A Day in the Desert

Ruth's Dad writes:

Today was another “Day in the Desert”. Since we expected the temperatures to go up into the 100's already in the morning we got up at 6am, had a quick “Kind-Bar-Breakfast” in our room and were on the road by 7am.

The Historic Route 66 led us through over the Sitgreaves Pass (3550ft). The road up the pass was extremely curvy (“Recommended for experienced drivers/riders only”!) and the views were impressive: Rugged rock formation and great vistas onto the plain desert.

We reached Oatman, AZ which is famous in the respect that it is a Ghost Town where people live: With the decline of Route 66 due to the establishment of the Interstate system and the resulting decreased traffic, the number of people living there declined too. But with the recent growing interest in the Historic Route 66, the tourist traffic has caused business to flourish again. We reached Oatman by about 8am and all the businesses (old saloons, souvenir stores, bars) were still closed. Hence we enjoyed a rather sleepy little mountain village. Even the famous free-ranging donkeys we had been told about seemed to wait for the official opening at 9am (you can buy carrots to feed them...) and so we saw only a couple of donkeys along the road and only one in town.

We left Oatman after a brief stroll and taking a few photos. By now the temperatures were in the mid-90's and descending down to only 600ft elevation into the desert they rose above 100F pretty quickly but we stayed relatively cool. The last couple of days we had been riding “California style” anyway: Helmet, bandana, long-sleeve athletic quick-dry shirts, gloves, protective pants and boots.

 That way the wind kept us reasonably cool but we had to drink a lot(!) of water in order to avoid dehydration.

We followed the old Route 66 through the desert until we reached Needles, CA but not before our otherwise trusted GPS (nicknamed “Susan”) sent us into the boonies. In Needles we had a sumptuous breakfast at the Wagon Wheel Hotel before continuing along the desert roads.

Further along unfortunately the old Route 66 road was closed due to damage done by some storms last year (We wondered how California spends all that money they collect with the outrageous tax on gas!). Hence we had to take some miles of Interstate.

Interstate riding is very exhausting. Since we went only about 60 mph (we didn’t want to kill the engines by overheating) cars and trucks were passing us all the time and their wake turbulence is not nice. Also, the cars and trucks heat up the air quite a bit so it's even warmer on the Interstate, and in 110+ weather that's not fun!

We left the Interstate after a few miles and heading into the desert again. The temperature was above 110F (the air temp sensor on my Harley pegged out at 120F!) and we took a break at Roy's Cafe in Amboy, CA. We fueled up ($4.99/gal makes you glad that the bikes average about 45 mi/gal!) and had drank a cold soda.

After those desert miles again, and finally the old Route 66 became so bad that we were afraid we were going to blow a tire so we decided to ride the remaining 30 mi to Barstow, CA on the Interstate again. We were glad to reach our Days Inn exhausted, thirsty but happy!