Day 11 - The West got a little too wild.

I thought I should spend this day getting a little closer to Vegas to cut down on my drive for the next day, so I left Phoenix just short of lunchtime, enjoying the rest of my 

vegetable pizza on the freeway. Using my atlas and Road Trip USA book the night before, I planned a day of driving and sightseeing. I was excited about my first stop - 

some outdoor exploring at Hassayampa River Preserve, on the outskirts of Wickenburg, AZ. Hassayampa River mostly runs underground but surfaces here to help create a dense forest of willows and cottonwoods, which provides a home to over 200 species of birds. As I was driving, I could 

see where the river was winding at the bottom of the hill, just by watching the changing vegetation. I arrived at the gate. It was closed! If I had left a day later, I would have been able to visit...

Feeling much disappointment, I continued on into the town of 

Wickenburg. Wickenburg is a town that developed out of the Gold Rush in the 1860's, and the buildings and the old cowboys you see through town still give you a feeling of the old wild west. Wickenburg is also home to a number of dude ranches, where out-of-towners can come to ride and learn a little cowboying. I had really wanted to spend a few days at one of these ranches and researched them before leaving home, but the minimum stay is for a week. 

The town had a museum (the Desert Caballeros Western Museum) that detailed its history, along with some general history of the West. I grabbed a coffee and went for a visit. The town is named after Henry Wickenburg, who discovered gold in the area in 1863. He founded Vulture Mine, and the town grew in order to service the workers. The town also profited from its location: at the fork between the only road running from northern to southern Arizona and the road to California. The museum had dioramas of the mine to help illustrate its history, as well as a life-sized replica of the town during its heyday, complete with general store, church, gun shop, post office, and rooms of both an old town house and a ranch house. 

In addition to highlighting its own town history, the museum had exhibits on cowboys, rodeos and Wild West shows, as well as some Native American art, a collection of rocks and minerals, and a collection of Western art and sculpture. (This was quite an amazing museum for such a small town.) I found the cowboy exhibit the most interesting of all, since I used a lot of the things shown back during my horse-riding days. The exhibit did a wonderful job of detailing the history and cultural significance of everything from spurs to bridles to chaps and saddles. 

A few interesting cowboy facts...

Originally, bridles and harnesses were made out of strands of dyed horsehair that were individually tied together and assembled by prisoners. Chaps were created to protect cowboy's legs from desert cacti and brush, rope burns, and horse bites. (I always just wore them to look purdy in my horse shows.) "Woolies" were made to be worn on the colder, northern plains. And the word "chaps" is really to be pronounced "shaps," since the derivation is from the Spanish word "chaparejos."

And here's a few tidbits of some Wild West advertising:

Barbed Wire: "Light as air. Stronger than whiskey. Cheaper than dirt."

To get riders for the Pony Express: "WANTED: Young, skinny, wiry fellows, not over eighteen. Must be expert riders willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred. Wages $25 per week."

Of course, I also enjoyed the rock and mineral collection at the museum, in particular the florescent mineral exhibit! They had a display full of minerals whose electrons were activated by the ultraviolet energy from a black light and, in turn, emitted brilliant glowing light! Add this one to the list of the coolest things I've ever seen.

After walking the streets of the town a little more, I went on to Vulture Mine to get a little wilder into the west. The mine was out in the middle of desert nowhere, and the drive that took me there was another of the nicest ones of the trip. After paying the only person I saw in this deserted desert (and she was hungry for conversation, too), I received a hand sketched map of the trail connecting all of the dilapidated buildings (and "dilapidated" is an understatement). Upon entering the trail, I wondered why I didn't have to sign some type of waiver or certainly, at least, give proof of my last tetanus shot. But here is the only warning I got, from the front of the map: "Welcome to Arizona and especially to the Vulture Gold Mine. It is our sincere wish that your visit will be safe and most pleasant. In the interest of safety we remind you that the Vulture Gold Mine is situated in a remote part of the Sonoran Desert, and as in all desert areas, the careless or unwary can, and do, get into serious trouble." Translation: "Try to not fall through any floors or ceilings while you're here or, while walking, to stab yourself in the eye with a piece of rusty metal, because if you do, there will be no one to help you. Also, watch out for wild animals and, despite our poor directions (We know you will get lost while you're here.) don't wander off too far and die." Let's just say, the mine was... ummm, interesting. I saw everything from the old mine shaft to the stamp mill to some abandoned living quarters. Most of the time I didn't really know what I was looking at or if I was going to make it back to my car, but it was interesting, nonetheless. Most of all, I just enjoyed the way the desert landscape looked through all the rotted wood walls and broken glass, and I did take more pictures on Day 11 than on any other day, so that says something. I also thought about what life must have been like here for those 400 workers at the height of the mine's gold extracting days. It looked like a rough life, but at the same time, they were also surrounded by this incredible landscape.

By the time I did finally make it back to my car, the sun was about to set, and I knew I needed to drive on westward and make it to my stop for the night, Kingman. I boarded Highway 93, for part of the drive designated the Joshua Forest Parkway, which was, in fact, filled with Joshua Tree dotted desert. Aside from Bumblebee (which was technically a detour), this drive gets #1 stretch of roadway for the trip thus far. I drove for 2 1/2 hours through nothing but perfect, pretty nature. The only bit of civilization I saw was a few emergency phones and a gas station and restaurant about halfway through the drive, in Wikieup. I even got to enjoy a desert sunset, uninterrupted by nothing on the horizon but mountains. 

When I arrived in Kingman, I bypassed the strip of motel chains for something a little more historic: the Hotel Brunswick. The Brunswick was located on Route 66, but the 1909 hotel actually predates the old highway when Kingman was a significant stop along the Sante Fe Railroad (My nightstand came with two sets of earplugs...). The hotel originally featured a restaurant and a full bar, where I got my first real dinner of the trip (salmon, risotto and grilled vegetables). And it was during dinner that I learned from my waiter that my room was haunted. He gave me an excerpt from a book to read, and apparently, the hotel has three ghosts! One is the daughter of the original owners, who died while riding her tricycle on the second floor. She can be heard some nights still riding it up and down the halls, and sometimes she leaves trails of pennies on the floor. The second is an unknown ghost, probably a woman, who is meticulous about the placement of a certain footstool and has even been accused of moving a mattress. And the third - my ghost - is W.D. McWright, who died of natural causes at the age of 73. One morning he didn't come downstairs at his usual time, and when someone went to check on him, he was found lying dead by the bathroom sink, with a towel in his hand. Mr. McWright is known to come out at 2AM for occasional visits, but thankfully, I was fast asleep having vivid nightmares. Yes, I was a little freaked out. When you combine all this folklore with the creepy look of the room (in a miscommunication between staff, I ended up being upgraded to a suite with a living area that looked like something out of the movie Psycho), I couldn't help but be a little creeped out. Sweet dreams was something I didn't get that night...

Day 10 - Art & Vegetables

Finally, I got to sleep in! What's a vacation without a little snoozing, right? With my dad, 7:30 is sleeping late, so yesterday it was nice to stay in bed till a whopping 9:30! 

And to make it even better, I got to leave the water on the entire time I was taking a shower!!! Normally, I have to wet my hair, turn it off, rinse my hair, turn it off, etc. 

I always run out of hot water, and one day I even ran out of water, completely. Yesterday, I turned the water up so high it was practically scalding. And after my shower, I even actually took the time to fix my hair (like, for real) and change clothes about 5 times. What a luxury.

After doing a little morning blogging and postcard writing, I headed for town. First of all, let me say thank goodness for GPS! I would not have been able to get anywhere in Phoenix if it were not for my GPS. However, I can't seem to get it to stick to the windshield, so it falls to the dash at least 5 times a day. I either end up with it talking to me from the passenger seat or with me trying to fenagle it back up there while I'm driving (not safe, I know). But Phoenix is one of the most confusing cities I've ever driven in, with its dozens of freeways and suburbs. Give me a bustling downtown any day, even with all its one-way streets, but I could do without this insane web of high speed roadways. And let me just note here, Phoenix drivers are slow. At home, most everyone goes at least 5 miles over the speed limit on the interstate, except for those poking along in the right lane, but here, everyone seems to drive consistently just below the speed limit. I feel like I am doing something seriously wrong just by going two miles over. Anyway...

I started my sightseeing yesterday at the Desert Botanical Garden. Their Dale Chihuly exhibit was actually the number one thing that drew me to Phoenix. Dale Chihuly is a glass artist who I became really obsessed with when I saw one of his exhibits at Charlotte's Mint Museum of Craft + Design during high school. It was so fabulous, I think I went 3 different times. When I was doing internet research, trying to decide where I was going to go on my 4 day solo journey, I found that Chihuly had created an installation throughout the garden, incorporating his organic glass figures within the desert environment. It really couldn't get better than this. Chihuly and cactus. It was a done deal. The garden was every bit as good as I expected, and there was glass 

everywhere. I spent about 2 1/2 hours there, walking through a series of trails, finding secret little desert nooks with garden benches, and inspecting, up close, every type of cactus imaginable. The garden has more than 50,000 plants throughout its 145 acres, including rare, threatened, and endangered species. I also stopped for lunch in their Garden Terrace Cafe, and I was so happy to have a vegetable panini! Oh, vegetables, how I have missed thee! I even upgraded my side to Terra Chips! Yippee for roots! And a fresh-squeezed lemonade for dessert. Heaven.

A little navigation sidenote... 

My next stop was to be Taliesin West, the winter home, studio, and architectural school of Frank Lloyd Wright. It was supposed to be in Phoenix, the sprawling city with its many suburbs. I typed the address into the GPS. It didn't come up. I tried it again, thinking I had entered something wrong. Still no luck. I cussed the GPS and looked in my guidebook for some indication of directions. Nothing. I called the place, but they didn't pick up. Then I remembered I had typed everything into mapquest the night before and left it up on my laptop, so I got that out. But the directions didn't make any sense. They ended in Phoenix, AZ. That was it... So I called Paul and had him retype it into mapquest. It didn't come up. He tried typing in the intersection instead of the actual address. It still didn't work. Finally, I found alternate names for both road names, and he tried that. Nope. So I gave him the website to the place to see if they had directions listed. They didn't. But they did have their address. And guess where it was? Scottsdale. Not Phoenix. A suburb that turned into a town.

I arrived at Taliesin West right on the tailend of the 3:30 tour, which lasted a total of 90 minutes and included a slew of interesting facts about Frank Lloyd Wright and a behind-the-scenes look at his house. Wright did have many inventive architectural ideas, but he was a very odd man. He designed everything for the average height of a typical human during the 1930s (so some people had to duck). He also believed in blending his designs with the surrounding environment; since the Saguaro cactus was the tallest thing in the desert, he thought that nothing man-made should be taller. He angled the walls of the house so that there would be no shadows and no lights needed during the day. This was good, since he refused to have electricity for awhile (and a phone - he had to drive 8 miles down a dirt road to the nearest pay phone when he needed to make or receive a call). The strangest thing, though, and honestly, maybe the thing I like the most: the house didn't have any windows. It was completely open to the elements. A past guest who visited Taliesin West on a tour recounted the story of a party where a coyote ran through the room. Desert animals did roam freely and ate and destroyed much of the furniture, etc. He also placed his wife's closet outside. I imagine they had plenty of fights...

His ideas for his school were just as interesting as his ideas for living. He started the school so he could make some extra money during the Depression. Now, Taliesin West is an accredited architectural school with bachelor's and master's programs. Ninety percent of the students who attend receive a list of job offers before they graduate. The school gets thousands of inquiries each year from interested students, but once they learn of the strict guidelines, the number dwindles down to 30-50. Each student receives one-on-one instruction, cannot have a job during their four years of school, gets only 3 weeks off each year, and must meet 25 levels of achievement before graduating (there is no grading system). Ok, so most of that sounds fairly normal. But the first level of achievement is table setting... so they'll know how to entertain clients. And another is working in the kitchen, because how can you design a kitchen if you don't know how to function in one? (Ok, I definitely get that one.) Now the strangest, the wildest, the one that gets them all... Each student receives $1000 during his or her sophomore year to design and build their own home in the desert that they must live in during the remainder of their schooling. If there are any expenses beyond $1000, they must get materials donated, volunteers, etc. This is the thing that weeds out a lot of those thousands, but it's also the thing that students say they get the most out of. A+ for this tour.

After leaving, I decided I was really in the mood for some coffee. I had missed my morning cup, and I knew I needed to get back and do some catch-up blogging and research where I was going to go the next day. There was a shopping center on every corner right at the foot of the property, so I figured if I drove through enough of them I'd eventually find something. I pulled into the first one - the very first one - and there it was: Starbucks. It was attached to a grocery store. I just couldn't do it. So I picked up my handy dandy GPS from the passenger seat and searched for "speciality food" and picked the best-sounding local java shop. It was an ok place, but not good enough for me to want to sit around and write/type, so I took my coffee for the road. As I was pulling out, wondering what I was going to do for dinner, I spotted a fancy pizza place across the street! Pizza! So I ordered one to go, a pizza overflowing with my friend, the vegetable. Tomatoes. Spinach. Artichoke hearts. Caramelized onions. Olives (my very special friend). Strips of fresh, green basil. And little bits of bacon.

Cappuccino from local coffee shop: $4

Small pizza from fancy town: $16 (!)

Pizza box full of vegetables: Priceless

 

P.S.

I encourage everyone reading to please subscribe and post comments! I would love to hear from you all back home, both my friends and my dad's and to be able to see who all is reading. 

Also, if you'd like a postcard from the road and I don't already have your address, please send it and I'll be sure to send you something! (You can e-mail it, if you'd like, to amandaaileen9@gmail.com.) Again, this is to both my friends and my dad's. I have already been peppering my homestate with mail, and I'd love to add some others to the list.

Thanks for reading!

Day 9 - In love with Bumblebee.

Sunday morning we woke up to white. Normally, I spend all winter long wishing for snow, but here I was, wishing that it were gone. We each had at least 100 miles to drive, and the roads didn't look promising... or safe. We spent about an hour and a half desnowing our vehicles. My rental looked like a giant snowball, and I had to scrape the whole thing down to be able to see to drive. Rocinante was fine except for the slideout. We had to haul everything out of the back storage compartment to get to the ladder, then repair the adjust-a-brush, and tear up the entire inside of the motorhome looking for my dad's gloves, so that we could then spend the next half-hour scraping down the top of the slideout so that it would slide in. Finally, we were ready. We each drove back down the icy road to the Ranch House Cafe for breakfast. The same waitress who served dinner the night before was serving breakfast, and some of the same people were there eating. In this town, everybody knows everybody, and they all gather around and catch up at this diner, hollering greetings at one other and interjecting in conversations from across the room. For breakfast, I had Ruth's Special, a mound of hashbrowns covered in some type of chili sauce with pieces of pork and topped with cheese. Delicious. My dad had an omelette while he chatted with one of the locals about the road conditions. He made some traveling suggestions for both of us and sketched out a map to Phoenix for me on my napkin. 

From here, my dad and I went our separate ways, me south to Phoenix, and he, on toward Las Vegas. We had decided to split up and do our own thing for a few days, then meet back up in Vegas on Wednesday. Going south on the highway, I had the better driving conditions and was off the icy roads within a half hour. He, on the other hand, had to brave the interstate in a RV on snow-packed roads - not an ideal combination, to say the least. He passed several upturned cars and a helicopter come to rescue the passengers. So it couldn't have been good. We kept calling each other with updates until we got to dry roads. Finally, he got back on Route 66, and I kept driving toward Phoenix. (Now, here is where you get only half the story. My dad will have to fill you in on his adventure.)

My drive was spectacular, with grasslands and mysterious rock formations flashing past and green mountains following me in the distance. Sheets of snow broke loose and fell from the car, to be left behind on the open road, and it felt metaphoric, for the independence I was gaining mile after mile, driving alone toward an unknown city. It felt good to be in a car, zipping across the countryside in a lightweight automobile instead of chugging up the hills. I felt lightweight.

Soon I was driving through the mountains that had been following me for so long along the horizon. The clouds hung low, and despite the cacti that dotted mountainsides, it felt more tropical than desert. The landscape was lush, the plant life abundant. There was an occasional drizzle of rain on my windshield; though it was less like rain than it was driving through the clouds, through the moisture, and absorbing it. 

Right in the heart of this curious landscape, I saw a sign for a town called Bumblebee. I had already seen it on the map, and the name was enough to make me want to stop, but its location made it a necessity. I pulled off the interstate and almost immediately, I saw my first Saguaro cactus. I whipped the car over to the side of the road and sprinted up the hill like a giddy child. Little did I know what was to come... The roads wound me down and around and back up again through this mountain desert and in minutes, I was on "primitive" dirt road. Plain Jane (as she is now called) didn't stay plain for long, but got covered in mud pretty quickly. I bounced along miles of one of the most gorgeous landscapes I have ever seen, pulling Jane over frequently to explore the desert plant life, to marvel at the mountains, and to enjoy this perfect weather and quietude. Bumblebee was just as brambly and wild and sweet as its name. A few trucks passed me, with four-wheelers on their backs, and I came across trailers stopped and abandoned, no doubt, with their drivers and passengers out playing in this desert oasis. It felt like a secret place that only us few had discovered. After about three miles into the five, it got too muddy to keep driving my little white car further on, and I had to turn back for the interstate, but I felt refreshed, returning to the road.

I had planned a lunch stop for Rock Springs Cafe, known for their pies. The cafe opened in a canvas tent in 1918. I'm not sure when they moved into their current location, but that, too, was old and looked like something out of a Western, with tin ceilings and a dimly lit wooden bar. I sat at the lunch counter, on the edge of that line that separates the customer from the reality. As I ate my turkey melt and rhubarb crumble pie, I watched the waitresses scurry from table to counter and stop for a three-minute bowl of soup as they chatted about the overflowing bathroom and what they did the night before. I saw all the different flavors of pie carried out, mounds of cream topping on the cream pies and fruit pies with their crusts fallen in. I picked rhubarb because it's the only one I've never tried and have always been curious about. I did like the taste of the red stalk, but the pie was nothing to write home about. Maybe it was something to the average taster, but to a self-proclaimed pie aficionado, I noticed how the crust was underbaked and lacked enough integrity to hold the rhubarb and how the filling was thickened not by proper cooking, but with cornstarch. Oh well, it was still nice to have a slice of pie before hitting the pavement again.

I got to Phoenix, a sprawling metropolis, about 2:30 and went directly to Mystery Castle, one of three things that drew me to this city. Mystery Castle was built by Boyce Luther Gulley for his daughter, Mary Lou. When diagnosed with tuberculosis, Boyce disappeared from his family and came to live out the rest of his life in Phoenix. He lived longer than the doctors had predicted and actually died a good while later, from cancer. Mary Lou was a toddler when her father left, and her most vivid memory of him was building sandcastles together at the beach. He had always promised her that he would build her a real castle one day, and this is what he spent the rest of his life doing. He built the entire structure by hand, himself, in the 1930's and 40's and incorporated many things he scavenged from the property and from around town, including windows made from glass refrigerator containers and wheels off his car, ceilings from railroad tracks and telephone poles, and patios and walls from cast-off bricks that came off the kiln imperfect and odd-shaped. The home really did look like something created in someone's imagination, with little creative touches everywhere, thirteen fireplaces, a floating staircase, and a looking hole from one of the balconies into the city. Mary Lou didn't know about the house her father was building until his will was read, but she still lives there till this day, and I met her while I was there (in the photo, she's the little white-headed lady on the right). She's quite the artist herself, as you can tell from the things she's collected and used to decorate her house throughout the years. And as we visited, she sat drinking coffee with her artist friend, who had painted a rock collection for her that surrounds her living room fireplace.

After leaving, I picked a hotel from the AAA book and let the GPS direct me through the confusing Phoenix roadways to what would be my home for the next several days. On this trip, I have discovered that my home can be anywhere, that it's something I carry with me. Yet, as I drove along the edge of the city, with it passing by on my right, for a moment, it felt as though as I was driving down Morehead, toward my house back in Charlotte. And for the second time on the trip, a little wave of homesickness set in. It will still be over three weeks until I'm back there, until I see that road again, and I do miss that place and all the people I love who live there too. 

I set my things down in my hotel room and went out to find some groceries to get me through the next few days, and while I was out, I found my home away from home, just the right thing to cure that yearning for North Carolina.... a thrift store! Haha! I finished the night with soup in bed, a Diane Keaton movie, and a call from Paul, and turned in fairly early to a real bed, not in a bag.

Day 8: Running from the snow

First of all, let me say I am behind because night before last we didn't have an internet connection, and last night I just wanted a break. So here's the catch-up...

We got an early start on Day 8 to make up for the day before. We pulled out of the RV park at 7:30AM and went across the street to the doughnut shop to pick up a quick breakfast. The doughnuts were some of the best and freshest we've ever had. We quickly made our way across the Arizona border to our first tourist stop of the day - the Petrified Forest National Monument, also the site of the Painted Desert. The desert was breathtaking - the sheer vastness, the colors, the rock formations. But the best part for me was the interaction of the petrified wood with its landscape. Let me just say, my heart skips a beat for petrified wood. There was petrified wood scattered everywhere! Some were pieces and some were entire logs. It was truly amazing to see. 

A History... 225 million years ago, the area was a floodplain where conifer trees lived in abundance. When the trees fell, flooded streams washed them into the floodplains, and "a mix of silt, mud and volcanic ash buried the logs. This sediment cut off oxygen and slowed the logs' decay. Silica-laden groundwater seeped through the logs and replaced the original wood tissues with silica deposits. Eventually the silica crystallized into quartz, and the logs were preserved as petrified wood" (from the park's brochure). As the continental plates shifted, this region was uplifted, and this the tropical environment became today's grassland. As weathering of the land has occurred, the petrified wood (as well as fossilized plants and animals) have been exposed.

The park only contains 10% of the wood in the Petrified Forest, so on our way out, we stopped in the gift shop to get a few souvenir pieces. As we drove into the next town, Holbrook, AZ, we saw a shop specializing in the sale of petrified wood, and our attention was piqued by the acres of petrified logs surrounding their parking lot. We had to stop. This was the rock shop of all rock shops. It trumped everything in my rock collecting history. Not only did they have shelf after shelf and bin and bin of every rock and fossil (even some quite beautiful dinosaur poop) you could ever imagine for sale, but they also had a display case that I could have spent the entire day in front of. I picked up a few more things here, including a small piece of petrified wood from Madagascar, and though I was tempted by the dinosaur poop, we went on into Holbrook to find lunch.

We had some burgers from Joe & Aggie's Cafe, an old Route 66 stop. The people here were really nice and, once they found out we were traveling the old route, had lots of suggestions for us. I bought a few postcards here that were sketched by the man who inspired the VW bus character in "Cars." The guy behind the counter said he was quite the kooky hippie. I don't know, but the postcards were pretty cool, but I do tend to like kooky hippies. We also browsed a few shops in Holbrook, hearing tales from more locals, and we made a quick pass of the town museum. On the way out of town, we passed the Wigwam Motel. I had really wanted to spend the night in one of these concrete tepees, but it just wasn't in the cards for that day. We had to keep making our way westward.

Our next stop on the Route was Winslow, AZ, made famous by the Eagle's song "Take It Easy." We did stop at the legendary corner - 2nd Steet and Kinsley - and my dad bought himself a T-shirt along with more Route 66 memorabilia. I bought a few plastic bears of local honey, gathered by a local railroader/beekeeper. I'm signing up for a beekeeping class next month, so lately my interest in honey varieties has grown. 

Our last sightseeing expedition for the day was at Meteor Crater, where 50,000 years ago a meteor traveling 33,000 miles per hour crashed into the Earth, creating a hole 570 feet deep, almost a mile wide, and 3 miles in circumference. Pretty freaking big! There was a fairly large chunk of the meteor on the display inside the exhibits, but about 80% of it vaporized on impact. Still though, all plant and animal life within a 100-mile radius was destroyed as nearly a half-billion tons of rock were gouged from the earth and showered the area. Astronauts did some of their training here in preparation for the moon landing, and some skeptics believe the lunar expeditions were actually filmed on this site.

From here, we had to make our way on in to Flagstaff, which was supposed to be our resting place for the night. But as we drove, we could see dense clouds looming on the horizon, and as we got further into Flagstaff, we learned more of the seriousness of the weather situation. We drove into snow showers as we entered town and came upon a mountain so big, it startled me. The white clouds were so enveloping and low-hanging that there was no warning there was a snow-covered mountain this large ahead! We stopped at the airport to pick up my rental car so that we could split up for the next few days and could hardly find a place to park Rocinante, the snow banks were so massive! So we got the car and kept driving west, trying to get out of the storm and the six inches that were predicted to fall overnight. First, we tried Williams, but the snow was still falling pretty hard, and the office staff at the campground suggested we drive on to Ash Ford. So we did. Despite the lack of a sign, we found a ghetto RV park behind a motel (sans internet) and parked for the night. But as we parked the rental outside the Ranch House Cafe for dinner, the snow started coming down... and kept coming. We ended up with about 4 inches by morning, and they closed the interstate down east of us, between Ash Ford and Flagstaff. We definitely had made the right decision to keep driving.