Sitting in front of my room at the El Trovatore motel in Kingman
Arizona… It could be the start of a song...
The weather is warm but not hot… the sky is filled with
clouds… some reports suggest thunder showers…
Today I started sitting outside my room, working on the
computer and chatting with the people walking by, then breakfast at the Rt 66
dinner, and only then at my target of choice… the archives/library of the local
history museum with great success… I could explain, but the details would
likely bore anyone not involved… It may be my passion but I understand it might
not be yours… It is one of those discretion being the better part of valor
things…
Having completed my work at the library, I chose to motor
west on Rt 66 to Oatman and beyond… I had two goals… traveling a piece of the
mother road which I had not before driven, and search for the remains of a long
abandoned narrow gauge railroad…
I was successful in traveling Rt 66, but less successful
in finding railroad remains…The drive took me over Sitgreaves Pass…not particularly high
but the road was quite exiting… steep, narrow, curvy and likely scary for some…
but at low speeds (the speed limit was 25 mph much of the way) in a modern vehicle
there are few issues.
Beyond the pass lies the town of Oatman… promoted as an
authentic western ghost town, it is in
fact a former mining town… with old buildings with tee shirts and Dakota leather belts and mystic rocks and such... add to that the presence of wild burros who stand in
the street and beg to be fed and authentic fake gun fights… plus lots of
tourists and you get the ideas… The
burros are the main attraction… very tame wild burros… leading to the sight of
a biker dressed in full leathers leading a small herd up the main street
through the agency of a small bag of burro food (available in many Oatman
stores)
I was in town both to sight see, but also to find the
site of a specific mine… but between a lack of local knowlage (and even less
available in town) and a landscape distlurbed by years of mining, I failed to find the site… I wandered a bit along the river then headed
back through Oatman and over Sitgreaves Pass (again) and back to Kingman for
the night…
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