Getting our kicks on Route 66

Friday Morning, the 5th of January, we awoke in Barstow to the tuneful whistling of freight trains as they headed east and west on the tracks opposite the motel we were in.  I slept like a baby, awaking at 12, 2, and 4 am.  I wasn't crying and wanting to be fed though so I guess it was okay.  It was -11 C.

We headed east on I-40 to Ludlow, California, where we exited and joined old Route 66.  we spent the majority of the day on the old highway.  There are dozens of abandoned businesses along the mother road, overgrown with weeds and covered with rust, grafitti and boarded up doors and windows.

We crossed the border into Arizona at Needles, California, and headed up into the hills to an old mining town called Oatman.  When the gold mines tapped out, the prospectors released their burros into the wild and they have survived.  Now Oatman is a thriving tourist town based around the wild burros that have descended from the beasts of burden released by prospectors long forgotten.  They come right down into town and you can feed them carrots or cubes of hay.  It's pretty quaint and it keeps the locals in business.  There were probably 150 to 200 visitors there, and the lady at the Popcorn stand where we got our feedbags says there are 13 burros that come into town, and hundreds live wild in the hills, foraging for their food.

From there we headed further into the hills, up a steep, winding grade with plenty of blind switchbacks and sheer drops to a pass that was literally a crack in the hillside and then down the other side with seemingly steeper hills and more switchbacks and sheer drops.

This section of route 66 was realigned in 1953, with a longer but MUCH safer route connecting Needles and Kingman, which is where we next found ourselves.

From Kingman we headed east on Rt 66 to Williams, Arizona, which is the gateway to the Grand Canyon.  I tried to do a couple of geocaches, but it was getting dark, and I was only able to find Old Route 66, in the general store belonging to John.  He was just closing up, but allowed me to sign the log and drop a couple of travel bugs that I picked up in Western Australia.

So we arrived in Williams at around 8 pm, and there was snow on the grass and in the forests, but the streets were bare and dry.  and it was COLD.