Adam's Blog July 18th, Day 13!

We plan to head out to Barstow, CA tonight so we get out kind of early. Breakfast under our belts and another last minute gift shop stop and we are on our way. Of course or first set of directions put us on a road where it is hard to discern what is the road and what is just a wash or a gap in the vegetation so we bail on that pay off the road and head back to the highway for a bit.

The second little town we come to has a car that looks like the police car from Cars and a lot of Route 66 shops. It is really a neat place until two bus loads of people come out of nowhere and we can't even leave the little shop we were in because there were so many people there. I mean, I am glad these people can make a livelihood of of this now but that is not my kind of scene. We pack it in and head on.

Shortly afterwards we reach a part of the road where we are crossing the Rockies. There is a section in the road where cars would have to drive up in reverse before fuel pumps to make sure the engines got gas. It is a lot of curvy roads and a lot of driving on the canyon rim to get to the crest and start heading back down. In at least two places on the way there are remains of a vehicle that went over the edge, kind of scary. The views though are great. For miles this road has been devoid of any real towns, just scattered houses and abandoned dwellings. We come across the town of Oatman. According to our guide that we are using, some people call this a ghost town but there are a lot of people and shops here. The most interesting thing though are all of the obese donkeys walking the streets. One even managed to fall asleep in the middle of the road.

We make it to Needles, CA for lunch and head back out when I realize that someone has placed 800 caches on the route between here and Barstow. Now there is no way I could get them all but Court and the family were patient enough to let me grab about 30. We had originally intended on heading in to the Mojave National Perserve but when we got to the fork for the park the thermometer in the car read 109 outside and the shortest trail was 1.5 miles. We figured that that wasn't fair to the kids and probably not safe either so we bypassed it. In to Barstow by the evening and in bed.

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