A Day in the Life of Arizona: Route 66 by Gregory McNamee

The sun is not yet up, but Angel Delgadillo is bustling around his barbershop, broom in hand, preparing for the day’s business. As his wife Vilma straightens stacks of correspondence and souvenirs, the octogenarian steps out onto the sidewalk and gazes up and down Route 66, taking in the cool highland air.

“This is just the way it ought to be,” he says, smiling a Cheshire-cat smile and looking benevolently out upon his native, still-asleep town of Seligman, in northwestern Arizona. “I hope they leave it just like this. This is what the world seems to love—America as it was, just like this.”

As if on cue, two early birds enter the barbershop, which doubles as an informal museum, tourist-information booth, and gift shop. Visiting from Germany, the two are heading west on the famed highway. Angel gladly advises them on what to see along the way. There’s no better guide, as Route 66 hands know, for Angel once logged many thousands of miles on the road with his family’s big band, once a mainstay of entertainment in little towns throughout northern Arizona.

Early Morning, Route 66

After calling on the Delgadillos and tucking away coffee and eggs, I clamber into my old truck to begin a leisurely journey along the storied highway. Crossing the northwestern corner of the state, this stretch of asphalt seems tailor-made for unhurried travel, though it wasn’t always such a quiet place.

Until the coming of the interstate highway system in the 1950s, Route 66 was the main artery between Chicago and Los Angeles. During the Depression, thousands of Midwesterners took to the road to try their luck in the farms and factories of California, the stuff of John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. Night and day, towns like Seligman shook with the rumble of traffic.

On this cool October morning, though, I have Route 66 to myself. I edge westward, watching as the sun fills the broad grassy valley that lies beyond Seligman, my truck the only vehicle on the well-tended ribbon of road even as hundreds of cars and trucks fly by on the just-visible interstate.

A Cooper’s hawk wings across a field, chasing a cloud of flickers. An immature bald eagle, sitting on a fencepost, stretches his wings in the rising sun, prompting me to pull over to have a closer look. Perhaps knowing that he affords a rare sight worthy of entry on a birder’s life list, the eagle flaps away a millisecond before I can wrestle my cameras out of its bag. Undeterred, and elated to have seen the sight, I turn to the other shoulder of the road to scan the looming cliffs for signs of condors—for, reintroduced in 1996, the giant birds have been spotted along the great rock reefs bordering Grand Canyon country on both sides of the Colorado River.

Corrals and Cowboys

The day warms as I climb out of the Aubrey Valley to Grand Canyon Caverns, where a few dozen pickups stand parked alongside a pipe corral. I pull in to see what has brought them out there and find an old-fashioned rodeo in progress. Well, perhaps not so old-fashioned, since I hear one young vaquero say to another, “What’s happening, dude?”

Once upon a time, “dude” was a fighting word, but none of the cowboys and cowgirls blinked. They had other things on their minds, having come to rope calves and show off their horses on this fine day for a fine reason: at another rodeo a year earlier, a toddler had fallen twenty feet from a grandstand and done himself some damage. He quickly healed, but now there are doctor bills to pay. Thus the rodeo, a fundraiser drawing participants from four counties. I watch the riding and roping for an hour, visiting with the cowpokes, proud to know that the tradition of taking care of friends and neighbors is alive and well.

I head westward, arriving a few miles down the road in Peach Springs, the capital of the Hualapai Indian Reservation, its fortress-like stone government buildings a monument to a troubled frontier. A quarter-hour later I descend into the rocky hollow called Crozier Canyon, whose steep red walls and winding course once posed quite a challenge for the builders of Route 66. Far in the distance, on the northern horizon, I catch a glimpse of the Grand Canyon.

In the shadow of the Grand Wash Cliffs, another monument to a bygone era awaits in the desert hamlet of Hackberry. Over the years and a couple of changes of ownership there, an old Mobil gas station, still operational, has been remade into an impromptu Route 66 museum, a destination guaranteed to thrill antiques aficionados and old-time rock-and-roll enthusiasts alike. There’s even a modest shrine to Elvis, even though Nat King Cole should be the tutelary spirit of the highway, and even though most of the visitors seem more interested in the petting zoo of old cars and roadside signs that rings the station.

Twenty-five miles later, I pass through the fast-growing city of Kingman, where things have definitely gotten busier: if only for a few minutes, big rigs and city traffic fill the old highway while the skies above fill with contrails and parachutists, courtesy of an air show at the Kingman Airport. The hubbub is unexpected after thus-far-quiet travels, and I quickly head to the cool sanctuary of the city’s new, artifact-packed Route 66 Museum, where I stop for a soda before heading out on the final leg of our journey.

The Black Mountains

That segment takes me another 25 miles southwest of Kingman and into the foothills of the rugged Black Mountains, which offer some of the most challenging territory of the whole length of Route 66, certainly something to set a flatlander to wondering whether the migration west was worth the effort. Many a jalopy drew its last breath on this twisty stretch of road, which may explain why the last building before the highway climbs into the rocks is another old service station.

Modern vehicles negotiate the grades out of Cool Springs more easily than those old-time machines, which prompts Jacqueline McGraw, the station’s caretaker, to grumble good-naturedly, “It’s mostly folks from southern California that go by. They drive so fast that they don’t stop to look at the beauty—and this is really a beautiful place. The sunrises are spectacular, and you can hear the birds sing. It makes me know why I was put on earth.”

It is a beautiful place, to be sure. As I climb up the rough mountains above Oatman, the sun begins to set, filling the deep canyons that line the Colorado River far below with shadow, yielding a view of one mountain range backing onto another, and another, and another, straight out of a Japanese landscape painting. I stand quietly, watching flights of birds, enjoying the now-cool breeze.

The silence is broken by a braying wild burro, then a half-dozen of them, clambering down from the rocks for a look at a passing stranger. Doves coo loudly, punctuated by the keening of a passing hawk. An old Volkswagen bus putt-putts its way up the western face of the mountain, its Quebecois driver pausing to call out a cheery bonsoir and receiving a howdy in return.

Highway noises of the best kind, those. It is just the way it should be, as Angel Delgadillo told me at the beginning of this daylong journey along a fabled highway that safeguards America as it was.

Planning a trip down Route 66? Don't forget to browse our collection of luxury hotels in Arizona, or check out things to do in Arizona.