Sunday, March 20
We’re staying in
California simply because the nearest Arizona KOA didn’t have the dates
available that we wanted. So our
exploration of western Arizona is being launched out of California. J
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Vacations seem to
be destination oriented and ours has been no different up to this point. Even though we saw some amazing sights, our
goal was to get to Arizona so we could explore.
Now we’re here and the daily journey will be our focus. We have the time to just wander. However, it’s not as easy as it sounds to do whatever
you want, whenever you want in a new place. Finding it's prudent to have a vague idea of the WHEN, WHAT and WHERE of your
day. I spent some time on the computer
this morning looking at routes, towns, distances, tourist attractions, etc. and
making notes. Going to follow the map in
my head…but will have Rapunzel handy in case I get us lost. J
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I have the
playlists on my iPod set to random play.
I pick the first song in my Cruisin’ Tunes playlist and then ‘random’
takes over. Today I started with ‘Bad Moon Rising’ (Credence Clearwater
Revival) and how appropriate it was that the first randomly chosen song was “Let’s
Take the Long Way Around the World” by Ronnie Milsap. A great anthem for our daily rides!
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Woke to the
sound of birds, the rumble of highway traffic and a squeak…a very rhythmic
squeak, which turned out to be a small child on the swings. The swings were squeaking, not the
child. J
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This morning Kim
saw several birds out back of our area and we both grabbed our cameras, thinking
we were seeing roadrunners. Wasn’t until
I zoomed in that I realized they were quail.
That was a first for me….have never seen quail, unless you count the
movie Bambi. We watched them for a bit
and saw some interesting behavior. A male was
at the top of a 4 ft high stone pile; it appeared he was keeping watch while the
others ran around. After a few minutes, another
one started climbing the pile and the first one scooted down. As we stood there, watching,
talking and taking pictures, the one atop the stone pile started calling
out. I figured it was a warning call,
but Kim said birds make calls for a variety of reasons. Anyway, the male called out several times, then
scooted down off the pile and the whole bunch of them moved along under the bushes that are beside our
campsite. Saw them hanging out there as we took off on the bikes.
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We’ve
been in Pacific Standard Time since crossing into Nevada on Thursday, meaning
we’re three hours behind Michigan. Arizona is usually two hours behind Michigan
as it’s in the Mountain Time Zone.
However, most of the state does not observe Daylight Saving Time;
therefore it’s currently in alignment with Pacific Time and is three hours
behind Michigan. As if we haven’t been
having enough trouble with time on this trip already. J This is an excerpt from an
online article written by Chris Kline in 2015 for the site www.abc15.com :
“Sunday
marks the beginning of Daylight Saving Time for most of the United States. But unlike almost everywhere else, Arizona
doesn't observe DST, and hasn't done so for about the last 40 years. Arizona's
independence from this annual time change can cause a lot of confusion for
residents and visitors alike. It means the state is in the same time
zone as Denver from November to March, but then falls behind Denver to Los
Angeles time from March to November. Why doesn't Arizona change? It has a
lot to do with the weather. The history
of daylight saving is tied to energy conservation. Switching to DST in the
summer means more sunlight at night, which in turn means homes don't have to
turn on lights as early. According to
the U.S. Government , that leads to energy and fuel savings. Over the course of the last 100 years, the
United States (including Arizona) has gone on Daylight Saving time in both
World War 1 and World War 2, but then gone off after the wars were over. In 1973, a more permanent federal law was
enacted to help with the oil shortages of that time. But Arizona asked for –
and was eventually granted an exemption.”
Wikipedia added this
bit of information: The Navajo Indian Reservation, which
extends into two adjacent states, Utah and New Mexico, does
observe daylight saving time. The Hopi Reservation, which
is entirely within the state of Arizona and is an enclave of
the Navajo Indian Reservation, does not observe DST.
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Rode out to Oatman, AZ,
today. It’s a former mining town located
in Black Mountain and it was a busy place, despite the heat. It’s similar to Mackinac Island but with a
western flare. Lots of touristy things
to do, see and buy. A big attraction are
the ‘wild’ burros, which come into town to get the tourists to feed them. By the way, whoever makes the ‘Burro Chow’ (1 ½”
square pellets), which is sold in many of the stores, has got to be turning a decent
profit. There was a ‘gunfight’ exhibition,
but I don’t think they were authentic cowboys because the emcee was wearing a
Shriner’s hat with his cowboy outfit. J
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Oatman is located on
Historic Route 66 and afte lunch and a short wander through town, we continued northeast toward Kingman. Because the road is
through the mountains, it gave us a good ride….lots of up and down and 10 mph
hairpin turns. About 15 miles out of Oatman,
we stopped at the Cool Springs Service Station.
Roadside America describes it like this:
Cool Springs Service Station was built in the 1920s and
eventually had a cafe, a bar, and cabins. But Route 66 was bypassed in 1953,
and the station was abandoned in 1964. Adding insult to injury, its ruins were
blown up for the 1991 Dolph Lundgren/Jean-Claude Van Damme film ‘Universal
Soldier’. Cool Springs Service Station had been a ruin -- nothing more than a
blackened pile of rocks -- until 2001. That's when Ned Leuchtner, a real estate
agent from Chicago, bought it and began its careful restoration, based on
vintage photographs. The work was completed at the end of 2004. Please don't drive to this
isolated spot with your fuel gauge on "E." Cool Springs may look like
a gas station, but it only sells snacks and Route 66 souvenirs. Thankfully didn’t
need gas but that cold drink sure tasted good!
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Rode 116 miles today….only took us about 6
hours. J
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Thanks to Kim’s eagle eye, we saw two wild
burros on a mountainside about 12 miles out of town. They seemed a
bit anxious by our presence so we figured that these were not any of the ‘wild’
burros who wandered through town...they were indeed wild.
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