Day 19 - City of Angels

We spent an awesome 20 minutes talking to the owner of the Wigwam motel before leaving this morning.  He was telling us stories about the various trips he's done and gave us some advice about places to visit including the location of banana split epicness in Pasadena.  One thing became immediately apparent from his stories - route 66 is a party town on wheels.  Many of the characters we've met along the way are total party animals but we just didn't catch them at the right time of day to experience it.  Probably just as well since neither Rachael or I are big drinkers. He also got us to take a couple of mad photos as the people who just stand in front of the wigwams are boring.  So we hugged it and there was another one where we totally failed to jump in front of it.

Technically we think (well according to google / wikipedia) these should be called Teepee's because their shape is wrong for a wigwam.  But the motel is called Wigwam so we are going with that.

Hugging a concrete wigwam - as you do...

Setting off west from San Bernardino we started to experience end of trip anxiety.  Initially we had planned to end our R66 adventure today before spending a couple of days in LA and then heading up the Pacific Coast Highway to San Francisco, our final destination before flying home.  But somehow we didn't want R66 to end just yet.  Some friends we met along the way are finishing their journey on Tuesday and since thats the day we are due to leave LA we decided to try to meet up with them and complete it together.  So we got to Hollywood where our hotel is and just stopped.

Before that however, we passed through a number of LA adjacent towns and drove basically along one really long road from San Bernadino to Pasadena.

Apparently there used to be lots of these in California but this is the only one left.  Still not 100% sure what it is though.

California kicking arse on signage.

One of the only actual road name signs with Route 66 on we've seen along the whole trip.

Since it was lunchtime when we stopped in Pasadena, we tracked down the Fair Oaks Pharmacy and Soda Fountain, as recommended, for a sandwich and to share the banana split of epicdom.  Let's be clear though - there was one banana sliced lengthwise in this thing.  And about 4 pints of icecream, sauces, whipped cream and cherries.  We attacked it as best we could but definitely could have used a 3rd person in the team to really obliterate it.

The banana was pretty much an afterthought in this mountain of ice-cream .

Moving on we negotiated LA traffic and managed to find our hotel pretty easily. The Hollywood hotel is surprisingly great.  We got an amazing deal for it online at Expedia and it's one of the nicest hotel we've stayed in since Chicago.  We read the reviews before booking but sometimes other people's idea of great isn't the same as ours. We'd seen a few times that places get 5 star reviews when we might only give them 3.  But so far the Hollywood is all it promised and more.  Having checked in we headed straight out again because we wanted to fit in a sunset visit to the Griffith Observatory and it's closed on Mondays so we needed to go today.

The Griffith Observatory - yes this is where they shot one of the Charlie's Angels movies... 

Griffith was fantastic.  It felt smaller than the Adler in Chicago but we both felt it was a more satisfying experience and more focused on education than entertainment, especially for the planetarium show.  The one at Griffith was narrated live by a guy with an amazing movie announcer / actor voice (probably a resting actor) and it was far less contrived than the Chicago equivalent.

Observatories seem to be great places to take pictures of the cities than they are in/near because of the high view point.  I do think Chicago has LA beaten for the view though, as there was quite a haze over the sprawl of LA, and Chicago has the epic lakefront view of the city which really can't be beaten.

The Griffith is one of the best places to view the Hollywood sign - even though this was taken on full zoom!

Of course LA does have the Hollywood sign and I managed to capture a pretty good fried egg sunset from the observatory's cafe balcony.

Fried Egg Sunset

Another reason we loved the Griffith is that since the recentish refurb there is a Leonard Nimoy event theatre where they play a short film about the history of the place and the recent work.  Leonard himself does the narration and is hella cute doing it.  We wandered around for about 4 hours all told and then made our way back to our hotel.

Foucault Pendulum at the Griffith - unlike the one at Meramec caverns this one actually works.

View of downtown LA - lots of zoom to get this too.

Sponsors star for the Nimoys. <33333

Rachael consoles Pluto on it's demise as a planet.

A helpful sign in case we got lost on our visit.

Einstein looks bemused.  Rachael looks amused. I could barely hold the camera steady for laughing.

Tomorrow we have another easy day - Hollyweird sightseeing and dinner with fandom friends.  Looking forward to it. :D

Day 18 - Leaving Las Vegas

Before leaving Las Vegas, Fi dragged me (kicking and screaming, honest guv) to Hash House a Go Go for breakfast. It becomes immediately obvious that this place is a little bit mental when you enter to find all of the staff in costume. There was a Fred Flinstone, Batman, Superman, Shaggy and Velma from Scooby Doo, even a woman dressed as the game Twister. Our server, in a clear sign that our presence there was fate, was wearing a red Star Trek Original Series minidress. Hopefully she was meant to be Uhura, otherwise she must have somehow met her untimely redshirt demise after we left.

Hash House a Go Go was featured on the TV show Man vs Food, which made their fried chicken benedict famous, so obviously we needed to give this a try. If I'd thought about this a moment and remembered what Man vs Food is like, I might have reconsidered. This dish is ridiculous. On top of a fairly large bed of mashed potato, you get a biscuit (for anyone unaccustomed to American "biscuits", think less Rich Tea and more savoury scone) topped with bacon, scrambled eggs, spinach, tomato, a massive piece of fried chicken, and all of this is covered in mozzarella and chipotle cream. With a bloody great knife stabbed through the whole lot. Oh, and a random slice of melon, perhaps to alleviate guilt?

They fry in zero trans fat oil, which somehow makes this okay?

I don't know. American portion sizes tend to the extreme, but this is the most absurd I've seen yet. I managed less than half, and that's lasted me all day. I'm not even sure I'll want to eat anything tomorrow.

Our destination today was San Bernadino, which lies along a nice speedy Interstate direct from Las Vegas. A sensible person might have taken that option, but I'm a purist and insisted we cover every mile of Route 66, so we backtracked down the 95 to Needles, California, to pick up Route 66 where we left off yesterday.

One thing we made sure to do before leaving Nevada was top up the petrol tank. Yesterday, we made the mistake of filling up just as we crossed into California, and the prices were a whole dollar per gallon higher than in Arizona. The scary thing is that even the California price of $4.99 per gallon is still less than half what we pay in the UK. Depressing thought, isn't it? And especially galling when Americans complain the price of gas is too high.

While I'm digressing about buying gas in the US, I'll mention to any Hypothetical Future People that it's an absolute pain in the arse. In America you have to pay before you fill up, which is fine as they all have pay at pump systems. Except they ask for a zip code, and therefore don't work for non-US residents. To get around this, you have to go inside, guess an amount to pay, go out and fill up, and then go back inside for a refund of the difference between the estimate and the actual. In the past I've only had to do this maybe once or twice per trip and so it's only been a minor inconvenience, but on this trip we've had to do it every single day, and often in places that aren't used to dealing with overseas visitors. I've heard that this is especially awkward for those doing the guided group Harley tours, where there are dozens of foreigners trying to do this at once. Nightmare. Seriously America, get with the times and sort out chip and pin.

End rant.

So, California!

Today's stretch of Route 66 winds a long way away from the Interstate, following the railway line through the Mojave Desert.

A whole lot of nothing. Except for our SUV, which Fi keeps claiming back after I exchange it for cooler modes of transport.

A lonely choo choo. Perhaps Fi will let me keep this one?

There's a long stretch where people have left their marks, autographing the road side in rocks and other miscellania. Some of which were clearly brought along especially, which we decided was cheating.

My contribution to improving signage along California's stretch of the route

After a long drag of flat desert, the road began to climb until we reached Cadiz Summit. In the early days of Route 66, a gas station and cafe at the Summit provided a much-needed respite for engines overheated by the steep climb up the mountains. Today, there's nothing left but some ruins and haplessly strewn tyres, like something out of a science fiction dystopia.

Actually not the most run-down gas station we've come across

Some tumbleweed here would have really been the icing on the cake, but alas there was none to be found. Route 66 has failed us on this front: clearly someone needs to go into business throwing tumbleweed through ghost towns to lure the tourists.

Navigation becomes especially tricky in complex roads like this one...

...so it's a good thing they provide lots of signage

Out in the middle of the desert, we came to the bustling town of Amboy. As I have a bit of time, I'll give you the complete tour of the entire town.

A gas station that actually has gas: this has become something of a novelty of late

A heaving post office. Just imagine the queues here on pension day.

As I'm sure you can imagine, the traffic here was horrendous. We stopped for a cold drink and in the whole time we sat there, we saw an entire car.

Once we'd escaped the rush hour queues and got another ten miles or so into the desert, we came across a man on a pushbike waving an empty water bottle. We stopped and gave him all the water we bought before leaving Nevada, and ended up staying to chat for a good long while as he turned out to be fascinating. He's sixty, and is cycling from Los Angeles to Flagstaff across the desert in the hope that it will be cooler high up (as we've just come from that way, we can confirm that it's actually downright cold there in comparison to Southern California). He showed us the hats he crochets, and the four leaf clover he carries in the hope he'll one day present it to a lady friend, and he's the type who tells a story so well you don't even care if it's true. I hope he made it across the desert okay; he had a long way to go.

We also happened across two of my very favourite things: a volcano and a train. Not combined, alas. Volcanos are incredibly cool and therefore require no explanation. I have no idea why trains suddenly fascinate me when they're out in the middle of nowhere.

Amboy Crater, and a whole lotta lava. Possible site of my future Villain Lair.

I wanted to be tied to the tracks, but Fi pointed out I'd insist on rescuing myself, and that might give the caped hero a complex 

The thriving town of Amboy has clearly taken business away from the rest of the route, as we passed a lot of ghost towns.

A distressing lack of tumbleweed

You might be better off calling the RAC than relying on this place

Nonetheless, I think the right business could thrive here, so I'm considering this region for the headquarters of my tumbleweed throwing operation. There's plenty of tumbleweed around (the boring kind that's still attached to the ground) and it has easy access to a whole host of ghost towns. Perfect! If only I could find some available real estate...

A massive field of lava near Pisgah Crater: new business headquarters and Villain Lair in one!

Now that I have a Plan, all I need is to build an unnecessarily large mundane object and add a shop selling tourist tat and I'm sorted. Screw astronomy: this is obviously a much more secure career.

My new business will benefit from the hoards of passing trade

This place manages by having starred in a movie that neither of us has seen

In between Barstow and San Bernadino, we came to our final stop of the day, Elmer's Bottle Tree Ranch. This is a forest of trees made out of bottles and other random junk, including cars, typewriters, surfboards and animal skulls.

Apparently the recycling collection here leaves much to be desired

Why? Why not.

Despite our best efforts to race the Sun west, we were losing the light by the time we arrived. As it happens, though, seeing the sunset through variously-coloured bottles turned out to be quite cool.

This place would probably make it into the top ten chart of forests made out of bottles

The Eye of Sauron has relocated to Helendale, CA

A creepy minion guard

EZ tree-topping rule of thumb: Christmas trees are topped with fairies, bottle trees are topped with rifles.

A standoff between the Mundane Trees and the Cool Bottle Trees

As darkness fell, we wound our way back and forth across the Interstate towards San Bernadino.

Our train friend has caught up with us

You only get the additional "historic" shield if you're heading West. Going East must be some crazy newfangled thing.

Our home for the night is the Wigwam Motel on the border between San Bernadino and Rialto, one of two remaining on the route. I insisted on staying in at least one, and Fi permitted this one as it's been more recently refurbished. At one time, it had become very run down and decidedly seedy, probably something to do with the infamous "do it in a teepee" sign. It was then bought by the Patel family, who have done an absolutely brilliant job of cleaning the place up. We'll get decent pictures in daylight tomorrow morning, but it's basically the Cozy Cone from Cars (not a coincidence, obviously). They're a bit like Tardises (Tardi?), much roomier on the inside than you might think. I'm writing this from a very comfy sofa, and the bed looks quite inviting so I think I'm going to call it a night.

I'm told these are technically teepees, but I don't think anyone's aiming for accuracy here

Day 17 - A donkey bit my postcards

Our first destination today was a town called Oatman that was rumoured to be the most batshit place in Arizona.  After yesterday we were thinking this town would have to go some in order to achieve this, but ever hopeful we set off. After one quite spectacular wrong turn we found the Oatman highway and drove across the vast wash in front of the Black Mountains in search of batshittery of epic proportions.

Something told us this was not the right road...

Rachael was behind the wheel and her previous rally driving experience was bloody useful as the road was like one of those children's colouring book puzzles where the duck has to get to the pond by crossing a plate of spaghetti. 

They used to drive this road in cars without modern suspension and power steering. Nutters.

Having survived the hairpin bends and loose definition of the term "guard rails" we arrived in Oatman ready to view the spectacle.  It turns out this place was quite correctly hyped as insane.
Oatman was a gold mining town until the 1930s and in it's heyday boasted 10,000 people.  Clark Gable loved the place and even spent his honeymoon with Carole Lombard there.  Route 66 took over as the gold mining came to an end but the town refused to die when the interstates were brought in, and now does a roaring trade in tourism. It's like a wild west town survived - wooden boardwalks outside each store complete with railings where you could tie up a horse.  If you have one of course and there isn't already a car parked there. Only now all the saloons etc sell knick-knacks and t-shirts and route 66 tat.

Oatman's finest tourist tat.

We see what they did there when naming this place.

Aside from the many and varied gift shops which are in original buildings, the town boasts a couple of restaurants. The Oatman hotel where we had lunch serves up Buffalo burgers and the most scrummy and crispiest fries I think I've ever had. The decor of the restaurant is amazing too - the walls are completely covered in dollar bills signed by visitors. Of course we added one of our own so people from the future may come across our travel blog URL as they peruse the walls.  Definitely THE place to eat in Oatman.

An expensive way to decorate a restaurant.

But Oatman's true batshittery comes from it's other residents and I don't mean the lovely people who work in the gift shops and hotel. No, Oatman is home to several wild burros.  Thats donkeys to you and me.  And they roam around the main street totally freely. The whole town is covered in donkey shit and there are signs up telling you to be careful feeding the donkeys because they bite.

A drove of donkeys getting ready to mug the tourists.

Needless to say the place is unusual to say the least. Getting in and out of the gift shops is interesting because they lie and stand on the sidewalks, stick their heads into shops and at one point one of them took a bite out of my postcard bag while I was trying to negotiate my way between shops. I was not impressed and I'll own up to being a little scared of the huge white donkey that was getting pretty aggressive with my postcards. When she took the second bite I pulled my bag away and reversed direction to get back to the street.  Ok so I totally ran away from a postcard eating donkey.  So would you because she was a right moody cow. Rachael immediately dubbed her the Sheriff of Oatman and said I was being brought up on charges for bad taste in souvenirs.  Honestly anyone would think I've bought a lot of tat or something.  Oh damn, I forgot to look for another suitcase today.

Staking a claim on any tourists trapped in this store.

If I stand here long enough someone will succumb to my sad!eyes and buy me food.

Leaving Oatman behind we were reasonably sure that nowhere else in Arizona could possibly top that level of epic batshittery.  This became an absolute fact because less than an hour later we crossed the state line into California.  Most of the borders between states in the US have been passed with little fanfare.  Sometimes they are on bridges over rivers, sometimes just a couple of signs on the interstate or on R66 itself. Mostly when we've found one Rachael has wanted to mark it by trying to be in both places at once but that's ok because we are usually the only ones around. California is special though.  At the California border there is a customs-like checkpoint where you are interrogated by the fruit police.  You aren't allowed to take any fruit or vegetables across the border into California.  We think this is to protect the large agricultural areas of the state from unwanted diseases etc.  I do hope someone has told the wildlife about this rule. It would seem a shame to regulate the humans only for a bear or a rat to ruin things. Needless to say Rachael did not try to straddle the fruit police checkpoint.  We didn't think it would go down too well.

We enjoyed California for a while especially as the road gets dryer and more desert like and we saw actual real cactuses on the side of the road (still none of the Saguaro ones that appear on all the postcards though), but fairly quickly we left it again for our third major detour on this trip and our 9th US state.  Pretty sure we qualify for a set of steak knives now. Heading north from Needles we drove for about an hour and a half to the city of Las Vegas, Nevada which is tonights stop.  Before entering Las Vegas itself we did a slight eastern swerve over to the Hoover Dam.  I've wanted to see the Hoover Dam for a long time.  It's been used as a movie location so many times from Universal Soldier to Transformers and many others and I've long been fascinated by it.  Rachael totally humoured this desire but upon getting there she became distracted by the beautiful interstate bridge that spans high over the river as it flows away from the dam.

The view from the Hoover Dam to the river below and road bridge above.

The lizard basks in the sunshine in front of the Hoover Dam.

We didn't do the tour of the dam because mostly I just wanted to see it in real life and walk across it. After half an hour marvelling at the place we headed for our hotel and my first view of the Las Vegas strip.

We are staying in the newly refurbished Tropicana at the south end of the strip (Las Vegas Blvd).  The hotel is beautifully modern without being overwhelming which is nice because we went down the strip for dinner and a look around and the same cannot be said for all the hotels in Vegas.  The worst offenders we visited were the Venetian and Caesars Palace.  We went into the Venetian for a look around and to see the Gondola ride.  The place is a total nightmare.  The signage for getting around inside is completely useless, apparently intentionally, so that you cover as much of the property as possible and to prevent you from leaving the building before parting with all of your money as well as your sanity.  Needless to say we didn't spend a single cent in the Venetian. Even if the owner wasn't on the right-wing funding shit list, the place annoyed me so much I wouldn't spend anything in there on principle.

Right before we fell into an Adventure LARP - You are in a maze of twisty passages all alike.

The firework setting on my camera came into it's own in Las Vegas.

Crossing over the street we stopped briefly at the Margarita bar attached to the Treasure Island hotel - we had frozen virgin Pina Colada and Strawberry Daiquiri.  I was sorely tempted to climb in to the Strawberry Daiquiri machine it was that good.  Although it did give me the stomach equivalent of brain freeze at one point.

Frozen cocktail goodness - beware the frozen oesophagus.

Next we headed over towards Caesars Palace where we had planned to try their new buffet for dinner.  Apparently since it only opened this week after a huge refit, loads of other people had the same idea so rather than queue for an hour to get in we went over to the Bellagio instead. Trying to find our way around Caesars Palace was almost as much a nightmare as the Venetian. I've been to Casinos before in the US - the Borgata in Atlantic City and the amazing MGM Grand at Foxwoods in CT.  Neither of them was designed so bloody badly that you just want to sit down and cry.  I was very glad to leave Caesars and head into the Bellagio where signage and the world began to make sense again.

Leaving Caesars we walked past several look-a-like characters they have for people to get their photo taken with.  The Mickey / Minnie mouse ones were presumably sufficiently different to avoid legal action from Disney but they looked pretty shabby to me. Plus they were way too tall.  In real life Mickey and Minnie are total shortarses.  I know cos I've met them at Disneyland Paris.
As we were passing the Jack Sparrow character he called out to Rachael "Hey Ariel - what are you doing out of the water?"  Needless to say this made Rachael's day and she's fallen asleep still grinning.

The Bellagio buffet is pretty amazing - so many different things to choose from and everything was delicious.  Both Rachael and I made a point of getting fruit and salad as well as sampling other yummy things. I think our time in the flyover states has warped our taste buds.  Apparently there is such a thing as too much red meat and starchy carbs. We still can't quite believe it.

After dinner we blew a few small bills on the slot machines in the Bellagio just to see what all the fuss is about.  At one point Rachael was about $40 up but that soon reversed and we got bored and headed back to the Tropicana.  Gambling is obviously not a gene that either one of us possesses in any significant way.

Tomorrow we head back to route 66 and start our California adventure properly. We have just over a week left and still so much to cover and I can't wait to see what the golden state has in store for us.