So today I have scrapped. And the bad news is that a lot of it I cannot share. I have made three lovely - well I think lovely - pages for ATDML for the December cyber crop so obviously I cannot share those - and I have made pages for new releases for PBP and cannot share those either. Not doing well really am I!
However, I can share this one made with Warm Memories by Tiramisu designs
Today I am thankful for
- feeling more on top of things today
- scrapping - it is my therapy and always makes me feel better so when I cannot do it I am not in a good place.
Day 16 flagstaff to Blythe
30th October 2019
Start miles 5534
Start time 7.40
End miles 5879
End time 6.00
The one with the burros
The whole of our holiday had been amazing and we had looked forward to every bit of it, but I confess that today was the day we were particularly excited about. Today we would drive the longest continuous stretch of Route 66 still in existence and we would take in many iconic sites including Seligman, which is the town where it all started to be saved. We were up earlier than we expected and when we went out to the car we were stunned by how cold it was. The car temperature gauge read 16, which in our world is about -9 and it was bitter. The desert air was so dry however that there was no ice on the car and no frost to be seen. Our first stop was the small town of Ashfork, where we looked at several of the old motels although our looks were a little brief as it really was incredibly cold.
The next town was Seligman, the home of Angel Delgadillo who was the man who had fought to have Seligman put back on the map when it had been totally removed. He launched a 10 year campaign and saved his town and inspired others along the Mother Road to do the same. He is in his 90s but still regularly in his store and is still inspiring people to love Route 66.
It was a fascinating town with much to see and we enjoyed spending time in Angel’s own shop and buying interesting souvenirs. It was lovely to see a hand drawn image of Angel and his wife drawn by John Lassiter when he visited Seligman when researching for the movie, Cars.
Seligman is now so well known that it is a stopping off point for coach parties and the shop sadly became swamped with a coach full of French-Canadians and so we bid farewell and checked out the other amazing places along this lively stretch of Route 66.
I loved this guy who ran a shop in the town - his cash register was part of an old car and he was such a character and seemed to sum up many of the people we met travelling Route 66. He was very happy to pose for the picture!
One place I really wanted to go was the Roadkill Café. We had had breakfast, but I said to Nigel that we really must have something to eat just so that we could go in there and check it out properly. I was quite surprised that it was so lovely inside as I expected somewhere very tacky and very rundown… It was neither. The waitress was lovely and very happy for us to order some French toast and a diet Coke to share and even offered to top it up in a to-go cup. The menu was amazing and very funny and I’m so pleased that we went in and had something to eat. Like so many of the Route 66 businesses it was family run and still run by the original family. That is pretty special. As we left Seligman we were able to follow the old route 66 where they had even restored the Burma-Shave adverts. I had read about these in Bill Bryson‘s books as he used to look for them on road trips when he was a child but I didn’t really understand what they were. They come in groups of four and a short poems with amusing phrases that you read as you go by. They were great fun to see.
We took it in turns driving this iconic stretch of the road until we got to Kingman, where we stopped for gas and a sonic as you do. Kingman is another important route 66 town with many things to see and a lovely historic district.
On leaving Kingman we started on part of the route we had really been looking forward to… the Oatman Highway. This road winds up through the mountains and is supposed to be one of the best drives on Route 66 as it twists and turns through beautiful scenery towards the town of Oatman itself. Our expectations were fully met on this trip. The drive was beautiful and we stopped several times to take photos and then we dropped down into the town of Oatman. To call it a town is a bit of an exaggeration but it has quite a history.
Oatman started life over 100 years ago as a mining tent camp and quickly became a flourishing gold-mining centre. In 1915, two miners struck a $10 million gold find, and within a year, the town's population grew to more than 3,500.
Oatman was named in honour of Olive Oatman, who as a young girl, was kidnapped by an Apache tribe, sold to Mojave Indians and later rescued in a trade-in 1857 near the current site of the town. Oatman was served by a narrow-gauge rail line between 1903 and 1905 that ran 17 miles to the Colorado River near Needles, California.
But both the population and mining booms were short-lived. In 1921, a fire burned down many of the smaller shacks in town, and three years later, the main mining company, United Eastern Mines, shut down operations for good. Oatman survived by catering to travellers on old U.S. Route 66. But in the 1960s, when the route became what is now Interstate 40, Oatman almost died.
Oatman is a fun place to visit -- an authentic old western town with burros roaming the streets and gunfights staged on weekends. The burros are tame and can be hand-fed.
It was one of the most fascinating places I have ever visited. It was incredibly tacky yet looked like a western town like something out of the films we used to watch when we were growing up. It was clearly geared up totally for tourists but you have to admire the spirit that gets people to keep the town going in this way. I was fascinated by the borrowers And we bought food from one of the stores to feed them. I feel it was a little on just that even though I was feeding them one of them decided to kick me as clearly I wasn’t feeding fast enough. It was still bitterly cold but we walked up and down the streets from time gone by thoroughly enjoying our visit. Eventually, we forced ourselves to leave and headed to our last tourist spot of the day.
We said farewell to Route 66, although we would pick up sections of it later in California. We headed through the desert and to Lake Havasu City.
Lake Havasu City is a fascinating place created in the 1960s and so is a true New town. The entrepreneur who created it was also the man who bought London Bridge when the City of London was selling it as it was no longer fit for purpose in London. He felt it was just the statement piece that would help him create a desirable place for people to live and he was right. From nothing, an incredible city has grown and it was lovely to visit. We headed for London Bridge and it was much nicer than we expected. The English village behind was a little off but the area itself was clean and attractive and London Bridge looked superb. We then decided to catch something to eat before heading off to our final stop for the night and so we went into a Denny’s near London Bridge. We got chatting to a couple at the next table who were ranchers from Oregon who had moved to Lake Havasu City a couple of years previously. They were very interesting to talk to and had also visited cattle in the UK.
We headed off to our final destination and indeed our final state of the holiday as we were staying in Blyth California. It was a pleasant drive but it took longer than we anticipated and by the time we crossed into the border the Sun had gone and we arrived in the dark. We had had an incredible day and slept well dreaming of burros no doubt.
The donkeys wandering the streets is hilarious! I guess you must really carefully watch where you are stepping when walking where the animals have walked. Hahahaha!
I was amazed to see the Confederate flag in a couple of your photos--the sweater and the flag. That is such a bone of contention in our country, but I guess some spots (especially those out in the middle of nowhere) continue their red-neck ways. Kind of scary actually.
My gosh! I had forgotten someone bought the London Bridge. It looks great sitting in the lake. :-D
Posted by: Barb in AK | March 13, 2020 at 09:21 AM