Road Trip From Ca to Tx 2008

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Last year I took the wife and step-kids across country from LA to Austin. We spent 4 days on the road and 5 days in Austin, because the wife and step-kids had never visited my relatives in Texas before. This year, between July 12th and July 20th, I took my two kids for the same trip, with some differences. We were on the road 7 days, with 2 and a half days in Austin.

Day One
Saturday, July 12th: We woke up at 7am to pick up the car at Advantage Rent A Car at 8am. The plan is to rent a car, drive it to Austin and fly back. We left LA along the 210 and headed up the I15 to Barstow, with me driving. I was going to drive until we hit I40, then stop for breakfast and let my daughter Kathleen drive for a while. Instead of taking I40 all the way, we were going to turn off and take the old Route 66 for some of the distance. I was inspired to do this from a book I bought during the last Ca-Tx roadtrip, Route 66 Lost and Found and the 2006 Pixar movie Cars. A lot of the things and places you see in cars were influenced by actual Route 66 sites.

Newberry Springs was the first exit off the I40 that we felt we could get a decent breakfast (we skipped Daggett). We stopped at some place which turned out to be a hardware/feed store, then kept going down Route 66 looking for something. Something passed by on the left and it didn't occur to me what it was for a few seconds. I turned the car around and went back. Yes, it was the Bagdad Cafe, where they filmed the 1987 German film appropriately named "Bagdad Cafe". The cafe, however, is not the original Bagdad Cafe. That place was located 49.2 miles east in a former town called Bagdad, California which no longer exists. More on that town below. When they filmed the movie the original name of the cafe was the Sidewinder Cafe. When a new owner took over she renamed it the Bagdad Cafe.

We entered and woke up one of the waiters who was sleeping in a booth. We sat down for breakfast and the other waiter offered us some free Belgium waffles and asked us to sign their visitors' book. You would have thought this place in the middle of nowhere doesn't get much traffic with all the attention they were giving us. But we learned differently when I had to change my order from the corned beef hash and eggs because they were out of corned beef. Turns out they have about 5 busloads of French tourists the day before and were out of almost everything. The owner, Andrea Pruett, was out getting supplies. That visitor's book they asked us to sign? They have nineteen (19!) volumes. So the place is VERY popular. I suspect they get waves of tourists and we just came by during a lull between the crash of waves.

Ludlow is a town that has been moved THREE times to meet the highway. It was founded in 1882 as a water stop for the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad steam engines, and later the Santa Fe RR. The town grew when gold was discovered in the area and continued until mining died down in the early 1990s. When route 66 was built, the entire town moved from one block north from the railroad tracks to meet the new route 66. This route 66 ghost town is just down the access road from the I40 exit where the current Ludlow is located. When I40 was built the entire town was once again moved to meet the interstate. Ludlow today contains a gas station, restaurant and a small tire and repair shop. The two pictures show the route 66 version of Ludlow in 1940 and now.

If you look south from the route 66 ghost town of Ludlow, towards the train tracks, you will see the remains of the first Ludlow, the mining ghost town. Here you can see the Murphy Brothers store, built originally in 1908 as the Ludlow Mercantile by John Denoir with a loan from Mrs. Preston. When Denoir went broke competing with the Murphy Brother's store next door, Ms. Preston took over the building and ran the store until 1918, when she sold it to the Murphy Brothers and left town. The Murphy brothers were an early Wal-Mart prototype, because they also were the second owners of the Chevron station picture in the route 66 ghost town. The first photo below is dated 1982. The building stood intact at least until Oct 1999, when the 7.1 Hector Mine earthquake occurred. The second photo is dated 2001, and you can see the damage. By the time we arrived, it was in even worse shape.

We tried to find Bagdad. We really did. What was left of the old Route 66 town was destroyed in 1991 when the site was used as a storage area for gas pipeline. The old town site is just a wide spot in the road now. So it was hard to find a wide spot in the road when the whole desert is one wide spot. Besides, by that time Kathleen was driving and she was having too much fun hitting the dips in the road at 90 mph. Kinda hard to look while bouncing like that.

Amboy Crater is a 6,000 year old dormant volcano rising only 250 feet above the surface of a 70 square kilometer lava field. According to the sign at the site, the last eruption could have occurred as recently as 500 years ago. This would not be the last lava field or volcano we would see on this trip. We didn't go up to the summit because of our schedule but we did hang around in the day use area for a little while to get some sun and climb over some old lava.

Amboy has had an interesting history for the last few dozen or so years. The entire town was put up for sale in the early 1980s. It was purchased in 2000 and used as a film location. This is the town that was offered for sale on EBay for a month ending on April 4th, 2003. The asking price was 1.9 Million. The highest offer was $995,000. It went unsold. The entire town was repossessed in February 2005, sold in May 2005 for $425,000 to Albert Okura, owner of the Juan Pollo restaurant chain. Since then he has sunk over $100,000 into the town trying to clean up the vandalism and bring the place back to life. They removed the row of port-a-potties and now they have working toilets, but they are run with salt water that is undrinkable. They have no running drinkable water at Amboy right now, because they have to replace the water tanks in the back before they can put drinkable water in. However they are selling bottled water. The gas station was reopened on April 24th 2008.

As we left Amboy we spotted something interesting on the side of the road and had to double back again to back. It was a tamarisk tree used as a Shoe Tree. Further down the road we saw the Amboy Underwear Bush. I'm still kicking myself for not getting a pic.

Between Amboy and Essex we also saw the desert graffiti, where folks have spelled out words and names (and other things) with small rocks against the slope of the berm that runs parallel to the route. Some of the stones have been there for decades, and some probably put there yesterday. A few were painted rocks, making them stand out all the more against the desert sands.

Road Runner?s Retreat is 10 miles east of Amboy. This wasn't in our book of sites but we stopped here anyway to take a quick picture. Years ago this was a place to stop and eat along a busy highway. Now, you just stand here in the middle of the desert, looking at these abandoned buildings, and wonder what else was left here.

Cadiz Summit Service must have been a relief to the drivers during the 1940's. Even though there isn't much of a grade on Route 66 to west-bound travelers, there is a steep grade on the east-bound lanes which would have left many motorists with an overheated engine. At the top of the hill was Cadiz Summit to serve their needs. Originally build in the 1920s by George and Minnie Tienken on an old alignment of Route 66, it was moved here buildings and all after the 1931 realignment. Interstate 40 bypassed this road in 1972. A handful of tourist cabins, cafe and gas station used to be here. All that's left are some foundations, a heavily graffitied, almost artistic shell of a garage, and rusty trash.

Essex once provided towing services, gas stations, markets and cafes to the Route 66 traveler. Water was so precious the businesses in the area charged 10 cents for a glass of drinking water and 10 cents for a gallon of radiator water. The Automobile Club of Southern California installed a free drinking fountain in the desert, getting rid of those outrageous charges. About a hundred feet from the old market you can find the water well off by the side of the road. It is a cute little stone well that has a shake shingle roof and looks a lot like a classic old wishing well. From Essex you can make a turn and travel to Mitchell Caverns/Providence Mountains State Park, the only limestone caves in the California State Park system.

We got back on I40 soon after Essex and soon drove into Needles, Ca. We weren't there long when we took the West Broadway exit to get back towards Route 66. We crossed the Colorado River, and Kathleen started calling her friends immediately to let them know she was in freakin Arizona! We made a turn to connect onto Route 66 and noticed the road quality had deteriorated. Not dirt road bad, but this was definitely an older Route 66 that we were getting onto. We slowed down, and things got a little surreal as we passed by what looked like a dirt parking lot and saw what we thought was a stuffed burro just standing there. I was on the phone with my Uncle at the time and gave the phone to Kathleen to say hi as we approached this animal. Slowly we drove up and then I noticed its ears were swatting flies. This burro wasn't stuffed. All of a sudden this 'stuffed' burro turned and started walking towards us, braying loudly like we were invading its territory. Kathleen started screaming "Oh my god!! Oh Jesus!!!" as she was yelling on the phone to my Uncle, who's a committed Christian. (I'm sure that went over great). My aunt Kathy later told me she could hear the screaming from the phone clear across the living room. We drove off, but not before I had burro slobber on my car window. Fortunately it started raining a few minutes later as Route 66 ran right down the middle of

Oatman. The town was named in the posthumous honor of Olive Oatman, a young Illinois girl who was kidnapped by the Apache Indians and forced to work as a slave. She was rescued in 1857 near the current site of the town. Oatman is an an old gold mining town which had a population of 10,000 around 1916 and only about 100 year round. During World War II, the federal government ordered gold mines in the area closed for manpower reasons. When the miners left, they left their burros behind. The descendents of these burros wander the main street of Oatman looking for handouts. You can buy carrots from several stores, one dollar per package. Kathleen thought they were a dollar for each carrot so she ordered two dollars worth. She got two bags of carrots. The burros got some, but we were eating carrots for the rest of the day.

The Oatman Hotel on Main Street (first pic below) is where Clark Gable and Carole Lombard spend their honeymoon night on March 18, 1939. We walked up and down Oatman in the rain. I talked to a few store owners. Some of them have been there for 20, 30 years. Kathleen bought her carrots, and I tried to buy a 12 pack of Pepsi. However the clerk there told me the owner doesn't give discounts for 12 packs so I would be paying for 12 cans and spend twelve dollars instead of five or six. Pepsi could wait.

We also found that Oatman has its own gunfighters group. The Ghost Riders Gunfighters perform Wild West Shootouts every day at 1:30 pm and are available for "Shotgun Weddings", Tour Bus "Robberies", Stage Coach Hold Ups they like to call them, and all kinds of special gunfight shows. They were wandering the street as well, and I talked to one of them. He told us that the burro we ran into earlier was Jack, the leader of one of the burro packs. When he wanders into town he acts like he owns it. No kidding. We kind of picked up on that. The gunfighter also hit on my 17 year old daughter Kathleen. "So I guess you're like 16 or 17?" he said to her. "Yeah, I'm 17", she replied. "So when's your birthday?" "December" "Cmon back in December then". She told me about this later. She said she would never do him but she was phoning everyone on her cell phone all day telling them a fake cowboy hit on her.

Once out of Oatman we right into the Black Mountains ahead. This route is the original Old Trails Highway that paralleled the Beale military road from 1857, and became Route 66 in 1926. Of all the stretches along Route 66 this is perhaps the most intimidating of all, with its steep grades, narrow road, and hairpin curves. Some travelers of old Route 66 would pay the locals to drive their car up the grade for them or even have their vehicle towed over the summit. But the views are beautiful. Be careful. There are no barriers or fences.

Ed's Camp was built by Lowell "Ed" Edgerton, who originally came to the area as a miner in 1917 and it didn't take him long to realize that the real gold could be found servicing the Route 66 traveler. He purchased the property the camp sites on in the late 1930s. It was a 'camp' in every sense of the word- there were never any cabins or rooms. Motorists on a budget would pull in and sleep in tents or their cars. For one dollar, a traveler with some extra cash could sleep on a cot on a screened porch. Water was sold to the guests on a per bucket basis unless you paid the buck to spend the night - then it was free. Ed died in 1978 and today the camp is deserted, but the odd buildings survive. Ed's Camp is on private property and not open to the public.

Cool Springs Camp, built by N. R. Dunton in 1927, gave early westward bound Route 66 motorists a welcome break before they tackled the treacherous winding ascent through the Black Mountains. Resourceful chap he was, he constructed the original buildings out of stones found along the highway. In June 1936 Dunton sold the property to the Walker family from Indiana. They added a restaurant and bar, and eventually a full-service garage and guest cabins.

As with the other businesses catering to Route 66 motorists along the original alignment east of Kingman, the tourist bubble burst when the road's alignment was changed in 1952. Cool Springs was converted to a poultry operation called "The Chicken Ranch." After a fire, that enterprise was also abandoned in 1964, and Cool Springs fell into ruins.

In the 1992 movie, Universal Soldier, A frame station was built around the old pillars and remaining stone foundation to create station. During a fight between Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren, the buildings were blown to smithereens. It would stay in rubble until 2001

Chicago real estate agent Ned Leuchtner and his wife Michelle purchased the Cool Springs Camp in 2002. They began a slow reconstruction project and rebuilt the Cool Springs camp into a Route 66 museum. They decided not to do food service or gas distribution because of the many regulations. But they offer soft drinks and snacks.

Seligman has two of the Route 66's greatest treasures. The Delgadillo brothers, Juan and Angel, are two of the most enthusiastic Route 66 boosters that any cause has ever known. Angel runs the barber shop in town and helped start the Historic Route 66 Association of Arizona. Juan was the proprietor of the Snow Cap Drive In. A Sante Fe employee at the time, Juan built the drive-in using materials discarded by the railroad. Juan at first sought to become part of the Dairy Queen network, but was turned down, so he searched for other companies to affiliate with, coming upon the Snow Cap Corp of Prescott, Arizona. Snow Cap no longer exists, but the name here does. Warned by doctors that he needed to relax, Juan lightened up by making his customers laugh. Not to give away his material, but beware of the yellow mustard bottle. Juan passed away on June 2, 2004.

Ash Fork is yet another small town of just some 500 people that got its beginnings when the railroad pushed through in 1882. When the settlement was formed it was named for the many ash trees growing on the town site. In 1893 the entire town of Ashfork burned to the ground, but soon rebuilt on the other side of railroad tracks, where it continues to stand today.

Many of Ashfork's buildings were destroyed once again by another fire in the 1970s. When Interstate 40 bypassed the town in 1979, it nearly died. However, the small population continues, supported by six flagstone yards located around town, ranching, mining, and a new generation of Route 66 travelers. Its citizens proclaimed the town as the ?Flagstone Capital of the World.?

Willams was the last Route 66 town to be bypassed by I-40 on October 13, 1984. Known as "The Gateway to the Grand Canyon.", the one and one-half mile stretch of Route 66 is at the heart of a Route 66 revival. The entire downtown area is listed in the National Register for Historic Places. Williams is home to the Grand Canyon Railway, reopened for passenger service on September 17, 1989.

We were going to stop and walk around for a little bit but Kathleen started making Kat-calls from the car. "HEY SEXY!!" So we couldn't stop.

The last hour we spent driving the 60 something miles between Williams and Tusayan, AZ, population 562. A nice spot nestled right outside the entrance to Grand Canyon National Park, this village offers a number of accommodations and campgrounds to the many hikers, bikers and tourists that visit the area. Among the stores featuring Grand Canyon memorabilia and the many gift and craft shops is the Grand Canyon IMAX Theater. The seven-story, giant screen presentation of the Grand Canyon offers guests a chance to experience climbing and rafting through the canyons on-screen. Many tour companies offer sightseeing flights by helicopter and airplane from the Grand Canyon Airport which is nearby. I went and got my Grand Canyon Pass for the next day, and we wandered over to the McDonald's across the street from the hotel and noticed a LOT of French people there.