off of the rear windshield so that we could see behind us.

We came out the Valley of the Gods on Highway 261, but it was a short drive back to Highway 163, near Mexican Hat. We passed right by the Mexican Hat rock formation, again worried about the impending sunset. This was a good choice, as once we got to the Monument Valley lookout point on the highway, around mile marker 14 and 13, the sun was in fact setting and lighting everything up in red. We stopped to get some photos here, which is roughly the spot where Forrest Gump stopped running cross-country in the movie. There were others taking photos, and Justin saved an Asian couple from getting run over by a truck. They were too focused on getting their photo, ignoring they were in the middle of an actual highway, where trucks were coming up from behind them at 60 miles an hour. We hoped, like yesterday, we'd get some good karma out of this.

We took some photos from the north, then went on the south side to see if more of the rocks were illuminated. They most certainly were, and in fact looked like they were on fire, being bright red for a minute or two until the sun set and the rocks turned back to more of a muted brick color (compare top left above with third row left above - those were taken only 3 minutes apart). That minute or two we took to be the payout on our karma. From here, it was only about a five minute drive to our hotel, Goulding's. When we arrived, the moon was coming up and was very bright. We checked in, and got our instructions for our sunrise tour the next day.

Because Arizona does not follow Daylight Saving Time, but Utah does, we lost an hour today, but it would make waking up for sunrise "later" tomorrow. At least that's what we'd tell ourselves mentally. Once in the room, Crystal had the epiphany we hadn't done our Duolingo yet, so we did it out on our back deck, overlooking Monument Valley. Almost immediately Crystal was talking about coming back here, and spending several days just hanging out. That's pretty high praise. Justin took a quick look at the photos, and they warranted some high praise as well. We never did eat dinner, we just basked in the splendor of the day and then went to sleep early.