Winter Road Trip Day 5: Christmas Day in...

We woke up Christmas morning at the Travelodge in Holbrook AZ, had breakfast at the hotel and got information on a local church to go to mass.

We headed into town, but found that we had the time wrong. So we walked around Holbrook to get a look at the place.

Holbrook is located on one of the historic stretches of Route 66 in Arizona.

The streets are full of classic Route 66 attractions like the Pow Wow Trading Post.

Petrified logs could be found all over town.

Linda's Indian Arts and Crafts is decorated with Indian artwork including a large mural on the side.

Here's the local geeky hangout.

That's the local police station behind a closed business. A lot of the businesses were shut down; not sure if it was for the season or for good.

Route 66 memorabilia is everywhere.

On the south side of town, we found a classic Route 66 icon: The Wigwam Motel.

Have you slept in a Wigwam lately?

The parking lot was populated by classic cars.

Here's an old Studebaker truck.

This is a working motel. You can see guests' cars parked among the classic autos.

We headed back to the church and attended a very friendly Christmas Day mass with a great musical group performing the hymns and carols.

After church we had lunch at Denny's, then we drove to Snowflake AZ, stopping along the way to get our first real look at the desert landscape. We've taken to referring to this as "Our Mesa" because it was the first such formation we got a good look at.

We found the remains of an old car at the bottom of a ravine.

And I found a tumbleweed!

Here's our car, "Laradie" parked in the desert.

And a picture of Gynn with the desert terrain in the background.

We took a look around Snowflake and then headed back into Holbrook. We stopped along the way to photograph some of Holbrook's most unusual attractions: Its dinosaurs.

There are dinosaurs all around town. They can be found in the rock shops.

In parks...

Here's a closeup of this handsome fellow.

There are even dinosaurs along the road in the desert.

We eventually returned to the hotel room and settled in for some shrimp cocktail that we picked up at Wal Mart in Springfield the day before, along with cold cut sandwiches. and Wal Mart cake for dessert.

It was a very different sort of Christmas, but a very enjoyable one, and we were ready for a week's worth of adventure with Holbrook as our base.