08/12/01 Las Vegas (NV) – Barstow (CA) / 548 Km

We woke up very early but it was still very hot. We went back to Kingman to take again Route 66. We found heavy wind gusts again, but not as heavy as in the previous day. In Kingman, we had breakfast in a dinner called Mr. D´z. I ordered “huevos rancheros” and I think it is the best breakfast I have ever had. I was so happy after I finished eating… I would go back there again just for a breakfast like that.

The road between Kingman and Needless is not in very good condition, but it goes through the Black Hills and the landscape is very nice. There was not a soul on the road. In one of the summits of the Black Hills we stopped to see California in the horizon. We were thinking of the thousands of emigrants from Arkansas or Oklahoma that due to the sand storms that ruined their crops were left with nothing. They were forced to abandon their houses, put their family and belongings on a car that had been repaired over and over again and threatened with breaking again, and make their way to California. We were wondering that may be they saw California for the first time from that same spot we were in. For a moment we tried to feel the same as they must have felt when the saw what they hoped it was going to be the land of opportunity. Hundreds of starving families drove Route 66 in the 30´s with all their hopes put on their future life in California. If anyone has read Steinbeck ´s “The Grapes of Wrath” knows exactly what we are talking about. The pity is that after all what they found out over there was not what they had imagined…

We went on the bike again, and after going down a slope, we found a village in the middle of nowhere: Oatman. And oddly enough, to be off the beaten track, it was quite crowded. Of course, we stopped in the village to do some research. The thing if that Oatman was a gold mining town through the early part of the 20th century. Mining was abandoned in the early 1940's and the burros (donkeys) that worked the mines were released in the mountains surrounding the town. When you arrive into town, you can see wild burros have the run of the town. Nowadays Oatman is a tourist attraction and on Sundays they organise a street theatre with cow-boys shooting at each other. The houses of the town are all timber houses, as in former times, and there are plenty of souvenir and jewellery shops. There is a Gold Mine museum and in the middle of the street you can see the light trucks they used to transport the gold out of the mines. I stayed looking after the motorbike while Josune went to inspect the shops, of course. They gave away carrots to feed the burros. We took some photos with them, and went back to the motorbike.

The landscape was again dramatic. I was quite worried since we were short of gas. We had filled in the deposit in the morning, but not in Kingman, and in this spot there was not a trace of a gas station. We arrived to a village called Golden Shore or something like that, we asked a guy in the street and he sent us to a nearby station. While I was talking to him a police car arrived and they went mad at me for leaving the motorbike at the edge of the road. I reckon that no more than two cars passed by that road every hour, and they came down on me!! As the boy told me, as the crime rate was very low in the region, the police had to play their role with that kind of things.

We spent around one hour in the gas station, and we came across the most bizarre characters of the village. As the weather was very hot, everybody went to the gas station to buy beer as I guess it was the only open place on a Sunday. We continued with the stage and we arrived to California. To enter the State the cars had to go through something similar to customs, where they must check if the cars comply with the local legislation, but they just ignored us. Wee filled in the deposit again in Needless. We still had to go through the most inhospitable part of the journey, the dessert, and according to our information there were not gas stations at all. The dessert part is a never ending straight road, in which we did not see a soul, surrounded by spectacular mountains. To make the moment even more special the sun set was just in front of us. Thank god Josune had some sun glasses that I could borrow.

We arrived to Amboy, a village quite different to what you can expect from California. We saw the Roy´s café and in front of it a gas station that was closed on Sundays. Therefore, there are gas stations in the dessert, provided it is not Sunday. But beware, the price was double compared to other gas stations in the country. It looked like Roy has some kind of monopoly in the dessert. The café looked like a nice place to eat, but it was closed (have we said we had bad luck?). We were surprised that Amboy had a post office, being such a tiny place. There was a road that took to Joshua Three National Park. We went ahead our way and as the old Route was closed in Ludlow, we took the motorway.

Anyway, we returned to the old road very soon. We intended to sleep in a campsite in Newsberry Spring but when we arrived there we did not like the place at all, and we decided to continue to Barstow. It was getting dark. In Barstow we saw a Motel with a Route 66 sign and there we went; El Rancho Motel. The place is a bit odd, it is ruled by a Palestinian family. We got a cheap room and afterwards they told us that for that price they would give us “one of the best rooms” with weather channel and all. Everything was closed in town and we ended up having dinner in an American restaurant; Denny´s , that is open 24 hours. It was our last dinner before finishing the Route.