Monday, April 20, 2009

ARIZONA DAY 9--ROUTE 66


It's Saturday, an overcast day with one little sprinkle of rain, but still warm and pleasant. We woke up in Kingman, Arizona and went to the Historic Route 66 Museum first. Then we were off to finish the CARS caches (ha!), and on along Route 66 to another old mining town called Chloride. ..what a hoot! I can't resist sharing 9 photos of this ghost town that has a few inhabitants and some very interesting structures and "displays." Then we pressed on to Hoover dam and Las Vegas.


Inside the Museum...can you see Mater?


Old Studebaker with an evaporative cooler in the passenger window and old Burma Shave Signs.


On the road (a Travel Bug called Tennesee Caving Dude is pictured at the top).



An original Route 66 Diner...just for Autumn.



Just for Briton...taken from Route 66 as we were driving by.


Cheesecake Rock, just outside Kingman.



Ramone Cache...#5...no clue.


Fillmore Cache #6...we found Tow Mater there. Now this is the part where we live up to our name, The Geo Idiots. After finding all 6 CARS Caches and collecting the extra coordinate clues, we put them all together to find Lightning McQueen. All 6 caches were within about a 2-hour stretch of road from Oatman (Sally) to Hackberry (Fillmore), with Kingman (Doc Hudson) in the middle. We were in Hackberry and wouldn't you know it, Lightning was all the way back beyond the Sally Cache (that we had already been to twice) at Oatman. We needed to back track to Kingman to press on to Vegas anyway, but we couldn't quit without getting Lightning, so we spent another almost 2 hours to get #7!! Luckily it was the most scenic part of the road through a winding canyon and when we arrived a little rainstorm had just ended and the desert smell was heavenly!


We found him!!! and took a Red the Fire Truck "Radiator Springs" sticker.


At the McQueen Cache, lots of little desert flowers had opened up after the rain.


Another photo of the rocks in the canyon on Route 66 that surely were inspiration for the movie setting.


OK, here it is...Chloride. What can you say about Chloride??? Hopefully these pictures will tell the story. This town seemed about the size of St. Charles with about 300 residents. Mostly you'd call it run down, but it had a peculiar kinda almost-charm, too. We drove around it like we were looking at Christmas lights. Here's the fence at the entrance to town decorated with an eclectic collection of rusted junk.



The kitchen utensils tree.



The boot fence.



The bottle window and wagon roof.


Blue house with trees displaying blue bottles and other rare treasures.


Porch with birdhouses.


The Old Red House.



The Gas Station. Looks like a train can fill up!



And the Yellow Bank.


Winding our way down to the back of Hoover Dam at sunset.



Front of Hoover Dam...I couldn't see the bottom.


Looks like they're building a new sky-high bridge over the Colorado River just beyond the front of the dam.

2 comments:

briton said...

nice truck stop, and nice bank. boy, Talmage would love to drive route 66 and go hunting for caches. Hoover dam is so gargantuan.

Autumn said...

The ghost town is so cool! It's very colorful...do they keep painting it? That diner looks pretty tasty. Those "Cars" caches are so fun, it sounds like it was quite the adventure finding them! Lots of fun things to see along route 66 huh? I really like the first photo!