Wednesday, June 13, 2018
We spent the night in Kingman, AZ at our hotel of choice for this trip, Best Western. It was an exhausting day of driving, but we accomplished one of our trip goals and that was to reach our daughter and her family’s home in Agoura Hills, CA.
Before we arrived in California, Dan and I both had sights we wanted to see before getting on the highway. I wanted to visit the Route 66 museum in Kingman, which we did. It wasn’t as good as it could have been given the topic, but it did give us an appreciation of what it must have been like to travel the road back in the time of the Great Depression. Terrible! The museum also had a small exhibit of electric cars going back to the 1920’s.
It was at this point we made a mistake. I told Dan I wanted to stop in Oatman, AZ, a town on Route 66 known for having burros wandering the streets. Little did Dan or I know that the road to Oatman went through the mountains and was one of the most twisting and turning roads we had been on. The 28 miles didn’t take a half hour as expected, but closer to 2 hours, including the time it took to get back on Route 40.
In all honesty, it wasn’t worth the time traveling to Oatman. While the burros did walk the streets, it was basically a tourist trap full of souvenirs shops and a smattering of antique stores thrown in. Since we weren’t in the mood for shopping, we essentially drove through town and left.
The next stop was on Dan’s wish list. When he studied at the University of Manchester he walked across the London Bridge in London, and he wanted to see it in its new location. The bridge had been completed in 1831 but had not been designed to withstand today’s automotive traffic, and as a result had begun to sink. It went up for sale in 1967. In 1968. Lake Havasu City founder and entrepreneur Robert P. McCulloch placed the winning bid of $2,460,000 (not including dismantling, shipping or rebuilding). The bridge was taken apart stone by stone and shipped through the Panama Canal. In October 1971 the bridge was opened in Lake Havasu City. It crosses a man made river and cars drive over it – of course one of those cars was ours. (Dan thinks that they thought that they were getting Tower Bridge, rather than London Bridge.)
Now we were finally on our way to Los Angeles. Since we were arriving at rush hour, which based on my observations is almost all day long, we took a longer route around the city. That strategy seemed to work for us as traffic was relatively light. We arrived at about 7:00 PM for our first home cooked meal in three weeks. Jessica made chicken piccata which was delicious.
We then spent a pleasant evening with Jessica, Joey, Bria and Mickey. Bria performed one of her own choreographed dance routines and Mickey showed us his thriving vegetable garden.
Note: Because we are visiting family for the rest of this week, we will be taking a blog vacation. All of us head to the Grand Canyon and other nearby sites for a week or so. We aren’t certain if we will have internet connections at the park and elsewhere, so it may be some time before we get back in touch, so don’t worry. We’ll be back.
BY THE WAY WITH WENDY & DAN 