12/29/05 - 1/10/06 Arizona again - Route 66 & other attractions

Kingman Route 66 Photo Gallery

1/1/06 - Happy New Year! 2006 finds us back in Arizona, at Davis Camp on the Colorado River. We enjoyed a week's stay here last Feb. We've been mostly overcast for the last couple of days, cramping our energy style a bit, but I can't really be complaining about the weather given what folks in Oregon & Northern Cal have had to deal with recently.

We arrived here a few days ago, after tracking Route 66 up from LA to Needles, just south of here. On the way we overnighted at the small desert town of Adelanto near Victorville north of Cajon Pass. Friday as we were running errands here in Bullhead City, eBoy's clutch started slipping, so he's in the shop. We're lucky that this breakdown didn't happen out on the Mojave Desert.

I rented a car for the weekend since I had planned to drive the Oatman Highway, an original section of Route 66 that ran about 50 miles from Kingman south to Needles. What a road! Some of the tightest hairpins I've ever driven, through some scenic but very rugged back country. If my clutch had lasted one more day, we might have broken down somewhere up there; not a pleasant prospect either. I had not checked out Oatman ahead of time, since it barely registers on the map, so I was surprised to find the street choked with tourists and burros. Oatman, an old gold mining town, has recreated itself as a wild west ghost town attraction, complete with staged shoot-outs. That's what we drove into. The burros seemed nonplused by everything. Get your snacks on Route 66!

1/3 - Well, big change on the team here. I finally decided to cut my losses with eBoy. He let us down one time too many. The trouble was more than a slipping clutch, it was a total tranny meltdown! It was a difficult decision, both financially & emotionally, but I just couldn't see pouring $4,000 into a $10,000 truck that seems to be cursed. So we have a new chariot - brand new. I'm toying with 2 names for our new beast: HeBoy (as in stronger than eBoy) or Egor (as in big strong servant).

Otherwise it's been relatively quiet. We had a minor blow last night, which seems to have brought more sunshine. Yay! The weather outlook in these parts is pretty nice for the next several days. We'll finish up the week here & head down the Colorado on the weekend.

1/6 - Timmy has made a couple of new friends, 2 boys who are camped next to us with their family. Several times each afternoon the smaller one, about 5, knocks on the door & asks to play with my dog. I'm not sure who has the most fun. But you know what they say about all good things. We'll pull out in the morning, on our way to Parker only about 80 miles south.

It turns out there is a large hill with many petroglyphs just a short distance from our camp site. I hadn't noticed them last year when we stayed here. They've since made it a lot easier, putting up informational displays & fencing them off. They are very similar to those we saw at Painted Rocks last month.

By the way, I'm going with Egor.

1/7 - Egor loves to tow! We're still on the Colorado, but about 70 miles or so south, at Crossroads Camp, on the California side, a few miles above Parker. It's a BLM campground wedged in between several commercial campgrounds along the river here, but it will be a nice place to spend a couple of days.

Got to thinking about that petroglyph hill last night & that it must have had some significance. Then remembered there is a rather large mountain across the river that is called Spirit Mountain, but which isn't visible down at river level. So maybe the petroglyphs were associated with the mountain. This morning we climbed the hill to find out. Sure enough, at the top of the hill Spirit Mountain came into view beyond the bluffs above the river. And as we looked around the hill top, at a level area I found a perfectly circular path, maybe 30' in diameter. It had a rather large depression right in the center. I'm no authority on such things, but I think this must have been a ceremonial site, somehow connected with the mountain. Well, as I was writing about this, I thought it would be interesting to see if there was any info on the internet. A quick google returned "Spirit Mountain, an imposing monolith of white granite that is an important site for native peoples of the Mojave and Sonoran Deserts who consider it to be the center of their creation." Oh, it's only the center of creation... Apparently there are other petroglyph sites that are associated with the mountain as well.

1/10 - I'm closing out this adventure from down south of Quartzsite where we arrived this afternoon. We enjoyed Crossroads for the most part. Its wide sandy beaches are nice for walking along the river. And we met a fun Canadian couple, Tanya & Marty. We sipped wine around a creosote brush campfire last night while Timmy made himself comfortable in Tanya's lap. But I wasn't too keen with all the generators there, morning to night they serenaded us.

Driving around, I found that the campground is named for a town that existed here during the dam-building days of the 30's. Population about 3000, all that remains of Crossroads is the stone shell of its mercantile. Saloons, car lots, gas stations, church, mortuary, all gone.

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