Wednesday, July 26, The Three or Four State Day

As per my usual routine, thus far into the journey, I awoke, organized some things, typed a bit, and made ready for departure. Then I was approached. One of the members of the large family gathering had realized his gumption was raised, and decided to inquire as to my doings. I told him about my road trip, where I’d been, and where I was generally headed. He, in exchange, told me about his 9 siblings and how they had decided to gather with their parents and all of their scads of children at a KoA outside of Williams, AZ. I knew that it was a large gathering, but I had no idea there were ten siblings there, each potentially there with bunches of children. It was interesting.

Then it was time for me to move on. I gave the man a wave, and pulled out into the KoA circle of traffic. It was time to get back on the road. I drove into Williams from there, and found another small city that had two one-way roads running through it. I think towns like that are strange. Anyway, I stopped, purchased the gasoline and ice, and continued on my way. As I passed out of town, I saw something off to the left that rather astounded me. It was perhaps the best cemetery I have ever seen. I don’t mean to get morbid or anything here, and don’t really think I will, but I just like to reassure people of my non-intentions, so here’s my description and reasoning: The cemetery was sort of built into a forest of cedars. I guess that’s a pretty accurate description. Anyway, the reason I liked it so much is that there seemed to be a really nice interplay between nature and our culture. The two seemed to go together (pun sort of intended) rather naturally. Other cemeteries seem overly dominated by maintenance and control. I really liked this one because it had the appearance of being a little wild. It struck a really good balance between nature and human caring. I guess other cemeteries always seem like there is someone who maintains things just for the paycheck, and you can’t really see evidence of people caring about their no-longer-living friends and/or relatives. I just liked it. As far as cemeteries go. I took some pictures of it, but none of them depicted it very accurately. Here is one anyway:

Shortly after I saw the cemetery, I was forced back onto the interstate. I drove around the interstate until I found the exit to Ashfork, which I drove through. Ashfork wasn’t particularly interesting, in my opinion, but it did have a historical marker that I stopped at, and while I was stopped there viewing it, everyone who drove by waved at me. I guess it was interesting, after all. I viewed the historical marker, but I don’t remember exactly what it was concerning at this point. I do know that there was something referring to the railroad (I think it was supposed to run through there, but something had happened so that it didn’t), and I also remember that there was a famous hotel that had been in the town until sometime in the last thirty years or so, when someone decided to tear it down, and a society that was started couldn’t raise enough money to prevent the destruction.

From there it was back to the freeway for me. That is, until I found the exit for Crookton Road. Then I saw what I have called the ‘Sign of Many Signs.’ See for yourself:

The next major city/town/group of buildings I was to pass through would be Seligman, AZ. Before I got there, however, I saw a sight:

Those, for the uninformed, are antelope. Real ones. Much as they may look like plastic lawn decorations, I have pictures of them in other positions and from different angles. Oh, they’re real, alright.

From there, I drove over some interesting bridges that had rather ominous signs just before them, which read “Ice Forms on Bridge First,” or something like that. After those, I entered the fantastical town of Seligman. Of all the towns I’d passed through from Illinois to Arizona, I felt that this town called ‘Seligman’ most embodied the original spirit of Route 66 (as interpreted by me). Part of this is due to the Drive-In Restaurant called the “Delgadillos Snow Cap,” which I highly recommend. It’s run by two brothers now, and they have quite the senses of humor. I’m not sure how many of you all will ever get the chance to go there, so I’m going to go ahead and spoil some of their jokes (that, and I’m sure they have far more than I saw there on that particular day).

I walked up to the counter, after having stood in the line for a few minutes, and said, “Can I get a double cheese burger?” To which the man behind the counter replied, “But, don’t you want me to get it for you?” Then I awkwardly responded, “Oh, well, yes.” The other joke I recall came about when I asked the difference between a shake and a malt. The man responded by putting out his hand in a gesture of greeting. We shook hands, and he said, “That’s a shake. A malt’s got flavor.”

After I placed my order, I went on outside and waited for the name he’d given me to be called. I was ‘Y,’ while the man ahead of me had been ‘Yellow,’ and the man ahead of him had been ‘Blue.’ When I went outside, I saw something amazing. A backyard full of cars. Old cars. Old, awesome cars. Beyond that, however, and besides the fact that several of the cars had eyes painted on their windshields (in a presumed effort to resemble the cars from “Cars”), was one car in particular. Some of you out there are car fans, I know, so I’ll describe it slowly, and using multiple sentence fragments. It was a Camaro. A 1969 Camaro. It was a 1969 Camaro Convertible. It was a Camaro RS SS. It was also white with orange racing stripes. Now, I know that my assessment may or may not be accurate, but I’m guessing from the above qualities that this Camaro was built as an Indy Pace Car. It probably didn’t actually pace anything, but it was one of those models. I was pretty impressed. Here’s the picture:

While I was there at the Snow Cap, I met some fellow Route 66 travelers. Three generations of Route 66 travelers, to be exact. They apparently had the same guide book as me, and had the same problems with the guide book as I have had. They had kind of a neat story, in that the father and son had somehow traveled from Southern California back to Kansas to pick up the Grandfather, and had begun the Old Road in Kansas, headed west. They told me that they had stayed in the Wigwams, which I believe were in Holbrook. The father had said that he’d been trying to get his dad to take him there for forty years. I thought it was really neat that they’d gone there. I wished them well, and departed. On my way out of town I saw a large ‘S’ on a hillside to the north. I like it when old towns have a letter on a hillside signifying the town’s name.

Nothing terribly interesting happened to me for a long while. I drove westward on the old Route 66 until Kingman, and then turned north. My plan was to make what I guessed to be about a 600 mile loop. When I turned north, I was on a highway that was very interstate-like, save the fact that the off-ramps were crossroads. I stopped at a historical marker because I was thirsty, so I got out, got a drink out of my cooler, and read the sign. It said something about a ghost town about five miles to the north and east. I thought to myself that since there appeared to be only one road going in that direction, that I would head on out there and observe the ghostiness of the town for myself. Well, I drove that five miles north and east, and I found a couple of really old looking buildings along the banks of a dry creek bed. Up the road a ways, the road came to an end in a modern day mineral extraction plant of some kind. Actually, I don’t even know if what I just said even makes any sense. So, I turned around, and headed back through the open range, dodged the cattle, and got back on the highway heading north, north to Nevada.

After the stop in Mineral Park, which I believe is what the ghost town’s name was supposed to be (wherever it is), nothing really happened until I was just short of the Arizona-Nevada border. There was a police checkpoint that nothing could get through. I was worried that they were going to stop me because I’m driving a pickup truck with a canopy and a sheet over everything in back—which seems to me that if anything were going to be suspicious, it would be something like that. They waved me through almost immediately, but stopped a couple on a motorcycle. The motorcycle was towing a tiny trailer, however.

Onward to Hoover Dam, and the crossing of the Colorado River! I saw a sign that said something about the Hoover Dam, so I stopped and took this picture:

It was just an overlook, but it was super hot there, and they had a visitor center. I spent a little over two dollars on a ‘Strawberries and Crème Fruit-cicle.’ It was extremely good. In that heat, I don’t even know that I’d say it was overpriced, it was so good.

Then I drove down to and across the dam, paid my seven dollars for parking, got out, and had a look around. I wasn’t terribly impressed. There was one thing (I didn’t know it at the time, however) that would have made it awesome, and I was fooled—it didn’t have it. It was hard to get a good angle because the place is so massive and there are no good distance lookouts to get a shot from, but here’s what the river below looks like from atop the dam (I believe I was just about on the border at this point). Here’s a picture of the Dam face:

Now, what would have made the whole thing awesome is this: do you see in the picture the little towers that rise from the top of the dam face? Well, one of those was home to the men’s bathroom. I had passed by the restroom at some point earlier, and noticed that you needed to take stairs up to the actual facility. This piqued my curiosity, and I decided to explore. On my way back, I went inside and climbed the stairs. For whatever reason, I had gotten my mind set (and my hopes very high) on the idea that there would be urinals with windows above them that afforded the user to view the river while... taking care of business, so to speak. I thought that that would have been great. But I got up there, and there were no such windows. I wondered what the point of a bathroom in a tower was if there were to be no windows. I was disappointed, and made my escape. Before I left, however, I wanted to check out the tour situation. I went down the escalator, sort of joined a family group, didn’t get my picture taken before entering, and found that tours were 11 dollars. In my opinion, that was just too much, considering the fact that I’d just paid $7 to park. So, I made my way back up the escalator, and held up other people in the process. I was about a third of the way up when they got on, and by the time I was halfway up, they were already 2 steps behind me. I did my best to move to one side, but the escalator was pretty narrow, and beyond that, I really didn’t feel like walking up the stairs. I knew I had enough stairs ahead of me in the parking garage. Before I got to the parking garage, however, I decided to stop in at the gift shop. It always amazes me when I see toy guns and things like that in the gift shop for a national icon. When I went back outside, I saw the sculpture to be pictured shortly. I don’t remember what he was called, other than that the first word was ‘High,’ but I do recall that he had a jackhammer or drill, so I’ve taken to saying that it’s a picture of the “High Jacker.”

I went back to my truck, left the parking garage after having been asked for the third time if I could help out some people with a dead battery, and made my way deeper into Nevada. I had a desire to know more of the camping situation in Nevada, so I stopped at the nearby visitor center at about 5 in the afternoon. Not only had it closed at 4:30, however, but the bathrooms were locked. Visitor Centers and I don’t seem to have a good thing going. So, I left there, and stopped in Henderson to buy gas. While in the establishment of my choosing, I asked the clerk if he knew of any campgrounds in the area, to which he responded with a look of laughter and said, “Not around here.” Bear in mind, that at this point I was ten or so miles from Las Vegas. I knew that there was a campground about an hour north of Las Vegas, but I was hoping for something that wasn’t in the “Valley of Fire State Park.” I passed into and out of Las Vegas without incident, but once I was out, I called my brother-in-law for a bit of information. I asked him to look up the temperature in the greater LV area. It was strange, because I knew that I’d been in some exceptionally hot places, but this place, to the north of Las Vegas, was by far the hottest-feeling place. As many of you know, I don’t have the air conditioning, and have just been driving around with my window down. This practice was difficult to maintain in such heat, because when I have my window down, I have a tendency to put my left arm out of it. The heat actually stung my arm when it was outside. I didn’t care for it. When I heard back from my brother-in-law, he informed me that it was 105. Now, I don’t know what was going on there that made it feel so hot, because I know I have been to hotter places than that. But I still maintain, that that place felt the hottest.

I eventually got to the turn-off for the Valley of Fire, but decided that 18 miles was just too far to travel just to travel 18 more miles in the morning to get back to the interstate, and only to sleep in a place that already felt like it was the hottest place I’d ever been, and to head into a place called the Valley of Fire. There were just so many things about that scenario that I didn’t particularly care for, that I decided to continue on, and see what the northlands would bring.

Unfortunately they brought nothing in the way of camping, for a good long while. I had looked at my map, and decided that there was a place in Utah that seemed reasonably close. What I hadn’t noticed that there were about thirty miles of the interstate in Arizona. So it ended up taking me about an extra 45 minutes to get there, and when I eventually did, it was quite dark. But first, the Arizona: Most of the Arizona I-15 runs through the Virgin River Canyon (or something to that effect), and I must say, that was probably the most interesting/scariest run of interstate I’ve ever driven. It was all windy curves, with sharp inclines and declines, and the occasional strong wind. Also, there was no room to pull off the road, nearly all of it was elevated, and there were canyon walls rising sharply on either side.

I saw a sign for a campground, and went to check it out. It seemed alright, except for the fact that the campground area was closed. I thought that they could have posted that on the sign out on the freeway.

Returning to the interstate, I continued northward, heading for the campground in Utah that I’d seen on my map. Upon entering Utah, the landscape changed dramatically. It was quite amazing to see. I exited the canyon, and suddenly was probably closer to cliffs that were larger than I’d seen before. Some looked like part of the mountain had just been shorn off, and others looked like gigantic mesas. This picture doesn’t exactly show the sights I’ve just described, but that’s not what it was meant to depict. It’s a sunset picture.

Soon it got quite dark, and I found the exit that I thought I needed to take. I took it, drove around a bit, and found the state park I was looking for. It took me a while to actually locate the campground however, because the signs didn’t mark anything very well, and the park was probably a couple miles long on the shores of a dammed river. When I eventually found the campground, I realized why I’d missed it for so long, and the reason was the fact that there was no one else there. It was in a wide open spot with very few small trees, and only one other group of campers who were down a hill and behind a building. I was a little frustrated at the debacle, but I made the best of it, watched the lightning storm to the south and east, called the parents, and went to sleep. It was still a little hot there, but I was able to withstand it. I don’t know if it was only a three state day, or if it can be considered four states. Arizona-Nevada-Arizona-Utah. I just don’t know.