Standin' on the Corner in Winslow, Arizona...

... such a fine place to stay!  For free!  In the center of town, there is a statue of a man (that's him with Nate, below) who we assumed was Glenn Frey... or Don Henley... but, no.  Just some dude.

There's, of course, a flatbed Ford too!

And (no kidding) Eagles music is played from loud speakers in the intersection during daylight hours,

all day, every day.

So, how did we end up in Winslow, AZ?  While Nate was spending some quality time under Baba G (oh yes, his favorite spot), I googled us up a free little city park just south of Winslow.  We thought it was really strange for a city to have an RV campground and were fairly sure it would turn out to be a bust.  To our great surprise, the park was really nice, almost empty, and... (we thought it was a mirage)... on the water!  In the middle of dry deserty AZ!  The only downside was the restrooms in the RV part of the park were out of order, so twice a day, we'd drive all the way out to the main entrance and back into the day use part of the park.  I know, I know.  We have a perfectly functional toilet in the RV.  We just still didn't want to deal with blackwater.  Or maybe blech-water is more apt.    Anyway... check out our gorgeous little waterfront spot:

And here was the view out the front door:

Two of the other people staying in the park (separately) were kayakers, who were kind enough to let us borrow their gear to take a three hour snorkel down the flooded canyon (yes, it was dammed... or perhaps the spelling should be "damned," given what dams actually do to rivers).  :(  Despite how the water got there, kayaking was lovely, especially after being on the road and away from water for so long!

The local grebes were also happy about having a waterway in the middle of the desert (and the cats were pretty thrilled about the grebes too).  Fortunately, there were no casualties.  ;)

The scenery in the canyon (once we got past the graffiti zone nearest the road) was breathtaking:

After our kayak tour, with our spaghetti arms, we returned to Baba G and cooked dinner for our generous equipment providers.  :)

(clam linguine with a pink sauce, if you must know...)

We ended up staying at our cool little spot in Winslow for an entire week, so we had a chance to do some tourist stuff around the area.  One night, we had dinner at an odd little place in town with severed heads all over the place, and one right over our table:

We also found Baba G's doppelganger!-- except that her paint job was in better shape and her butt didn't sag quite as low as ours...

There were also some really cool old cars parked in various spots around town:

And we visited the nearby Little Painted Desert (we visited the big one too... later...), which is already spectacular in full sun...

but gets really gorgeous, with the colors becoming even more saturated as the sun sets: 

Winslow was great, but after a week, we decided it was time to move on again.  Nate had done a tune-up on Baba G and we were really excited to see how she'd run with some new plugs and wires. [Cue the dramatic music... yeah, the ominous kind...]

So, back onto I-40 we went, driving to another park that we had high hopes for, but ended up being just sort of dusty, windy, and kinda creepy.  Also: all the restrooms in the park were LOCKED!  So, what we intended to be a two night stay turned into just one.  But, we got to see some more cool red rocks (which was the name of the park) and we left without anyone asking us to pay for our stay (weird, but we'll take what we can get... hmm, maybe paying is how you get the bathroom door code...):

Up Next: The Many Trials of Nathan: "Walmart Parking Lot" Edition