T’would be more fun/To go by air…

Monday, September 13, 2021 Who knows what day it is, we’ll be home on the 15^th!

Leaving Flag on a beautiful, Chamber-of-Commerce day!

We got to Kingman, AZ, after driving from Flagstaff (aka Flag)  after a wonderful, calorific visit with friends in Flag—he is a Cordon Bleu chef!—there might have been a tiny bit of wine and a—OK, OK, two—martinis involved. From there we will travel over my most anticipated road, the Oatman Highway.

Can't resist a tiki-head.

Stopped at an old-timey store and Randy bought a Route 66 shirt.

One of the displays inside the old-timey store.

Typical scene on Route 66.

One of the dirt roads we took outside of Flag---still on Route 66! Not the one that gave us a worry.

This is the one!

Before we got to the Oatman Highway, we just had to drive a dirt road outside Flag. So far we have not damaged the car with rocks but we were almost stranded when the car, who knows why, got extremely hot. As in many beep-beep-beeps from the car while nagging us that it was hot. Randy found a downhill part of the road, put it in neutral, and turned on the heat. Phew! Disaster averted!

It got worse and this is about when the engine was telling us "I'm too HOT!"

We are in the midst of the longest continuous segment of Route 66 anywhere. About 159 miles of “pristine Route 66.” And it’s beautiful. And there are lots of new old BurmaShave signs (the originals were removed about 1963 for the final time. 

Some of the ones we saw: 

T ’would be more fun/To go by air/If we could put/These signs up there.
He tried to cross/As fast train neared/Death didn’t draft him/He volunteered.
If hugging on highways/Is your sport/Trade in your car/For a davenport.
If daisies are your/Favorite flower/Keep pushing up/Those miles-per-hour.
You can drive/A mile a minute/But there is/No future in it.
Cattle crossing/Means go slow/That old bull/Is some cow’s beau.

Definitely the flagstone capital, there is flagstone EVERYWHERE!

More Ashfork scenes.

We were anxious to see Oatman, but it's still a long drive. Everything is a long drive!

Our first indication that we were getting close to Oatman were these friendly (but we kept our windows closed!) burros, a mom and her baby. Well, baby is almost as big as mom and has learned that he (or she) can get food from automobiles.

They were obviously curious and when we stopped...

...first the baby approached...

...followed very quickly by his (or her) mom. We did not open our windows nor feed them anything.

After our encounter with the adorably cute burros, we drove on and looking back, they were still in the middle of the road, hoping, we presume, for more generous cars to come by.

Sitgreaves Pass on the way to Oatman.

Not everybody makes it over the mountain!

A small way station on the way to Oatman (and more burros!).

Ed's Camp is DEFINITELY private property. There are No Trespassing signs everywhere and several of them had guns drawn on them. This was as close as we desired to get!

15MPH is a necessity in this delightful little town due to the roaming wild burros. Not to mention the roaming wild tourists who also frequent the town. You can buy food to feed the burros but I would not like my hand to be that close to their mouths! They are WILD animals!

The history of Oatman and its burros.

The burros wander pretty much any place they want to!

From Oatman we traveled a bit further, planning on getting to LA the following day.

We had a nice lunch in Needles. About the only nice thing I can say for Needles.

A small town called Bagdad. No idea why it was important for me to take this photo!

"...Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino..."

The author of one of our bibles seems to be fixated on Giant anythings, including Polly.

He is also fixated on bridges, this (last one, I promise) is a Baltimore Truss bridge.

And this is the Bottle Forest.

Tomorrow, Los Angeles, Pasadena and Colorado Blvd or Street or Avenue, who can remember the name of the street the Rose Parade is on?, and, drum roll, please---Santa Monica: End of Route 66 and the Santa Monica Pier (they are not the same!).

The Best Things in Life are Free…

In yesterdays mail—which, being the procrastinator that I am I didn’t open until today—came the 2020 [!] Guide to Arizona’s ROUTE 66 with a ton of suggestions for what to drive by, do, see, eat, drink, or sleep in. It was free, I guess, since I didn't order it (although I have ordered several other books about Route 66).

Unlike every other guide to Route 66 this goes from the west to east. It’s a little disorienting going that direction but then, Arizona is not known for following the rules.

This little guide has inspired me (and thus, Randy) to read The Grapes of Wrath by Steinbeck (you didn’t really need to be told that, did you). I am, by the way, flabbergasted that I will have to wait at least a month to get it from the library! Also wanted to watch Cars which is apparently peripherally about Route 66 but we probably won’t do that.

There are some really fascinating (to me, anyway) places/things at least near if not actually ON Route 66. Like the Dambar & Restaurant (Damn Bar, get it? Ha ha.) in Kingman. Or the giant (you can sit on it) jackrabbit in Joseph City. I never even heard of Joseph City and I’ve lived in Arizona for 24 years! There are wild burros roaming the streets of Oatman; the Gigantic Headicus (a VERY large, very green, tiki head), GH for short, in Antares (another town I’ve never heard of); and the not-to-be-missed Road Kill Café in Seligman (I have heard of that one although I do not know how to pronounce it) whose motto is, “You kill it, We grill it.”

However, Randy has dashed my heart’s desire to stay in the Wigwam Motel. Well, not really.

There are towns we do have to stay in if for no other reason than being able to walk back to our motel after imbibing at various breweries: the Mother Road Brewing Company and the Lumberyard Brewing Company in Flagstaff (hereafter to be called Flag because that’s what everybody in Arizona calls it, only tourists call it Flagstaff); and the Rickety Cricket Brewing and the House of Hops in Kingman.