Route 66 Day Seven

Day seven is Wednesday the 29th. We are up bright and early today, on the road by 7:30 a.m. The pre-1952 Route 66 is an Arizona mountain road, full of steep drops and tight curves. This road was chosen because of the gold found in the mountains. Throughout this trip, we are continuing to discover the weird and wonderful. Here is a useful item in the middle of a desert.



Along the way we were moved by the number of personal roadside shrines along the highway. In Golden Shores, we found the traditional personal roadside displays like this




While driving the road to Oatman, we also discovered a Korean war shrine a bit off the road on a rocky dirt road that was a challenge to drive. But we were glad we did as the shrine was moving and the view was spectacular.




Oatman is our next stop and it is a true Wild West town. If I had lived in those days, this is how I would have ended up about two days after arriving.



Oatman is the home of the wild burros who are the descendants of the animals used in the mines. Now, they are master beggars but who cares when it so much fun. Denice managed to get them so agitated that one of the shop owners had to threaten them with a spray bottle which in burro means big trouble.



Me, I just stuck to feeding one at a time. And turning them into models for the day. This guy may end up a saddle bag if he cannot read.

















For you movie trivia folks, the Oatman Hotel is where Clack Gable and Carol Lombard spent their honeymoon here after getting married in Kingman. The temperament of Oatman is a bit hot




as was the temperature.



Next we were off into the hairpin curves outside Sitgraves Pass. Gorgeous scenery and one spectacular view of the switchbacks themselves. Once again, we come across a very personal roadside shrine location and are moved by the memories and the view.


















Through Cool Springs (yeah--right!!) and into Kingman where we went to a store for supplies that was a retro tribute to the road. There, we met a guy whose electrical business in Chicago went bankrupt so he left his house and staff behind and came out to Cool Springs. He bought a truck and is doing electrical work for whomever. He seems really happy.

Next it was into Kingman where we had lunch at the first place we found: Bangkok Thai Cuisine. A few blocks down the street was a cool retro cafe and a bunch of tourist things so we did them. The cool locomotive in Locomotive Park was a great distraction.


Next was the Powerhouse, home to the Route 66 museum. The cars in these museums always look so good to me.



In our continuing effort to document the weird, a could not help but wonder how the parents explained the two statutes that flanked the entrance to the Hilltop Hotel.

Check out the motto on their sign and maybe that explains it.


Kingman had a boodle of hotel signs but my favorite, shown below, points out the difficulty of access on this trip. Sometimes I could not just get my butt to where I wanted it to get the photo I needed to take. Here, the angle is too steep but there was no easy place to go to get a better one. Also a huge number of my photos were taken during the day with no cloud cover so there goes the "good" light. Ah, reality check.




Next up was Antares, home of the Ranchero Motel and a giant Tiki head where the hotel is gone but the head remains. I would have junked it but it was too big to fit in the van.


We next made a stop at Hackberry and the Hackberry General Store which has a great collection of cars in the yard. The cool thing about cars in the West is that not only do they rust (although where the water comes from who knows) but the sun bakes the colors right off the vehicles. Gorgeous.

























While I was outside shooting the old cars, Denice met a man more to her liking inside the store.


In Truxton, I found this beautiful roadside shrine.








A great old gas station is in Peach Springs and some more cool cars pooped us out so much we decided to stay at the Supai Lodge, the home of the Havasupai Indians. When I got to the front desk, the staff was nice enough to give me all the details about the room--then tell me they had no vacancies. I guess it always pays to ask the right question first.

We then decided to try to drive to the bottom of the Grand Canyon only to discover that the road runs through Indian territory, you need a permit and the entire route is car eating dirt. At this point, it would be safe to say that things are not going our way.

Seligman proved the salvation. Not only did it have a cool bike shop.



We checked into a great throwback place, the Historic Route 66 Motel, which had the added pleasure of the youngest clerk in the business named Marius (probably a four-year-old). He helped checked us in, gave us directions to our room and helped us log onto the Internet.

We walked next door for dinner at the Roadkill Cafe. While eating our great food, Denice invited a man named Ken to our table when his was mistakenly taken by a couple coming to eat. Ken told us about his life on a ranch in Colorado, his upcoming family reunion, and all about his RV and dogs. He was a great guy to meet and we added this night to our short list of top ten best things.
After dinner, I headed out to shoot a few neon signs in the town of Seligman, and then it was to bed.


Miles today: 186

Total Miles for trip: 2,615

You can see all the photos from this trip at http://www.flickr.com/photos/gniebuhr/

Route 66 Day Six

Today is Tuesday, June 28, and it is day six of The Poverty Tour of America.  We leave Barstow today at 7:00 a.m. by backtracking to Lenwood to try to find an abandoned drive-in that supposedly is there.  This site must be long gone as we could not find it.  However we did see one of our first wild life sightings: a coyote running across and along the highway with a jack rabbit in his mouth.

Back into Barstow and it is McDonald's again.  This time we are eating in the Barstow Station McDonald's, a restaurant made from old railroad passenger cars. 

Off down Route 66 to Daggett where we discovered Mugwumps, an old stop that had been converted to a photocopier store. When the photocopier place went out of business, the guy walked away leaving all the machines sitting outside the old garage.  Weird.  Even weirder, he used an old mail truck for his business and left his stuff abandoned in that as well.

Even Weirdest:  Through the power of the Internet, it turns out I have this one all wrong.  I hear from the owner of the business and here is the real story:

First off I am the owner of Mugwumps....

1. We started off by printing Mugs

2. We were "Wumping out MUGS" thus the name "Mugwumps"

3. We never were a photocopy business. We did screen printing,offset printing, embroidery, Ad Specialties, and of course mugs. Copies was a sideline.

4. The 1963 Jeep FJ-3 was Never used for the business. It was and is an ongoing project vehicle just for fun.

5. The business was ongoing for over 30 years.  We went out of business because a bunch of Druggies broke in and destroyed the equipment.

(BTW yes they went to Jail 

YOU DON'T SCREW WITH A RETIRED MARINE AND GET AWAY WITH IT )

6. None of "stuff" was abandoned I live in the next block.

And one more Route 66 legend is set straight.  Thanks for the update from Mugwumps.  

Off we went from Daggett to the Calico Ghost Town.  One odd thing is that our GPS showed us motoring along the Ghost Town Rd. but (WHOO WHOO) it had no image of the road.  The Calico Ghost Town was a silver mining camp that once held 1,200 people.  Today about 1/3 of the buildings are the originals but all them appear to be full of stuff to sell to tourists which should be no surprise considering this was once a Knotts Berry Farm operation.  We did do two cool things:  we toured Maggie's Mine and took a ride around on a narrow gauge mining train. It was over 100 degrees out there and to prove it Denice took this picture of me.

Driving through town to get back onto Route 66, we spotted the Daggett Pioneer Cemetery.

Through Minneola and into Newberry Springs found us having lunch at the Bagdad Cafe.  This was the site of the cult movie of the same name of which the workers at the cafe seemed to be very proud.  We checked out the memorabilia and then decided to split a buffalo burger.  While we waited about 45 minutes for our burger, despite being the only people in the cafe, we were entertained by the conversation of the men who staffed the cafe.  Let's put it this way:  think The Big Lebowski.  After we re-ordered our buffalo burger, we finally got our food.  When lunch was done, after being warned that the road we were about to drive down was "a car eater," one of the guys also warned us about getting bit by a snake like he was yesterday.  That (or massive drug use) may explain a lot. 

This is the actual Airstreamer used in the movie.  I am going to have to watch the movie and see it.

We then headed down the car eating road to Ludlow.  The road turned out to be not as rough as advertised but it did offer incredible beauty.

The next stretch of the dirt road led to Lavic which shows the effects of the lava flows from the Pisgah Crater--a scene that reminded both of us of our trips to Hawaii's Big Island.  The road continues to be rough from Ludlow through Klondike, Siberia, Bagdad and into Amboy.  The Amboy Crater is another volcano in this area whose effect can be seen along the road.  The town of Amboy was sold on Ebay to Albert Okura, the owner of Juan Pollo Restaurants, who was to restore the city.  Our opinion is that he has failed to carry out the plan.  Sad. 

However, Roy's Cafe is open although we did not go in.  I did use the restrooms and had to run the gauntlet of this horse in order to pee.

Along this road, people arrange the rocks into words and phrases, another reminder of the Big Island.  Another local tradition is to the Shoe Tree, where people hang their own shoes.  Either that or the Highway Department has found a use for all those shoes I always see lying in the road. 


On we went through Chambles, Cadiz, and Summit.  On the road was Cadiz Summit, where a former site of a complex where just the graffiti covered walls are left. I am fascinated by old ruins and this station was no exception.  Covered with graffiti, it still held a spell over me. 

Across the street was this chair, sitting there as if someone would use it to watch the next sunset.  The whole site was covered with rusty stuff and proved great pickin’.

On a hill above the ruin I found this cross overlooking the landscape.  Who knows the story?

Danby, Essex, Fenner, Goffs and Arrowhead Junctionwere all towns on the pre-1931 Route 66 we decided to travel. In Needles, we saw the El Garces, an old Harvey House hotel, now a shell with the promise of renovation.  Like all the towns along the route, Needles was not without its great signs.

We took a jaunt out to Parker Junction to see where the old route crossed into Arizona at the Colorado River.  A location to eat and sleep became a priority at this point so we decided to return to Needles and checked into an old Route 66 motel called the Best.  After paying $25 for our room and then actually seeing it, we backed right out and went to look for another place to sleep.  Perhaps the sign prohibiting any drug dealing in the room should have been our clue.  Suddenly, the town's name of Needles began to mean more than it had before. 

Checking in at a Days Inn ended our odyssey until we went to a Dennys (I know--Dennys!!!!) for dinner only to discover it had no air conditioning.  At this time of night, it was still over 100 degrees out there and we wilted through an average meal.  Finding a cool place to stay and eat in each of these depressed by-passed town is going to be a continuing problem on the road. 

Miles today: 236

Total miles for the trip: 2,429

See all the photos from our trip at http://www.flickr.com/photos/gniebuhr

Route 66 Day Five

We finally left the teepees of the Wigwam behind this morning as we left Monday for parts east of LA in search of the stuff that dreams are made of. 

We once again were forced to breakfast at McDonald's but why not?  We were heading down the road to the first McDonalds.  This was the location where two brothers named Maurice and Richard McDonald opened their first restaurant.  Later the chain would open its first franchise in Chicago but here is the true first location. 

And because it is Hollywood, you never know what big stars you might run into when you are out and about. 

Proceeding north on Cajon Blvd. out of San Bernadino (after getting a little lost because of some freeway construction) we stumbled upon an old motel where two rather interesting men were having a rummage sale / flea market / junk dealership. 

One guy was selling overstock crap but the toothless guy had a huge area in front of the old motel that was full of junk.  When I tried to walk into the back part of the lot the guy told me all that junk was off limits because he had some "projects" he was working on.  I cannot even begin to imagine what those projects might be but think either The Bates Motel or possible Ed Gein.  Anyway, I bought a rusty basketball hoop (that is cooler than it sounds), a skeet throwing tool, and an old tool on an old piece of wood, all for $7. 

When I got back to the van, Denice was being chatted up by junker guy number 2 who was regaling her with a stories about getting a speeding ticket in Wisconsin in the winter, mentoring folks who are in need and various other topics.  We listened to this guy's stories for about twenty minutes before we could politely move on.  This is going to be common on the Route as everyone seems to want to talk and tell their tales on The Mother Road. 

Then it was into Devore where a theme for the rest of this trip began to develop.  Following the true Route 66, the original roads as best we can, means we are driving on all the old, now by-passed, roads.  They are filled with by-passed businesses, abandoned possessions and the waste of an over developed country who casts off even its landscape. We began to call this the Poverty Tour of America.

However, if we are determined enough, we can find history where we need it to be.  There is, for instance, a sample of the original Route 66, paved well before 1926. This is possibly the only example of this type of Route 66 pavement left, according to the guidebooks.

We are pretty sure that most tourists and the big guided groups like those Brits and Aussies at the pier stay on the big highways like 40.  We are determined to stay off those highways as much as possible.

So that means that you might be a little depressed by what you see in the city of Devore

but you make up for it by driving into the toner Devore Heights. 

To find this place we had to head down a road where old Route 66 dead ends, then reverse back to a newer version of the Route (or in some cases a completely different newer road) in order to get through.

After going through Cosy Dell we hit Cajon where I spotted a yard art place on the side of the highway that looked like it had really cool stuff out for sale called Main Street Collectibles. I talked with the owner and he told me that he can make any fiberglass anyone would want from any photograph.

In case you would want one, the Big Boy sells for $795 plus tax and shipping. The good news was that instead of using this guy's business as a museum, he had some cool old stuff around for sale as well so I could buy something.  So, to pay for the photography I was doing, I went junkin’ and bought two ice picks, a carved wooden Mexican mask and a piece of cool rusty iron with some numbers on it. 

For lunch today it was the Canjon Summit Inn which features ostrich from a nearby ostrich farm and I can testify that it if fine on a bun.  And, obviously, a great '50s themed cafe. 

Next it was on the road to Victorville.  Denice and I visited the California Route 66 Museum where Denice was fined for touching the artifacts.

This placed rescued the folk art stuff from the Hulaville Museum including this 15 foot tall hula girl.

Next we crossed the Mojave River and into Oro Grande where to my great surprise, in a very unlikely place, we found two antique stores sitting on the side of the old Route 66. 

The first was Linda Marie's Enchanted Treasures which was a great place to stop and visit.  I bought another skeet throwing device (was this the croquet of Route 66?), some old wood spindles, and a candle holder with faces for around $15.  Linda Marie is a wonderful hostess, seeming slightly lost and maybe too upscale for this area but her place is wonderful as you can walk outside amongst her wares and see the old motel over the fence behind her shop.  She took our picture for her website as the famous artist and author visit.  OK, that was a little bit of an ego boost. 

The Route 66 Antique Station was right next store and is a typical antique mall like you would find anywhere in America.  I managed to buy two wood wall sconces, an oil strainer, and a little frame for $30.

Through Bryman and into Helendale, where we tried to fill up here because of the cheap gas prices. Helendale also offered up my first opportunity to wander amongst someone's history.  I am always amazed as I walk through these sites especially when I find things like this scattered crockery.  It is eerie. 

Then it was on to Hodge where we found some another ruin.  As we got further down the road, most of the ruins are well fenced off from scavengers like me.  Also, many are covered with graffiti.

The poverty of these locations does create amazing beauty.  The embarrassing portion of this though is that occasionally we pull up to an abandoned ruin only to reveal that this is actually someone's home.  We are gaining a sensibility for survival out here and an education on the economic state of many of our fellow Americans. 

Not lost on me is the beauty of the desert despite the fact that it is over 100 degrees out here.  While this challenges the plants, it also creates some wondrous beauty.

From Lenwood we made it to Barstow and choose this as our destination for the night by checking into a vintage place called the Route 66 Motel.  When we checked in, we met the female portion of the husband and wife who own this place.  Besides telling us all about everything her husband had accomplished as an Indian businessman making it in America since 1962, she also showed us original photos from the town that showed the buildings we were going to sleep in were originals in the town of Barstow.  She also gave us a lecture on breathing and following the teachings of Swami Ran Dev which we have yet to try.  All of this exchange was done with a backdrop of Betty Boop.  Here is her domain at the motel where Denice and I spent twenty charming minutes with a unique individual.

Dinner tonight was at Jenny’s Steak and Mexican Restaurant, a local restaurant--not a chain.  While this was a goal for the whole trip, it was not always possible to find local charm and food.  After dinner we did the town for neon. 

Miles today: 153

Total miles so far: 2,429

View all the photographs from this trip at http://www.flickr.com/photos/gniebuhr/