Historical Kingman

This is the oldest living thing in Kingman. This mesquite tree is over 200 years old. The  branches are held up by braces.

Bonelli House, built in 1915.  He had electricity in the house long before anyone else.

Can't remember the year of this clock,  but besides telling the time, it  also tells the day, month and year.

Notice the hinges on the step that the guide is standing on. It opens up and lets in cold air from under the house. It was their air conditioning. The husband had all sorts of innovations  in the house.

The courthouse was built in 1915 for $80,000.  In my blog about Oatman, I put in a picture of a hallway that led to the honeymoon suite of Clark Garble and Carol Lombard. This is the courthouse where they were married. Hard to imagine. You would have thought they would have been married in Los Angeles, in front of all their friends.

Back in the day, women had to make everything in the household. Here is the ingredients for  lye soap from the Bonelli House. Just had to include it.

Soap:  5 lbs of grease (any waste fat)

1 can lye, dissolved in water (use enamel or iron pot only)

1/2 cup borax

1/2 cup ammonia

I won't put in the directions, but looking at it certainly makes me glad I live now, not back then. Can't imagine using lye, ammonia and borax on your skin

Grand Canyon Caves, Peach Springs, AZ

I love caves so I suggested to Denny about seeing this one. He is ho-hum about caves. His thinking "if you've see one, you've seen them all. What we had planned to do that day fell thru, so we ( I ) decided to go. Unfortunately it was a 60 mile backtrack but off we went. It turned out to be very interesting. Even Denny admitted it.  It is the largest dry cave in the world. Of all the caves, only 3% are dry and only 1 1/2% are open to the public. We had to take an elevator 21 stories down. Thew walls are 65 million years old.

 There are 3 very unusual facts about this cave.  In a large room, about an acre, there are cases and cases of water and food. During the cold war, President Kennedy had this cave stocked  to use as a bomb shelter. There are enough supplies to feed 2000 people for 2 weeks. Not sure what they expected to happen after that.   The water is in black jugs, holding 18 gallons each. This is before bottled water.  The food is still edible (YUK) because it is ,mostly saltine crackers and hard candy. Not sure what the reasoning for that was. Hard to sustain yourself on crackers and candy. That was in 1962. Everything is still down there.  Nothing more had been delivered until last month. Several palettes of MRE's and bottled water came.  More is suppose to be coming.  The guide said that the cave was bought a few years ago by a survival doom & gloom company. Can't remember the name. If you went on their website and for a fee ( I'm sure it is ALOT of money),  you can buy space in the cave in case the world comes to an end. I wonder if it is the group that has been predicting the end of the world, the last one being Oct. 12th.

The other interesting thing is that they have created a bedroom suite in the large room. It has a double bed, bath, lights, closets and TV.  For $750 per 2 people, you can stay the night. They turn off all the lights in the cave except for 1 small one. There are lights in your bedroom suite also.  The guide turned off all the lights to give us an idea about how dark it was. It was blacker than black. Very eerie. It is so quiet that you can hear yourself breathe.  We don't think we could ever do that. He said about 200 people have done it. He said that about twice a summer season, the lights go out, usually because of storms. They have flashlights every so often. They are painted with glow in the dark paint so you can find them. I'm certainly glad that didn't happen when we were down there.

The bedroom suite

Long distance shot of the bedroom suite, looks kind of spooky to me!

Very dark but the cases on the right are the new bottled water. On the left are old boxes of crackers

The black buckets hold the old 1962 water. UGH

Another view of the new water

Last, there have been several weddings down there. Can't imagine doing that. Each couple left a little of their wedding there, flowers, parts of veil, etc. Everything is still in good shape because there is almost no humidity.

Two Months and Still Going

We left two months ago today. We have traveled 5200 miles. We haven't even gotten to when we usually leave, the end of Nov.  We have been to 12  National parks and several National Monuments.

The National Parks we have been to are, in order:

Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Colorado

The Arches, Moab, Utah

Island in the Sky, Canyonlands, Moab, Utah

The Needles, Canyonlands, Moab, Utah

Bryce Canyon, Utah

Zion, Utah

Zion/Kolab, Utah

North Rim of the Grand Canyon, AZ

Monument Valley, Utah

Mesa Verde, CO.

South Rim of the Grand Canyon, AZ

Skywalk, West Entrance to the Grand Canyon, AZ

National Monuments we have been to:

Cedar Breaks, Utah

Four Corners, Utah, AZ, New Mexico and Colorado

State Parks:
Dead Horse, Moab, Utah

Most of our traveling so far has been to places that get too cold or snowy in the winter. We have been hustling to keep ahead of the weather. Three parks we were at have already closed. Now that we are headed to central AZ, we will be staying longer at each place to relax.

Because we left so early, we're not sure if we will be staying out until we usually get home, the beginning of May. That will be 8 months. Denny thinks that might be too long for him. Might be going home a little early, but it is still raining in WA. Don't like the rain and cold. Such a decision to make. We'll see.

Oatman, AZ

Today, we visited Oatman, AZ.  It was built in the late 1800's, a wild west town. Then it stated mining gold. It was going great until the gov. told them that gold was no longer needed for the WWII war effort.  It was also a main road for the Dust Bowl immigrants going west.  Now it is an old wild west tourist attraction. It has lots of wild burro's roaming the streets. In the 1880's, they brought in burros to haul everything. The descendants are still there. My Dad told us to watch where we walk and he was sure right.  The burro's wander anywhere they like and that means they do their business anywhere. It is a fun town to see. Most of the old buildings are still in use.   Clark Gable and Carole Lombard spent their honeymoon there. They loved how quiet and laid back it was. Clark Gable played poker with the miners.  They went there quite often. Hard to imagine.

The road is part of the last long stretch of RTE 66 still in use.  The closer we got, the road got worse. it is still a 2 lane road, but very, very narrow with hairpin turns that you can't see around. Quite the drive.

A donkey nursing her young. As you can see, it is in the middle of the street

Denny's friend

Denny introducing me to his new friend

Aren't they cute!

An overview of the town. You can see the donkeys going down the middle of the street. In the left foreground, you can see what you have to be careful not to step in

More donkeys, they are everywhere

Doesn't this look like it would be fun to watch. Oatman is  just the kind of town that would have bed races. Lots of artists live there now.

This leads up to to their honeymoon suite.  It was being remodeled, so we couldn't go up. We had ice cream in the Ice Cream Parlour in the lobby.  Forgot how much I liked Rocky Road. It and chocolate chip mint were my favorites as a kid.  Haven't had either one in years

This is the beginning of the original wooden sidewalks. Most of it is in pretty bad shape. Lots of rickety and loose boards.

One of the Mysteries of Life Solved--Maybe

After we had been gone awhile, a strange thing started happening.  We would be sitting watching TV in the evening and the lights would go out. Just for a second or two, then go back on. By the time Denny got up to check it out, they would go back on. Hard to find out what's wrong when they go back on so fast.  Happened 3 or 4 times.  Then it didn't happen for quite a while. It also only happened at night.  Night before last it happened at least 10 times in about an hour. A few times they stayed off for quite a while. Our inside voltage gauge showed  0 volts.  He was able to get outside with a flashlight and the outside gauge ( came with the RV) also showed  0.  It would go up to 120 when the lights went on. The next morning the power also went off in the morning. Thank heavens I was able to make coffee before they went out.  That would have been disastrous.  Have to have coffee!   Hopefully it was an easy fix. Two years ago Denny bought a voltage booster. We were having alot of trouble with parks not having very good power.  He disconnected it and so far, no more problems. Every once in awhile, we get into parks that have good power.  He thinks he just has to check the voltage before he hooks up the booster. It means that the booster was doing its job. It is a bad thing to have too much voltage. That can  burn the electrics you have, like the TV.  Hopefully this will fix it. Would be amazing to have such an easy fix to an electrical problem. We have never really had any major problems with the RV. Knock on wood.

What's up with that?

This has nothing to do with our travels, but I just had to rant.  We  get the local channels so we listen to Phoenix news.  There is a 5 year old black girl missing/kidnapped in Glendale, AZ.  It is southwest of Phoenix.  She has been missing for over 2 weeks.  We have not heard a word about it on the national news.  You hear lots about Lisa, the little 10 month old girl in Missouri. That was on the national news almost as soon as it happened. Not a word about little black girl.   Why is that?  Is this racial profiling?  Is it because she's black?  There is no talk of domestic dispute here so it makes you wonder.

I don't usually go on like this, but this really made me wonder!

Kingman, AZ

When we told Marvelous Marv where we were going, he suggested getting off the freeway and take the back road to Kingman. It is the longest part of RTE 66 that is still in use. It is 100 miles long. Most of RTE 66 has been paved over by the freeways or is in such bad shape, it is very hard to travel on. It  took us a little longer than the freeway, but worth it.  We rarely came upon another car. Felt like we were in the 50's.  Didn't see George Maharis tho. If you know who I mean, you are really dating yourself.

The whole time we have been gone, I have had a lot of trouble with my Overdrive. That is the device that connects me to Internet wherever we go.  That is why I haven't had good luck downloading pictures.  A lot of campgrounds now have their own Internet called Tengointernet.   The Tengointernet and mine were working against each other. Very frustrating. Kingman is big enough to have a Sprint store, so I took it in. They had no idea what was wrong, but did download some updates.  Lo and behold, it works now. It has been a frustrating 2 months. This is why I have been able to show so many pics. Since I'm here for another week, I'm going to download a lot of pictures that I couldn't before.  That is why I got so far behind in my blog.  I never had any trouble with it last year.