Here I am, once again, performing restorative surgery on old blog posts. It’s 2023 as I take the scalpel to carve things up, enhance, and hopefully improve the appearance of what were some sorely lacking posts about this 4th of July 2006 trip that took us to Texas. Take this entry that is very specifically titled Rusting in Colorado: that reference was about the rusting swing found near Cortez, Colorado, that you’ll see down below. That original post was 185 words about the swing and its owner but now, with greater bandwidth and storage available, I’m adding more photos and trying where I can to pull details into the trip narrative.

As was already noted and shown in yesterday’s post, we stayed in a Wigwam right here in Holbrook, Arizona, on old Route 66, just down the street from Joe & Aggie’s Cafe. This little standalone cafe opened in 1943 and was operating up until 2020, when COVID-19 hit. Suffering a couple of deaths in the family, loss of employees, and the subsequent loss of momentum, Joe & Aggie’s may well be permanently closed.

There was a strategic reason for spending an overnight in Holbrook, and that’s because State Route 77 travels north out of town up into the Navajo Reservation. Somewhere out there is Indian Wells and the nearby Bidahochi Butte; it was there that we turned east on Greasewood Road, a.k.a. Indian Route 15.

Finding the Sunrise Trading Post in 2023 was slightly difficult as someone identified another ruin as being the Sunrise Trading Post, though that building has no signage remaining. Well, we stopped to photograph this decaying old building near Shonto Spring, and, zooming into the image, it clearly says this is the Sunrise Trading Post. Sure, there could have been a second location, but the information regarding these old outposts is thin.

North on Highway 191, we come to Indian Route 26, pointing us in the direction of Nazlini, exactly where we want to go.

The Navajo Reservation is a vast land about the size of West Virginia with what seems like only about a dozen paved roads. In order to see more and go farther, we are looping out around the New Mexico border before heading north, all the while on good old dirt roads.

From the badlands of Nazlini, we climb into the forested area approaching Sawmill.

About the time we reached Wheatfields, also on the Navajo Reservation, we encountered paved roads again and some beautiful sandstone monuments.

But it was in Lukachukai that we’d finally be able to nab some lunch and not just ordinary grub; we’re talking roast mutton on frybread, the king of sandwiches.

You take Sedona and the crowds of pretentious arrogance, and we’ll bask in the isolated beauty of Red Valley.

Stopping at the Red Rock Trading Post in Red Valley, Arizona. Was it for gas, ice cream, or maybe a hunt for a Coca-Cola with lime? That damned drink haunted us for years, and as I started writing about it, I needed to do some fact-checking where I learned that I was on the mark regarding the timing of when we might actually have been looking for it. It turns out that Coke first introduced Coke with lime in early 2005, but it was quietly discontinued somewhere in 2006. Well, we didn’t get the message and spent the next years looking for it again and again. I need to stop writing about this 17-year-old trip for a moment and write the Coca-Cola corporation some hate mail right about now.

Looks to me like Fat Boy had all the ice creams and half a case of Coke with lime. Oh, how I miss that stuff! By the way, we are entering New Mexico on the Red Rock Highway, a.k.a. Indian Route 13, and I have to admit to some confusion: you see, we’re either in Red Valley or Red Rock, Arizona, and that depends if you are reading a map from Google or Bing.

Off in the distance is Tsé Bitʼaʼí, or “the winged rock” as translated from Navajo. We know it as Shiprock. The central formation is an ancient neck of a volcano. The “fin” that is here in the foreground is a volcanic dike made up of relatively rare lamprophyre rock that originates near subduction zones. At one point about 30 million years ago, the area we are standing at would have been at least 1,000 feet below the surface it has since been eroded, thus exposing all of this.

This shop south of Cortez, Colorado, on what was once Highway 666 in Towaoc, was the Ute Mountain Indian Pottery factory, where we bought a couple of hand-made, hand-painted bowls. Those bowls, barely visible on the left, are treasures of ours used multiple times per week.

Through Cortez and around Mesa Verde, we traveled south, returning to what was to become today’s “photo of the day” until 2023. I took this picture roadside in southern Colorado at what appeared to be an abandoned home. As it turned out old man Lavell Harris of Cortez owns the place and used it as a hideout from the wife when he needed a moment away from it all. The swing was made by his father-in-law some 50 years ago. Lavell passed away in 2014.

From Colorado, we dropped back into New Mexico to stay the night. While the itinerary suggested the Anasazi Inn, there must have been something that triggered us to get away from that place. Instead, we opted for the Budget Inn down the road, a mistake as it was one of the worst rooms we have ever stayed in. Why was it so bad, you ask? Shit on the wall in the bathroom was just one part of the overall dark picture. Why didn’t we leave, you might also ask? We were cheap, we were tired, and it adds to the color of the memories we gather.