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I was fortunate to have had the opportunity to travel “Route 66” as a young boy with my parents sometime around 1960. Traveling that road, as a child who had previously never left the friendly confines of a blue collar community in Chicago, was a true revelation that spawned the wanderlust I carry to this day. |
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Route 66, like many great old American highways, has long been made obsolete by the US Interstate Highway System. The colorful small towns, filling stations, independent shops, restaurants and so many unique tourist traps along these routes have been replaced with efficient but impersonal rest stops and mega gas stations capable of getting you fueled fed and back on the road with the speed and efficiency of an Indy 500 pit stop. But don’t cry, some of that flavor still exists on parts of “Old Route 66” and especially where it passes through the “RealWest”! |
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Winslow, Arizona may, at first glance, look not all that special but it and the surrounding area offer much for those who take the time. In the heart of Navaho Country, 18 miles away from “The Little Painted Desert”, 30 miles to the south from “The Apache Sitgreaves National Forest” (with camping, hunting, fishing and water sports), Meteor Crater, Sunset Crater, and Canyon de Chelly National Monuments all within a two-hour drive and the “Petrified Forest” only 60 miles away, one could easily spend a week here but 2 hours in the afternoon was all I had this past January while driving back to our home in Nathrop, CO from Phoenix, AZ. Winslow is located about 160 miles West of Albuquerque New Mexico off US Interstate Highway 40 or, if you are traveling from the West on 40, it’s 58 miles East of Flagstaff, Arizona. My timetable had me just taking the business route through town to locate a Route 66 attraction that was installed in 1999, long after the demise of that great highway and some 26 years after the song it commemorates. |
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Take It Easy was written by Jackson Browne and Glen Frey (of Eagles fame) in 1973. Some time after Browne had put it to the side unfinished, Frey looked at it and he liked the unfinished piece so much he pressed Jackson to let him finish it. It took some time but Jackson eventually capitulated and let Frey finish it. The finished song was one of the Eagles first big hits. Im huge Eagles and Browne fan so this stop was long over due. Eagles version |
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Located on the corner of Kinsley and east bound lane of Old Route 66, the monument consists of the statue of a young man leaning against an old street lamp with his guitar at his side. In the background is a brick facade building whose windows have been etched with the reflection of a woman driving a red “Flatbed Ford” looking his way. Darn good, I’d say! The statue, in my eye, looks like Jackson Browne but I wouldn’t bet it was designed to be that way. In one of the upper windows you will see a couple hugging and on the sill of another window is perched an eagle, a not so subtle metaphor for the band. Snobs might consider the whole thing a little tacky but, for me, it’s just fine and it fits perfectly into that “Old Route 66” theme. According to a sign posted near the site, plans to expand it are in the works for sometime in 2007. If I find myself in the neighborhood in 2008, I will stop to see what those changes look like. If you get there before me, drop us an email to |
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While there, I took a few pictures and stopped in the shop across Route 66. I bought a T shirt, checked out the tourist welcoming center on the other corner and then drove less than a mile east on the “Old Route 66” business route to visit the historic “La Posata Hotel”. But that’s another story. |
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