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Now that we’ve ridden the length of 66, and need to start making our way back to San Diego for our flight back home in a couple of weeks, we decided to take a different route along faster roads for as much of the journey as we can. We’ve had several recommendations to visit Jerome, just outside Cottonwood, and since it sits on State Route 89 in the direction we need to go it was an ideal place to start. Jerome is built at the bottom of a mountain pass road on a steep hill, and as you can see from the photograph, it has phenomenal views back out across the valley.

Better still, we had another treat in store as we left to discover that there are several miles of beautiful sweeping curves through the mountains. We climbed to over 6,000 feet, where there was more evidence of recent snowfall off the road in the shadows, before descending another 1,000 feet or so as we rejoined the I-40. With the remainder of the journey being at 75mph we covered close to 200 miles in less than 4 hours, returning to Kingman by early evening.