Saturday 13th June

We left Flagstaff for Albuquerque today. Sally took us to the Greyhound Bus Station, she has been so kind and hospitable during our 3 day stay in Flagstaff.

The original plan had been to hire a car and drive from Flagstaff, but in the end I chickened out as I really didn’t fancy driving over 300 miles ‘on the wrong side of the road’ and as we did not have pre-booked Amtrak tickets (and the train was to depart at 5.00am!) we decided to take the Greyhound which departed at the more civilised hour of 12.40pm. That worked out really well. The bus was full of a motley group of people varying from a young mother with what looked like a new-born baby to a big tough looking tattily dressed man who was a trucker. All sorts of nationalities too.

Whilst cruising along Route 66 (!) I was pleased I was not driving. Although most of the journey was scrubby flat desert the scenery was very interesting and after a couple of hours we passed the most amazing red cliffs (that is the only way I can describe them) and they ran alongside the road for probably the best part of 100 miles. They were amazing shapes and colours and it would have hard to concentrate on driving without looking around. We passed through several Native American (mustn't say 'Indian'!) Reservations, lots of very run-down homesteads miles from anywhere and townships with names like 'Buffalo Range' and 'Two Guns'.
… one of which looked as though it had Native American's face carved in it, but I suspect I was just weathered:
The journey took 7 hours including 3 stops. The first place we stopped at was Winslow where the hot desert wind was so strong it was difficult to walk against it. We arrived at our hotel in Albuquerque at around 8.30pm