Day 14: Kingman, AZ to Barstow, CA

Route 66 in the Mojave Desert

Only about 60 miles from Kingman to the California state line but what a 60 miles it is.

The Hill Top Motel in Kingman AZ

The Orchard Inn Motel in Kingman, AZ

Since we stayed on the east-side of Kingman last night, we started off by driving through the city.









Kingman has a lot Route 66 woven into its history and this was very evident by the many businesses that are still alive today.

We still saw several motels and restaurants from the hay day and their historic downtown had many activities around Route 66.

Stretched out section of Oatman Highway

After Kingman, one enters the Oatman Highway - a long stretch of Route 66 towards California that deviates from the interstate completely. The first 20 miles or so are through the Arizona desert before we got to the Black Mountains.

Route 66 through the Black Mountains in Arizona

This is where Route 66 really took us for a spin with hairpin turns, narrow roads and no fence next to us. The heat started to crawl up to the 100 degrees here. However, this passage was very nice to drive and we got some great views on either side of the Black Mountains of the valleys below.

Small town of Oatman, AZ

I know it's not polite to take a picture of a nursing
mother but I couldn't help myself

About 5 miles into the mountains, we got to Oatman, a town once dedicated to gold mining, but has now been completely converted to tourism. The old buildings (western style) are all still there and there are many attractions one can see. We happened to arrive at the time when a gun fight show-down was about to happen so we stuck around for that.

Le Brun Motel in Needles, CA

We did have to watch out for the wild burros that are walking around in the town, trying to get food from whomever they encounter. They are tame enough to approach you but we got warned several times by the locals that they do bite and kick when they get annoyed.

Welcome sign to Needles, CA

After Oatman, we got back on the road through the Black Mountains and made our way down to the Colorado River and the natural divider between Arizona and California.

Once we crossed the Colorado River, we got to Needles, the first city on Route 66 in California. Lots of history here again with dozens of motels along the route. We also saw several really nice murals throughout the city that were displaying scenes of what the road would have brought.

Mural of pretty much the route we took today - on top of a grocery store in Needles, CA

The Mojave Desert

From there, we took the National Trails Highway across the Mojave desert. The temperature quickly started  rising, hitting a peak of 109 degrees/43 celsius according to the temperature reader in our car. And of course, there was nothing in front or behind us - just a long stretch of road along the railway.

Abandoned grocery store in Essex, CA

After dozens of miles, we started hitting some old towns, some completely abandoned, in the middle of the desert. Most of them had at least one motel and a gas station - signs that Route 66 had a significant purpose for these towns.

Ruins of a gas station/garage in Cadiz Summit, CA

In Goffs, the only thing we found was an abandoned gas stations and motel. In Essex, the sign claimed the city has 100 people living it, even
though we could barely find a couple houses that did not look completely abandoned or burned down. Danby just had an old abandoned gas station.

Roy's Motel and Cafe in
Amboy, CA

Abandoned Motel in Goffs, CA

Cadiz Summit had a couple ruins of an old gas station/garage, completely covered with graffiti.

Amboy looked like a hopeful rest place in the middle of the desert with its amazing tall sign, yet the school was all boarded up and the steeple on the church was crooked because it was sunken in.

There's me....

The gas station was still open for business and happily serving gas at 5.09 for unleaded when the nationwide average is 3.83. I guess when you are in the middle of the desert and you need gas, you don't really care what the price is.

.... and my dad, Frank

Around Chambless through Amboy and  beyond is what our guide calls the "Route 66 Public Art Corridor." It is miles and miles of a dirt berm where hundreds of travelers have written their name in the dirt with rocks found alongside the road.




It was pretty neat to see and given that we were are close to finishing Route 66, we had to leave our mark as well. So in the 104 degree weather in the middle of the desert, we began collecting rocks to write our names, hurrying up to get back in the air-conditioned car. I wonder how long we will be part of the landscape here.....

There are miles and miles full of names

Entrance to Calico Ghost Town

As we got closer to Barstow, our final stop for the day, we came really close to Calico, a ghost town near Daggett. Calico used to be a mining town for silver and is located up near the mountains. It has a particular meaning to me because exactly 20 years ago, I came to the U.S. for the first time with my family to tour the entire West coast of the United States.

Downtown Calico. You can see the name written
on top of the mountain

We started off in Los Angeles and made our way up to Washington state to then come back down to San Francisco. One of the early stops we made was to visit Calico and although I was 12 at the time, I vividly remember visiting this ghost town.






So it was only appropriate that I would revisit this with my dad this time. While the town "closes" at 5pm, you could still drive in and walk around, which is what we did. There were many things we still remembered from the first time we were here and it was nice to relive these old memories. As we drove away, my dad and I started reviving some of the segments of the trip we made then and the route we took. I can only imagine we'll do the same about this trip sometime in the future.

Miles driven today: 261
Time driven today: 7hrs 15min

Total miles driven: 1,948
Total time driven: 60hrs 5min

Day 13: Flagstaff to Kingman, AZ

Street sign in Kingman, AZ

Today's leg of Route 66 took us further through Arizona. I'm really liking this state and the scenery that we encounter along the way.

The Western Hills Motel in Flagstaff, AZ

We left Flagstaff this morning and as we were driving through the city, we encountered several motels along the way.

The Downtowner Motel
in Historic Flagstaff, AZ

Not too many relics left though in the new part of town. In the historic district, however, you could find several motels and restaurants and other buildings from back in the day that were preserved.

Old abandoned segment near
Bellemont, AZ disappearing
under interstate I-40

From there, we hit the road towards Williams. The drive was through nice stretches of pine tree forests, far enough from the interstate to make you feel in no-mans-land. A couple miles outside of Flagstaff is the small town of Bellemont. There we found an abandoned piece of Route 66 that led straight to go under the interstate.

Highest point of Route 66 in Arizona
at 7,410 ft in Parks, AZ

A little further after that, close to Parks, AZ, we hit the highest point of Route 66 in Arizona at 7,410 feet. The nice thing about it as well is that it lies on a dirt road in the middle of a forest.


Parks has really tried to preserve Route 66 as well as possible and they created an Auto tour of where the original 1920's pavement once crossed that section. No cars allowed, but we hiked the piece. Some of the pavement was still there, but other pieces were just scraped up and the pavement was tossed to the side.

Welcome sign in Williams, AZ

Williams was next on the list and this town is Route 66 overload.

Red Garter, an 1897 bordello, with a manikin
hanging out of the window in Williams, AZ

Everywhere you looked, they had signs, little neighborhoods, buildings, restaurants, motels, gas stations and everything in between dedicated to Route 66.

Their welcome sign said it all: "The best of Route 66." There is definitely a lot of history here.

The Cafe 66 downtown Williams, AZ

The Supai Motel in Seligman, AZ

The next town, Seligman, didn't want to be the underdog, and had very lively signs of Route 66. Besides the several motels that we saw, they had a huge souvenir store that had Route 66 plastered all over it.

Guy signing "Get your kicks on
Route 66" in Seligman, AZ

We pulled over and hung out for a bit. There was live music playing and many other visitors of Route 66 hanging out.

The picture I took was of a guy playing "Get your kicks on Route 66" - very appropriate for the moment.

Looking up into the cave where
condensation created this erosion

From there, we hit a long stretch of 66 through the Arizona plains between a couple mountain ranges and made our next stop at Grand Canyon Caverns. No city here, just a recreation place to visit the largest dry caverns in the United States and the third largest in the world.

The Snow Palace - soft mineral bubbles forming
 on the ceiling of the cave

20 ft sloth, whose bones were found in
this cave

They are not that far underground, about 100-200 feet but pretty stretched out. They were originally called Dinosaur Caverns for the bones that were found that were thought to be from dinosaurs yet later discovered to be from a sloth dating back from the Ice Age. Later however, the then owner wanted to know where the airflow in the cave was coming from. He lighted several signals of red smoke and left a crew up on the ground to see where it would appear.

Bobcat that fell in the cave and was preserved

Two weeks later, nothing had appeared so the crew left. Shortly thereafter though, they got a phone call that red smoke was coming out of the walls of the Grand Canyon. The caves were therefore renamed Grand Canyon Caverns. Side note that the Grand Canyon is about 120 miles from this place. Another neat thing is that you can stay overnight inside the cavern, all decked out with tv and all the bells and whistles.

The Lido Motel in Kingman, AZ

We drove through a couple more small towns and along a nice stretch of the road.

Route 66 Motel in Kingman, AZ

The road is taking us through many hills and while the stretch we are driving is a newer piece of 66, we can see scattered pieces of the old original road zigzagging around us and around the hills.

The old road is in very bad shape though and many pieces are missing and eaten up by the landscape.







Our stop today is in Kingman. We haven't explored the full portion of the road yet in this city, but as we were driving in, we saw a couple motels already welcoming us to rest here tonight.


Miles driven today: 172
Time driven today: 4hrs 30min

Total miles driven: 1,687
Total time driven: 52hrs 50min

Day 12: The Grand Canyon

Ok, so the Grand Canyon is not on Route 66 but since we were so close, we decided to take a day off from the Mother Road and visit this amazing natural landmark.

When we arrived and I got a first view of the canyon, I was taken back immediately with the vast immenseness of what was in front of me. I did not expect the canyon to be this big, but I guess that's why they call it the Grand Canyon. The many colors coming from the canyon against the sunlight looked out of this world as well.

We only had about a good half day at the Grand Canyon so we couldn't do many of the activities that you can do there, but we did want to hike one of the trails, even though we knew we wouldn't make it all the way down. As we started our hike, we heard the thunder in the background, amplified in the canyon. We did decide to continue but about a good mile down in the canyon, we got hit by a huge rainstorm. We tried to find some trees to take cover under but didn't have much luck and we got wet pretty quickly. We pondered for a bit whether to continue hiking down, but the temperature had already dropped by 20 degrees down to the low 50's, the wind was blowing hard through the canyon and the path started getting muddy.

So we hiked back up the canyon, getting soaking wet in the process, and made our way back to the car. Of course, by the time we got there, the storm had passed.

Cold and wet, we didn't feel like hiking more so we hit the road and covered the many view points along the rim of the canyon. Several miles further to the east, it was much sunnier, which dried up our clothes very quickly.

Driving through the forest on top of the canyon, we hit a spot in the road where several cars were parked and we saw some people in the forest.










As I looked closer, I saw a huge male elk sitting down in the forest, just chilling. So we got out very quickly to shoot some pictures of this amazing animal.





As I was focusing my attention on the elk in front of me, I heard some sounds next to me and noticed a whole herd of elk - about 12 to 15 of them just hanging out. They looked in our direction to keep us in check, but were very calm and did not make a move to run away.

I was so amazed by the beauty of the Grand Canyon and can't wait to go again to spend several days here.

View of the Colorado River at the bottom of the Grand Canyon

Day 11: Gallup, NM to Flagstaff, AZ

The Road Runner Motel in
Gallup, NM

Since we stayed at the east side of Gallup last night, we started off today by driving through the city, encountering dozens of motels again, one after another.

Virgie's Restaurant in Gallup, NM

It's just amazing to see the amount of motels that are along this long 4-lane stretch through town.

This must have looked incredible back in the day when travelers arrived from far away - with neon signs probably visible from far in the desert.

The Blue Spruce Lodge in
Gallup, NM

The remainder of New Mexico was only 18 miles, so we found ourselves very quickly in Arizona. Route 66 in Arizona is very interesting.

Old abandoned bridge in Allantown, NM

The route zigzags through the landscape and although several pieces of the old road still remain, they are going either through private land, have been eaten up by the interstate, or completely disappeared and have been overgrown.

The Arrowhead Lodge in Gallup, NM

There were several times where we saw pieces of the road on the map, and even on our GPS, that were labeled as Route 66, but when we got to them, we could just see a far stretch of land as if the road never existed.

So basically, we did a lot of interstate driving today, which is nice for making up time, but it doesn't really make you feel like your getting your kicks on route 66. What we ended up doing then multiple times, is drive a piece of interstate, get off the exit to view the town or what was remaining of it, and then get on the interstate again to drive to the next town.

Not much could be seen though driving passed little towns besides some old bridges, some functional, others not, that give away the road once came through here. It is apparent that the bigger cities were the attraction and attended to visitors. We found a couple old bridges in Allantown and Querino as well as Sanders.

The Painted Desert

About 50 miles into Arizona, we got to the Petrified Forest National Park, where Route 66 still has its concrete going through it - though you cannot drive this piece. Since we were there, we visited the park and got some really great views of the Painted Desert - with its many different colors stretching out. The interstate we were driving on, just gave us a plain desert view with small bushes everywhere, so it was interesting to see this whole new world of colors just miles off the interstate, but deep below it.

Boulders at the bottom of
Newspaper Rock

Close-up of drawings on those boulders

As we drove the loop in the park, we got to Newspaper Rock, a bunch of big boulders that have hundreds of petroglyphs etched into the stone by the ancient tribe that used to live here. The boulders were way below where we were but when you zoomed in with a binoculars, you could see the many drawings on the rocks.

The Teepees in the Petrified Forest National Park

Next in the park, we got to "The Teepees," called like that because of the cone-shaped formation that these hills had. Again I was amazed how the landscape changes so rapidly from the painted desert that we saw, to plains with small bushes, to these amazingly colored cone-shaped hills. The layered blues, purples and grays are created by iron, carbon, manganese and other minerals giving it that color.






About 15 miles into the park, we got see the Petrified Forest, where many pieces of trees were now laying around as pieces of rock. It's amazing how well the shape and character of the tree is preserved in the rock.

Fallen petrified logs

What is not understandable to me is how these logs are the way they are. It's like someone chain sawed pieces and then let them turn to rock. We hit another piece in the park called Jasper Forest, that had many pieces of petrified wood on the valley floor, fallen from the rock above where they were once encased but through erosion had fallen down into the valley.

Largest log in the Petrified Forest National Park

Welcome sign at the entrance of
Holbrook, NM

Our last stop in the park was at the Giant Logs Trail, where you could see huge pieces of petrified wood and walk around to touch them. In some cases, with the hundreds of years of sand blowing, the rock had been naturally polished and gave it that crystal look.

The Wigwam Motel in Holbrook, NM

Once outside the Petrified Forest National Park, we re-entered route 66 and got into Holbrook, which housed several shopping places to buy petrified wood but is also home to the Wigwam Motel, where your motel room is, well, a wigwam.

"Here it is" sign announcing the Jack Rabbit Trading Post

It was neat to see these teepees stand around in a circle and it must have been quite the place to stay overnight back in the day.


After that, we drove through Jackrabbit, which houses one of the most famous trading posts along Route 66. Once back in the day, you could find billboards from hundreds of miles away counting down the miles until you got to this trading post. I honestly expected the place to be bigger, even though the sign is pretty impressive.


In Meteor City, there was not much there, besides the world's longest map of route 66 as you can see from the picture.

Ruins of Two Guns, NM

Ghost town of Two Guns, NM

Next, we made it to Two Guns, a ghost town at this point, that had some revitalization about ten years ago, but quickly died again.

What we found close by were many ruins on the edge of Canyon Diablo. The town used to house some gas stations, two roadside zoos and had a cave as well, which we could see way below from one side of the canyon.

View out the window from one of the ruins at Two Guns, NM

We were able to make our way to the ruins on the very edge of the canyon and were amazed by how settlers had built up this town around the canyon.

Twin Arrows, NM

A little bit further was the small town of Twin Arrows. The trading post/gas station/cafe is now closed even though we found quite a bit of housing on the other side of the interstate and a new casino is being built that is planned to open next summer.

Abandoned Trading Post in Twin Arrows, NM

1914 bridge across Canyon Padre

Our last stop for the day was to find an old bridge crossing the Canyon Padre near Twin Arrows. The only way to get to it was to drive down the interstate about 8 miles, get off, and then take old route 66 back up alongside the interstate to get to the bridge.

While the first 5 miles was a dirt road, it was very manageable to drive. However, the last 2.5 miles were rough on the original blacktop pavement with lots of potholes and pieces out of the road. At several spots, the road was completely gone and replaced with dirt road with tons of rocks.

It took us a while to drive this piece until we got to a certain point where we no longer felt that it was save to continue. So we parked the car and hiked the road for the last half mile around the hills to get a view of the canyon and 1914-bridge. I honestly expected the bridge to be half apart but it was in a nice condition and from what we could tell still driveable. We walked over the bridge and stayed around for a while to take in the quietness and beauty of the canyon.

As we eventually drove off to Flagstaff, we could see ourselves getting closer to Mount Elden, with a top peak of 12,633 ft. As we drove through Winona to get to Flagstaff, we again were amazed by the changing landscape. It is so filled with pine trees and greenery that it honestly feels like the Pacific Northwest.

So even though we hit a lot of interstate today, it was nice to visit some of the areas to observe nature and all its glory.

Miles driven today: 219
Time driven today: 5hrs 45min

Total miles driven: 1,515
Total time driven: 48hrs 20min