Oatman, AZ

To begin, we are in a location where it is very difficult getting and then staying on-line so we hope that this post gets out. Yesterday, we made the short (but steep) ascent into Oatman, AZ. This is a former gold mining town that still has some operating mines in the area. There are wild burros that are allowed free reign in and around the town. The approach people begging for carrots. We were warned that the burros sometimes believe dogs to be coyotes and so will attack and stomp them. Since the town is very small and Sunshine was already getting scared from the noises of the many motorcycles and all the people in the area, Carol stayed near the truck with her and I entered the town on foot and photographed a bank robbery and shootout skit performed on Main Street. This is a really fun town to visit. We had been told that taking Old Route 66 east out of town was a scenic route to take so we took it. The roadway is twist, turny and climbs several thousand feet. About 5 miles out of Oatman is a small turnoff that is used by vehicles to turn off so as to see the surrounding vistas. This one had a very rocky 2 track that climbed even higher than we were at the time and had a wall on one side and dropped very deeeeep on the other side. At the end it seems like we could see forever. The thing that made this extra interesting was that it was either a "lovers leap" or suicide ridge or just that many had fallen off the road into the deep canyon because there were dozens of crosses in the cliff dropping down from the 2 track road. From there we climbed a little higher and then went into part of The Mojave Desert. Not wanting to spend the entire day driving, we circled home, descending the same roadway that we came into Bullhead City originally - the road with the 12 mile 6% grade with the traffic signal at the end of the 12 mile grade. This was one of our more interesting days! Just got a phone call from the RV repairmen and the part that they needed for our injured Montana will be shipped in the morning so they should have us good to go by tomorrow afternoon. We will then move on to Las Vegas on Wednesday, to set up seeing Vegas again and the Hoover Dam. I say see Vegas again because Carol has not seen it since the 1960s and I was last there in the early 1970s.