In a few weeks we are going to be taking a trip from our home in Jefferson City, Missouri out west, first stop is Casa Grande, AZ, then Sedona, and Williams AZ. Then up to Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon. The trip from there is a bit undecided, we might go farther north into Utah or over into Colorado, possibly going home by way of Denver. Another option is to go back home through New Mexico.
Both my wife and I have back problems, and we will have our 5 year old son with us so we will need to make plenty of stops along the way, and I'd like to try to make some of those stops at places to photograph and/or watch some trains. I prefer open county areas as opposed to urban, especially for photograhpy. We will likely be taking the most direct routes/interstate as suggested by Google Maps/GPS but I'm not opposed to going a few miles off the main road or taking a 2 lane road for a bit as long as it isn't too out of the way.
And if there are any spectacular spots in these areas that could be suggested we would be willing to go out of the way a bit and make it a destination to spend some time at.
I'm not very familliar with these areas so any help would be very much appreciated!
Plenty of good train spotting around Williams - Flagstaff and if going toward Las Vegas inroute to Utah I suggest you drive old Hwy. 66 between Seligman and Kingman fo additional train spotting.
As I recall Casa Grande is just north of the Picacho Peak area, which was a scenic location for shots in the days of the SP Sunset Route and still should be today.
I would confirm the Flagstaff area, particularly to the east of the town if you want the majestic San Francisco Peaks in the background. The Arizona divide west of Flagstaff is an interesting area...it is about 10 miles west of Flagstaff.
Ed
One good trick is to look at one of the public rail photo sites and search some of the locations on your route. It can give you some good ideas on photo locations.
Using Waze for navigation you can set it to show railroad crossings as well.
If your travels take you on I-40/US route 66, the Winslow, AZ Amtrak station at the La Posada Hotel is a great train watching spot at the yard leads where trains gather to wait their turn to enter the mainline. There is almost always some movement at that spot.
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