Although we have been trying to trace down old Route 66 this past week, most of the time we have either been on I40 or within sight of it.  We found lots of interesting small towns and roadside attractions.  We even stopped to photograph many of them.  Yesterday, we left the beaten path.  We decided not to take the interstate highway to Phoenix.

We ignored the urging of the GPS, looked at a REAL map, left the interstate at Winslow, found SR87 and headed south toward our destination.  More than anything else, this impressed upon us how few people travel off “the beaten path.”  We went for miles without seeing another car.  The towns and gas stations were widely scattered in this desert country. At first, the land was mostly flat and empty.  The road was only two lanes and there was no breakdown lane.  In the far distance, we could see the lower ridges of the mountains long before we started to climb.

I was driving and Jim quickly discovered there was no internet service for his iPhone.  Before long, we lost cell signal altogether.  Since we live in an area where cell service can be spotty, we weren’t really concerned, at first.  We expected to pick up a signal again in a few miles.  It did not happen.

As the road began to climb, we found no signal and places to stop became even more rare.  The vistas were gorgeous, but we couldn’t photograph them because there was no safe place to pull over.  I drove across country a few times in the sixties.  This section of our route took me back to a time when our car broke down after dark in the middle of nowhere and cell phones didn’t exist.  I found myself a little nervous and Jim became more and more frustrated at not being able to check Facebook or upload his pictures.

We we  finally picked up a limited signal while coming back down from the mountains and approaching Phoenix.  Traffic picked up again in the same area.  We passed through a couple of touristy little towns with restaurants, gift shops, and other “attractions,” but it was now getting dark and we decided against stopping to explore.  We had been out of touch with the world for more than 2 hours.  It felt like a foreign land.

Today, we head for California and will be staying on the I-10.  I’ve never been across the desert this way and we are hoping to find other photo ops to equal those on I-40.