In Albuquerque we stop at the Frontier Restaurant, a crowded cafeteria-style Mexican/breakfast eatery where we get the best breakfast burritos in the world. Then on to Old Town, where we wander around old, not particularly politically correct gift shops, jewelry stores, fudge shops, and ceramic shops. Sidewalk vendors have displays of turquoise laid out on blankets. 

After Albuquerque, 66 takes us through a reservation, where there are highway signs warning us not to take pictures without a permit. We stop in the early afternoon at a little curio shop where a transplant from the Northeast, Mary, shows us her rock garden and cob house. She's done the mud building herself. She tells us that she runs the gift shop for the hell of it, and that her only customers are European tourists driving Route 66. She tells us that some improbable number of tribe members, like 40,000, got put in jail a few days ago. She says all the locals are mean and drunks and meth heads, so be careful, and that she hopes we have a good trip. I buy a chicken bone sculpture.

Mary's store has only received one review.

We also spy a satellite dish fence nearby. Creative re-use of dishes was a common sight during our trip.

We pull off at a lot of "trading posts" selling taffy and snowglobes until it gets dark. (Pictures below are from various days.)

Here is a schedule of gift and curio items which were available for purchase:

  

  

  

We stop for the night in Winslow, hungry, and find no open restaurants on New Year's Eve except for one called "The Turquoise Room" in a swanky old Harvey hotel. It's too expensive, but we stop by the gift shop, where I ask the cashier whether they sell worry dolls. He says, "No, but we sell Peruvian Burial Boats. Not the same, I know." 

We drive, listening to Billie Holiday, until we get to Flagstaff. We make a couple detours - down a dark and closed road to Meteor Crater, which we can't see because it is fenced off. Brett and I discuss the ridiculousness of fencing off a crater. We also see Twin Arrows, and Brett takes pictures of domes. 

In Flagstaff, we drive around hungry and irritable until we finally find the "Doghaus," which seems like a staple burger joint. The man who takes our order is straight out of Pee Wee's Big Adventure or Twin Peaks — an abstruse local character in a time of crisis. Sleep in another classic motel. Pass a bottle of whiskey between us for the New Year; fall asleep immediately.