This started out as a normal day: wake up, get dressed, ride the folding bike, go for food at the breakfast bar, but first check to be sure the Cobra made it safely through the night. SURPRISE: Someone left me a small HotWheels model Cobra on the dashboard, with a mysterious note… What a mystery! Then during breakfast, I met the young lady, Gabby, who gifted me the Cobra model: she was at the motel for a conference, and had asked us about the Cobra the day before, then accidentally saw a HotWheels Cobra at the grocery the same day and bought it for me! How thoughtful, and what a coincidence!
Later on I met the manager of the motel, who told me her husband was an Air Force Veteran, so I told her the story of my Aardvark Cobra kit car, and Col. Gale Larson. THEN I met the guys who were touring in their 1957 Corvette, parked near the Aardvark…the day was pretty full already!
We eventually fired up the cars and headed to the Powerhouse Building in Kingman, which now houses a museum and a Route 66 spot for car pictures. Just after Mitch photo’d the Aardvark under the Route 66 sign, I parked it and was surrounded by a number of tourists from China, who became my new best friends. One of the ladies wanted to sit inside the car, and I convinced most of the other folks to stand around for a photo. Wonderful! They didn’t speak English, and I know NO Chinese. We spoke by waving, gestures, smiles and good luck. After we parted company at the cars, I ran into them again inside the museum, where we unfurled our “C3on66” Banner, and got a photo of most of the group together with us. The only words all of us understood were Shanghai, Cobra, and North Carolina…what a riot! They were all so enthused and friendly…this is a good reminder that much of the world is this way!
We also met the assistant director of the Kingman Museum, who explained to us that Kingman is the WORLD CAPITAL of On-Street DRAG RACING! Meaning, they close off a 1/2 mile stretch of Route 66 every year and have hundreds of cars drag racing in competition…and the race is taking place THIS WEEKEND. That explains why our hotel room was so expensive! Next, she showed us the museum exhibit dedicated to Angel Delgadillo, the 96 year old retired barber who is considered the father of Route 66 preservation efforts in Arizona. It’s a long story, I’ll tell you later, but he is an awesome man to whom we owe a real debt of thanks for starting this preservation ethic in cities along the Route. We also visited the Electric Vehicle museum in the basement, a work in progress, which contained my favorite car, and LAND SPEED RECORD streamliner run at Bonneville Salt Flats, constructed by Ohio State University engineering students. I don’t know how fast it went, but it looked awesome!
Following our lunch at a local BBQ place, we hit Route 66 for a drive to our next motel stop in Barstow, CA. It was a long way, up twisty, steep, scenic and entertaining mountain roads. We had fun in the sports cars until we got stuck behind slow RV Motorhomes lumbering up the steep road. It gave me time to imagine what it must’ve been like in the 1930’s for people immigrating to California on this road, driving old early model cars and trucks, overloaded with their few belongings and family equipment. There was no such thing as convenient bathrooms, gas stations, grocery stores, rest areas along most of the Route, and those old type cars and trucks were slow, unreliable and dangerous on the treacherous poorly paved or gravel roads.
What’s over the top of those mountains? Well, OATMAN, CA, the Wild Burro capital of the USA! No kidding, wild burros wander all over the town and around the outskirts, with no fences and no control. Drivers must be cautious not to hit these even-tempered animals, they seem to have no fear or understanding of the danger vehicles pose for them. Mitch had been taking photos of scenery on the way up, and explored Oatman much deeper. Mike and I took off for a must-stop destination about 100 miles away: Bagdad Cafe.
Bagdad Cafe is a nothing-looking place in the middle off the desert near Newberry Springs, CA. BUT it’s a popular stopping place for tourists, primarily from France, because it is the place where a German movie was filmed in 1987. For some reason, the movie was wildly popular in France; it never was popular in the USA. I’ve watched the movie, and wanted to see the place. More importantly, my FB friend Jean Baptiste Sarcabal, from France, once had a drink there at the bar, and I promised to send him a photo of me doing the same thing on this trip! We met the people who own and run the place; It truly is one-of-a-kind, and they gave us the tour of the whole place to prove it!
Onward to our motel in Barstow, CA. Tomorrow, we continue deeper into California, toward Arcadia.
