{"id":1213,"date":"2012-11-06T10:32:38","date_gmt":"2012-11-06T15:32:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/?p=1213"},"modified":"2012-11-06T10:34:50","modified_gmt":"2012-11-06T15:34:50","slug":"williams-az","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/2012\/11\/06\/williams-az\/","title":{"rendered":"Williams, AZ"},"content":{"rendered":"

We went up to the Grand Canyon yesterday, reducing our bucket lists by one. It was a beautiful day, a great adventure and an incredible place. But it deserves its own post, which will take a little time to assemble. So I will devote this post entirely to Williams.<\/p>\n

We chose to stay at the Grand Canyon Railway RV Park<\/a> which, as the name implies, is adjacent to the depot for the train that would take us to the Grand Canyon. It was convenient, but it was also a very nice RV park. Another attraction: it had a kennel. We ended up not using the kennel, opting instead to let the dogs lounge in Patience for 9 hours while we traveled to the Grand Canyon, but the fact that a kennel was available was one of the reasons we chose the place.<\/p>\n

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Patience at the Grand Canyon Railway RV Park<\/p><\/div>\n

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Grand Canyon Railway RV Park, with tracks to the left<\/p><\/div>\n

Good things about the campground? Clean, well-designed, well-maintained, nice dog walk, nice sheltered common area with picnic tables and an “eternal flame” fire pit. Not-so-good things about the campground? No pool (not that it mattered with the chilly weather), the playground was across a road, the laundry was small and expensive and the railroad tracks were active during the night – there is a regular 5am freight train (think My Cousin Vinny<\/em>).<\/p>\n

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Common area<\/p><\/div>\n

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Dog walk<\/p><\/div>\n

And cold. That isn’t the campground’s fault, but it made the stay memorable. Especially the first night when we ran out of propane (well, not exactly out) and I had to step outside at 5am in 25-degree temperatures to switch the tanks. This was the first campground on the GTW where we woke up to frost.<\/p>\n

The other reason for choosing a campground in Williams was Williams itself. Its main street is a fragment of old US 66 and is dripping with all the nostalgia that “Route 66” conjures up for Baby Boomers. It has done a pretty good job of maintaining the spirit of the time, though not so well as Hot Springs. Much of Route 66 in AZ no longer exists, having been replaced by I-40. Williams seems to take some pride in being one of the last towns to be on the old Route 66.<\/p>\n

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Williams declaration of pride<\/p><\/div>\n

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Old Route 66<\/p><\/div>\n

The town is expensive. I am speaking mostly of diesel fuel ($4.49 per gallon) and food ($12 for a burger, $18 for a continental breakfast for us); I can’t speak to the pricing of the motels that line the main street (which is the old Route 66) – more than a dozen of them, most of which look like they should rent by the hour. We did enjoy the (expensive) food we consumed at Cruiser’s Cafe 66<\/a> which is a quality restaurant and a souvenir shop that sells shlock, but very interesting and high-quality shlock. We also enjoyed the animated, joke-telling bear across the street. Typical line: “Sorry about your wife. I didn’t realize that her beehive didn’t have any honey.”<\/p>\n

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Cruiser’s Cafe 66<\/p><\/div>\n

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Animated bear<\/p><\/div>\n

Williams is a small town. We ran into the campground clerk at the Safeway and the cafe waitress at the laundry. If you live here, don’t do anything embarrassing because everyone<\/em> will know about it.<\/p>\n

The architecture is interesting, some authentic native american shops exist (and I encountered a Navajo at the gas station), and there are little scenes all around that catch your eye. An interesting place, but very small. A half-day visit is recommended.<\/p>\n

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Williams bank<\/p><\/div>\n

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Vintage Bronco<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We went up to the Grand Canyon yesterday, reducing our bucket lists by one. It was a beautiful day, a great adventure and an incredible place. But it deserves its own post, which will take a little time to assemble. So I will devote this post entirely to Williams. We chose to stay at the … Continue reading »<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[22,11,4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-places-az","category-gtw","category-places","category-rvparks"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1VniU-jz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1213"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1234,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1213\/revisions\/1234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ourwanderyears.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}