On the Mother Road, RTE 66 – Barstow to Kingman

We are on the road again, this time barreling down the “Mother Road.”  Just want to get our “Kicks On Route 66.”

Transporting victims of the Dust Bowl to the promised golden land of California, the Mother Road became a symbol of hope for a better life for mid-west refugees.  It was the road to Mecca for the Joad Family in Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath.  How fitting is it that we encountered our own dust bowl outside of Daggett, CA, where the dreaded Inspection Station awaited Dust Bowl migrants.

Iconic Rte 66 spawned many novels, TV series, songs and movies.  The indie film Bagdad Cafe, a story about a tightly wound German woman escaping a troubled past by finding meaning in the American desert, became a cult classic in Europe and Asia. It’s titular cafe in Newberry Springs, CA, is now a major tourist attraction for foreign tourists as well as bikers and drivers in search of roadway romance.

Visitors around the world leave business cards and letters of appreciation on the wall. The cafe feeds all sorts of desert rats as well.  Eating here too often has its downside . . . . . . and can expand your backside.

Route 66, of course, is no longer a thoroughfare. It was replaced by Interstate 40, but many sections of historical interest have been preserved. They constantly loop around I-40. Each loop is a time capsule, a journey back into a simpler life.  Time has certainly stood still here.

One of the these loops passes through Needles, CA, on the Arizona border. The Native Americans were the first to carve out this path.  The pioneers who followed traced its path to the Pacific Ocean.  Here we have a prairie schooner, resembling a ship crossing the ocean.  Most westward bound pioneers walked alongside these loaded wagons, pulled by 4 mules.

No trip to Arizona is complete without a trip to Oatman, an old mining, ghost town. Today it is a bustling tourist town, complete with daily staged shootouts for gun enthusiasts.  We learned that in 1939 Clark Gable and Carole Lombard spent their honeymoon at the Oatman Hotel, built in 1902.

Oatman is a rocky, mountainous place, where the offspring of burros that worked the mines roam freely.  Watch your step.  Pete chatted up his jackass friend.

Sitgreaves Pass is the steepest portion of the original route.  Travelers in the past had to find locals to usher them across this 3550-foot pass.   Most early cars (circa 1920) did not have fuel pumps, so they often had to drive the pass backward. The view at the pass summit takes in the corners of California, Arizona and Nevada.

At the top of the pass is an unofficial graveyard for the ashes of deceased locals.  They are ecletically adorned.  Some even have solar powered garden lights that can be seen from many miles away.

Kingman was once a railway hub.  In 1915 when the National Old Trails Hwy became the first coast to coast road, travelers began to experience running alongside these massive freight trains. It gave some Americans their first taste of riding shotgun with the trains. To accommodate travelers, hotels, restaurants and gas stations began to dot the highway.

When the Interstate was later built, businesses closed shopped. Their owners abandoned the buildings and left behind ghost towns, but later nostalgic travelers rediscovered the highway.  Some of the old places have been restored to capitalize on people pining for the glory days. Here is the old Powerhouse, built in 1907, now the Route 66 Museum in Kingman, Arizona.

Get your kitsch on Route 66.  This section of RTE 66 is on Andy Devine Avenue, named after the great character actor (Roy Rodgers show), who was one of Kingman’s famous residents.

“On the Aitchison, Topeka & the Santa Fe . . ”  Johnny Mercer wrote this song for the Harvey sisters, the daughters of the famous owner of Harvey House hotels and restaurants. The cross-country railway parallels RTE 66, but ceased to operate in 1996.  Today goods from China and Korea – via the Port of LA – are transported through Kingman to Chicago on the railway BNSF (Burlington, Northern, and Santa Fe).