We (Ok, I did) woke up early at our truck stop near Blythe, CA. This is a small town on I10 at the border of California and Arizona. I fueled up, made my cup of coffee and got back on the road. Our destination today was to get to the Grand Canyon … a great deal further north then we had hoped for … but we couldn’t do this trip without this stop.
We’ve fallen into a pattern of trying to drive non Interstate roads during the day and focus on logging miles on the Interstates in the night. One of the things that we enjoy the most is the scenery and especially the small towns and the things they have to offer. Today we would spend most of the day on secondary roads.
Our first part took us into Arizona and then north along a nice, albeit isolated and generally empty road. We passed “towns” that had nothing but trailers in dirt lots. We rarely saw a person anywhere … our theory, that they must be nocturnal in this area, as the daytime heat was significant. Our RV generator is getting worse, and we have a hard time keeping it going for more than 1 hr a day during the heat part (the most needed for us) of the day.
We constantly wonder what people do in these little towns, we contemplate what circumstances got them here and why they would choose to stay. There is no grass, nothing is green, you basically live in the dirt, it is very hot and everything, and I mean everything is covered in a layer of dust. Ugh… still, there is a certain beauty to the landscape … not for us, for sure.
We continue through the “dirt town” of Parker, to join a road that basically follows the Colorado river … what a contrast … green! It was very striking, you come over the crest of a hill to see a valley of green amongst the backdrop of the yellow landscape. This was a great drive, the river here is wide and deep enough for boating, as there were hundreds of power boats, the entire shoreline lined with trailers, houses or apartments … very odd look indeed.
We stopped for a nice little break and a swim in the desert. To be precise, we stopped for a swim on Lake Havasu. The water was crystal clear, with more visibility than I have seen in any tropical ocean. The outside temperature was about 110F, the water about 90F … wonderful. The hard part was not frying your head in the sun … I wonder if there is a market for “floating sun umbrellas”, so you can protect your brain from the harmful cooking. This was a great 1 hr distraction, we left with about 2lbs of rocks that the girls wanted to “collect”.
We continued northward and joined I40 eastbound …. yay, actually making some progress towards home. I40 is one of the busiest highways in the country, it is a major east-west corridor … I’m sure that the highway is interesting in many ways, but for us it represented something else … it was one of the reason’s that Route 66 died. I40 for the large part replaced the famous Route 66 … there are stretches of the old highway scattered throughout several states … and we wanted to see as much of this as we could.
We got off I40 and joined Route 66 at Kingman, AZ and followed the road for about 100miles. We started with a stop at the Route 66 museum in Kingman (apparently, as we saw on our drive, there are many Route 66 museums) … The highway is not in bad shape and was easy enough to drive … it was sad in a big way, as we passed, business after closed business … mainly gas stations and motels … all from the 50s era. We passed a couple of “stores” that survived to cater to the few tourists that make it through here … All with the “Route 66” sign and some sort of 50s era car in front … nice.
We made a stop at the Grand Canyon Caverns, on Route 66 … from a road perspective, this attraction warranted a divided stretch of highway to accommodate people visiting it. It was the only divided stretch of highway in Arizona until I40 was built. The caverns, had a distinctive, “attraction lost in time” feel … it wasn’t very well developed (by current standards) and had a very “mom-and-pop” feel to it, although it wasn’t. We drove about a mile off the road to the entrance / gift shop / western store / restaurant. Outside stood some old mining cars, a 15 ft T-Rex dinosaur statue a Route 66 sign and some other rusting items.
Kelly stayed with Jack and Genna (both asleep) and we headed in. We paid our $15/ea entrance fee and waited for our tour begin. It was going to be guided and would last 50 minutes. Our tour had a French family (more on the French later), a British family and us … We started by boarding a “freight” elevator that was installed in 1960 something and looked like it was not “updated” since then … we descended 260ft into the ground, slowly, with a bunch of creaking, some bouncing and a distinct … “pray the cables don’t break” feel to it.
Our tour guide, wearing jeans, a western shirt and a "Uglystick” hat did the tour, she was very nice, although short with descriptions and always seemed in a hurry :). The caverns are the largest dry caverns in the US and the 2nd largest (their claim) in the world. There is no water down here … the temperature is a constant 56F and 6% humidity. 
The caverns, 2 rooms to be precise … were very large and impressive. The first room was over 100ft in height and the size of a football field. The second could house 3 football fields and was taller than the first.
The caverns were discovered in the late 1800s (as the story goes), by a person riding to a poker game. It started to rain and as he passed a 
hole, he noticed it was not filling with water. He came back a couple of days later with his brother and was lowered into it with a rope and lantern. He crawled around in there and saw “gold”, “diamonds” and “silver” … he really saw, rust, gypsum and selenite crystals … worthless … but before he had figured that out, he had purchased the 800acres that housed the caverns.
Until the 40s the caverns cost 25 cents to visit and required being lowered by a rope. In the 50s and 60s, you climbed down ladders and it cost 50 cents. Aside from the natural beauty and the awe of seeing such a cavern, you had a few other interesting things on the tour. During the cold war, the cavern was designated a fallout shelter, and enough supplies for 2000 people for 2 wks where lowered in there. The supplies are still there … water, rations, medical supplies … but interestingly enough, no matches, no batteries, no flashlights … just imagine 2000 people in the dark :).
They found some remains in the cavern … the skeleton of a giant ground sloth from the ice age period. The walls near the hole entranced, showed the claw marks of the animal trying to get out. They also found a mummified cat, which had fallen into the hole, broken something, crawled a couple of 100ft and laid to die on a gypsum deposit … which had the net effect of removing all moisture and “mummifying” the animal … cool!
We got back on I40 and drove to Williams, AZ and our KOA campground. This was our 2nd KOA of the trip and like the previous well maintained, run and very efficient. Turns out KOA is like the McDonalds of campgrounds. Our “park”, Circle Pines, was very nice, full of motorhomes as it is a gateway to the Grand Canyon.
Out of 40 motorhomes, 30 where rental units … out of those 30, at least 25 were not America … French, German and Dutch. We, although outnumbered, represented the American contingent. I’m pleased to write that, it required 2 Germans on average to dump the sewer and at least 3 French … while most of the American RVs only required one person.
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