Monday, August 06, 2007

A QUICK ROADTRIP


So, no kids on Thursday (my only day off) and what to do.
Melissa spoke of driving up north into Utah and I thought about driving to L.A. Instead we took the road south into Arizona. We started by going over Hoover Dam (Lots of traffic there due to TRANSFORMERS being filmed there, tourists and all that) Once we got over the dam, we continued driving south, no hurries no destination. The initial idea was to drive and find roads that would take us into old mining towns. Along the way we saw some thunderstorms that were too far to get us or the car wet.
We did veer into a road that lead to Chloride, an old mining town founded back in the 1860's. Mellisa did not want to have anything to do with this town, it did look deserted and silent. We were looking for "Yesterday's restaurant", but it turned out that they were on vacation. We turned around and left the town quickly and back onto the highway. The next stop was Kingman AZ. This was no small mining town. We had lunch at a place we'd rather not mention except that on its wall there was a note form their health department which had placed them on a "Needs Improvement" status.
From Kingman the choices widened. Go into the Grand Canyon a mere 2 hours away, Further south into Sedona (about 4 hours) or West towards L.A. Given that it was already about 3:00PM, we decided to go west along the famous Route 66.
From Kingman it quickly headed towards the mountains. Mountains on this side of the country are nothing but giant boulders of rocks. There are no pine trees or other large trees growing here. Only sage bushes, saguaros and plenty of dessert grass and flowers. A beautiful site considering the minimal rain that has fallen in this part of the dessert.

The road turned into a two lane road with very sharp turns into the hills. Surprisingly there were a lot of homes (mobile, trailers and such)throughout the road. It did not take too long to reach the top. On the way we stopped a few times to take pictures. Once we began to descend, the road was the same; colorful and still with dizzying sharp turns. At some spots, you could see signs of old mines as well as some that seemed operational.
The highlight of the trip was a town called Oatman. Right along the center of the road, there were donkeys meandering around as if they owned the town. There were plenty of tourists (Of course we were tourists at that point too) feeding carrots to the donkeys, some seem a bit aggressive, while some others just laid on the ground.






Once we left this town, we headed towards Bullhead City. By this time it was already about 6:30PM and since we had nothing else to do at home, we decided to spend the night in Laughlin.


Melissa and I had come full circle.
One of our first outings as a dating couple was here in Laughlin and we actually stayed at the same place.

5 comments:

Ms. Marie said...

I think that what you wrote was beautifully written. I laughed pretty hard about many parts, but more so with the "restaurant" as well as Chloride...:O

I am glad that you wrote about us coming full circle in that little town full of nothing much but a beautiful river, with a "moon" that I will never forget.

I love you...

~M

Yummerson said...

Awww aren't you guys too cute! I like that you are so often posting about your outings. I hope that once Diego gets older we too can have family or lovers trips.

Coco said...

Sounds like a wonderful road trip!!
Thank you for posting pics along with your writing : )

Blessings.

Adriana said...

Llegaron a Sedona?
Es un lugar hermoso, y tambien Laughlin me gusta mucho...

Martiuks said...

A mi me gustaria alguna vez hacer un viaje asi por carretera sin tener un destino predefinido y acompaƱada de alguien especial.

Hasta ahorita no se me ha hecho, pero espero no quedarme con las ganas.

Que padre que tu hayas tenido oportunidad de realzar un viaje asi.