I was raised by wolves. Very kind, very nurturing wolves. I love riding to a town a just barely learned the name of on a Friday, making a decision at the intersection to get myself lost 1000 miles away from home on a Saturday, and trying to figure out how the hell I can get home on a Sunday. Just ride a place and see a thing.
Easy like Sunday Morning. Life has never been more stressful, but I’m getting hardened about swimming upstream.
Clint and I sat at the bar last night and planned out a 2800 mile ride to calgary on May 23rd. Ill head out friday morning and ride the 1120 miles into High River, Alberta Canada in a single session, meeting him at the border, and I’ll earn my Iron Butt Certification. My friends say I can’t do it. I’ll definately do it. I’ve done 600 miles in a day, and was fresh as a fucking daisy. I can do the other 500 miles no problem. Granted, I didn’t wake up untill noon, but I was spry and energetic as a 16 year old. I’ll do it. I actually can’t wait.
Because I’m easy. Easy like sunday morning.
Times are indeed tight. I sold the fatboy this week to square up a little on some debt and it feels good to have some debt taken care of.
I need to ride. I’ve got the Street Glide back and I need to load up the tent and sleeping bag and find me a place in the desert to ride to and watch the stars. It’s impossible to have a cheaper vacation.
The stock market crashed in 1929. This is what they rode then:
1929 Harley Davidson
After the crash of 29, they figured it out. in 1934 in the heart of the great depression, they designed bikes that still copied to this day.
We’ll figure it out. We have to. We just will…
From a recent ad campaign by Harley Davidson, which I tend to believe:
“Over the last 105 years in the saddle, we’ve seen wars, conflicts, depression, recession, resistance and revolution. We’ve watched a thousand hand-wringing pundits disappear in our rear-view mirror. But every time this country has come out stronger than before. Chrome and asphalt has always put distance between you and whatever the world can throw at you….. If 105 years have proved one thing, it’s that fear sucks and it doesn’t last long. So screw it, let’s ride.”
The Okies Moved West to Change America
Right now I know half a dozen people who have lost their Jobs due to the economy. All I know is I have a wife who looks to me to keep her and our 3 kids safe, to keep them fed and keep us together. Come hell or high water I will do that. What will come of this? I can only think alot of good. We’ll rely on each other more. We’ll save more. The economy will be more real, not based on someone trading commodities out of fuel.
Stick together. We’ll work through whatever comes ahead.
I bought this from the Postcard Rack at Roy's in Amboy in 1991 from Buster Burris. The Picture was taken in 1956 of a Plank Road that crossed the desert in California before pavement. Plank Road Picture from 1963Plank Road Picture taken in 1941Old Post Card of a Plank Road
To Learn more about Plank Roads and when/why we had them, click here. Another Good Link is here.
Labor Day in 1991 was an opportunity for my new bride and I to take a little road trip on the mother road once again, so friday night after we both got off work we headed down to Needles. I remember listening to Cassette tapes of Roxette most of the way down in our 1986 Mercury Lynx and having a helluva time.
Back then I considered “sleeping in” was waking up at 6 AM, and was able to talk my wife into heading out early and fitting in a trip to Lake Havasu which was not far away. We woke up, went to the El Garces Harvey House in Kingman, took a few pictures and headed down the Freeway to Lake Havasu.
66 Motel at Dawn
After a short visit to Lake Havasu, we headed back north and up to Topock. The road between Golden Shores and Oatman was gravel back then, but it was just good to be on the mother road again and before long we we’re in Oatman Arizona yet again. To this day, I’ve never been on Interstate 40 to Kingman. We always go through oatman because the pull is too strong.
Mrs Zip in Oatman
We spent our Saturday afternoon in Oatman and then into Kingman to crash for the night and head out again to see more Route 66. Robyn and I had done this route a year earlier on the Magna, but It never got old. Besides, we still needed to find our bridge we’d been looking for from the picture. Maybe this time was our lucky day.
On the way down from Oatman we passed by cool springs, which we’d seen before. I was surprised to see it had been rebuilt, but not very well:
Cool Springs was being prepped to blow up for a movie
I wasn’t sure why. Old windows we’re put in to look old, and the back of the building wasn’t finished. I was in construction at the time, and hadn’t seen this kind of a building method before. Last time we’d seen Cool Springs, it was just a foundation and a couple of stone pillars. Even so, it was cool to see something happening with this part of the mother road.
We rolled into kingman and got our room at the Quality Inn, which seemed like a really route 66 friendly spot in the road. In 1991, so many Arizona route 66 towns still seemed to be figuring out how to rebound from being bypassed. Kingman didn’t quite have the route 66 pride it has today, so when we saw the Quality Inn Showing Route 66 Signs outside, we figured we’d give it a try. We also knew by our route 66 newsletters that the owner was part of the state route 66 association. The quality Inn puts a plaque on the door of the famous people that had stayed there, and our room was Will Rogers Jr. Good enough for Us.
Mrs Zip and I at the Quality Inn in Kingman
The Next morning we woke up early again and headed out to hit the mother road again. It was a beautiful September Morning as we stopped by a place we didn’t think too much of at the time, and I remember my new wife wondering why we stopped at the Hackberry General Store:
This is what it looked like in 1991:
Hackberry General Store in 1991Hackberry General Store in 1991
This is what it looks like today:
Hackberry General Store 2008
It’s neat to see how someone fixed it up and it’s been a viable business for quite a few years now. Route 66 is doing good again!
I’ve probably said on this site a million times what got me into Route 66, so forgive me if I say it again. I was reading a Motorcycle magazine in the late 80’s that had an article on Route 66. It had a picture of a place the author visited on his bike that had a mature tree growing out of an old bridge that struck me. I wanted to find that Bridge. I showed my future wife who is always up for a road trip adventure, so we set out to find that bridge. We looked for it before we we married and still hadn’t found it. We only knew it was in Arizona.
Crookton Road East of Seligman
I’d gotten pretty good at following old abandoned sections of roads while Driving. I started looking down washes and riverbeds this run to see if I could spot our bridge. After we got back on 1-40 on Crookton Road I spotted it out of the corner of my eye before we hit Ash Fork. I told Mrs Zip and we knew we were close. We got off at the next exit and tried to double back and after a mile of dirt roads and crossing railroad tracks in our little car, we doubled back to the crookton exit and found the cinder alignment of Route 66 that was active from 1920 to 1965. We pulled up and saw our bridge!
Partridge Creek Bridge Route 66 . This was Route 66 from 1920-1965
Once we basked in the glory of our road finding skills, we got back on the freeway and headed into Ash Fork to find the answer to another more recent mystery:
Ash Fork Arizona Universal Soldier Set
In Ash Fork, they were clearly filming a movie. We’d been this way before and aside from being the Flagstone Capital of the world, its a pretty sleepy town. When you see massive semi trucks from hollywood and movie sets, you recognize it immediately. We talked to one of the security guards watching the weekend sets to find out that they were filming for a Jean Claude Van Damme Movie Called Universal Soldier. That explained Rebuilding of cool springs! We took spome pictures and headed on up the road toward Williams.
What it looked like in the movie
So I might as well show Cool Springs blowing up too...
After Williams, I could see what I know know is an old abandoned 1931 section of the National Old Trails Highway, which eventually became route 66. Because of the rain, we couldn’t get back to it, so we got off at Devil Dog and searched for it on that side of the freeway. We found it.
Devil Dog Culvert, built in 1922 till 1932
We drove around as much as we could see here and saw where future alignments and improvements in excavating bypassed Devil Dog in 1952 till I turned into Interstate 40 in 1984.
Old Arizona Route 66 Alignment from 1952 meets It's Replacement
From there, we drove up to Parks to drive yet again another old alignment of the mother road. Parks Arizona to this day is still one of my favorite Sections of Route 66.
Parks Arizona 1931 Alignment of Route 66
Parks alignments are interesting. From the turn of the century to 1984 this section of mountainous route 66 changed many times, sometimes for only several feet. The general store and post office in Parks between 1931 to 1932 changed the front door of their establishment from the south side to the north side becuase the new road moved to the other side of them. The pavement there is still in good shape but the forest is slowly taking it over. Its one of the best sections of the entire road called route 66 I think.
Once we we’re done screwing around in Parks, for some reason we decided to double back. I don’t remember if we got the motel room for 2 nights, or we wanted so see something we missed, but in any case we headed west again. We had the added bonus of going through seligman again to have our 2nd hamburger ever at the snow cap if we hurried.
I’m pretty happy that in my 20 years travelling route 66 I’ve been able to meet some of its most colorful and enterprising people. Angel Delgadillo is regarded as Route 66’s “angel” for his efforts to bring the mother road back into the world’s consciousness. If Angel is the Angel, then his brother Juan is the clown. He was truly one of a kind, and regardless of your day he had the ability to put a smile on your face with his antics. If your heart was somehow made of stone enough to resist that, his hamburgers would certainly do the trick.
Juan Delgadillo in 1991
Juan Passed away in 2004 after working all day at the restaurant he built from scrap wood 50 years earlier. It was a sad day. Juan made everyone smile, and was a pure nutjob that built his local business in the middle of nowhere into a place that people would travel the globe to come visit, and thats no exaggeration. I am proud my wife and I got to see the master at work several times, and am proud to say that the beat goes on with his kids. I’ve taken my daughter there, and she laughed too.
For a good article on Juan Delgadillo, click here.
From the Snow Cap it started raining again, and we drove the whole way to Kingman in the Rain and it was just a nice trip. I’ll always have the picture in my head of racing the Freight trains down to kingman in the pouring rain. We stayed the night in Kingman again. Tomorrow was labor day monday, and we’d need to head home again.
The next morning, we doubled back to Oatman. On the way there, we passed cool springs again and the Universal Soldier guys must have worked that weekend, because the cool springs movie set had been blown up. I wished I’d taken a picture of it. Everything was swept off the road and in piles.
Wild Burros in Oatman Arizona
We stopped in Oatman again, petted the burro’s and had some food at a cool old restauraunt built out of plywood that I’ve never seen since (it was built around Joshua Trees), then made time to get to Topock, Needles and then Home.
Colorado River Route 66 Sign near Topock
It was a great route 66 Trip that I’ll always remember.
By the time I hit Crozier canyon/Hackberry I knew I had one more picture in me and I knew what I wanted. Unfortunately, the winds were picking up, my shutters on my camera apparantly were hanging, and I just knew I needed to get home. I could see heavy clouds forming in the direction of Kingman and Las vegas, and I had 5 hours ahead of me without rain gear. I took the last 2 pictures of my trip haphazardly and then opened it up to get home.
From Hackberry, I rode into kingman feeling confident I’d make it home dry so I went into Denny’s on Route 66 and ordered me a superbird and several cups of coffee. In that 45 minutes, the clouds became dark and heavy and I questioned whether I should get a room in Kingman for the night. I need to buy rain gear. The fact that it was cold and I knew rain would freeze me to my bike faster than the movie Dumb and Dumber, I had second thoughts. I said screw it, I’d deal with it as it happened.
It rained all around me. In front of me, and behind me, and I only got a little wet. Spring break traffic was rough near hoover Dam, but at the end I made it home dry and ahead of Robyn.
I’m so freaking glad to have my Street Glide back. I love it like one of my kids.
I passed through Peach springs and Valentine to get to the cool neon warmth of The Frontier Cafe in Truxton Arizona. Truxton is a pretty new route 66 town by most standards. It came about as a hotel and cafe in 1951 when Donald Dilts built it to take advantage of the traffic that passed by this part of the highway. The name of the town comes from the Beale Camel Expedition when Lieutennant Ned Beale stopped at the spring here in 1857 and named the town after one of his relatives. After the Motel and Cafe was built, other businesses started to spring up.
I’ve seen the sign have better days, but not long ago a route 66 preservation fund of one sort or another raised some money to get it painted, and cleaned it up. I tried to wait for the hanging signs to swing horizontally for a picture, but 45 degrees was better than 90 so thats all I could get from the wind Gods who were in force today.
Truxton Cafe
I was hoping to get some breakfast here as well, but soon realized route 66 doesn’t wake up in this neck of the woods till noon. It was getting windier, cumulous clouds were forming, and I knew I needed to get to Kingman so I could start to head north and have the 35 mile per hour winds to my back. I was riding sideways by this point.
I have always passed Truxton and not spent alot of time here, which is a shame. I’m usually done with waiting from visiting the grand Canyons and ready to make miles and haven’t stopped to appreciate this cool route 66 town. I’d have loved to see it in its heyday. I can imagine with a stream of steady 50’s, 60’s and 70’s traffic this place could sling hash and pour coffee not to mention keep its rooms full. If it we’re ever open when I was there, I’d book a room and enjoy some time here because I’d imagine it would be a cool experience.
I’ve been going to the grand canyon caverns since 1991, but had never eaten there. I left Seligman thinking I’d get breakfast there, and the signs on the way up the road to the caverns sayd they’d have it there for me. Not so, not untill 10, and it was 9. I took a couple pictures and headed down the road. I understand. I’m just glad they serve food at all, and stay in business. They’ll do what they have to do. Someday I’ll actually have food there.
As I rode past williams, got Gas in Ash Fork (which I wanted to ride a little more but will next run), I headed down crookton road and into seligman. The music sounded sweet, my hands were cold and the wind was gusting. The sun was also setting and I didn’t really care because I knew where I was spending the night, and it was at a place I’d visited 20 years earlier. The heart of route 66 Arizona, and the place where the revival of the mother road started: Seligman Arizona.
I’d passed by the KOA in Seligman for years, and it just looked stark and treeless. I knew I had to stay there, because I’d packed a tent and it would just make sense. So I did. I knew beforehand from reading the KOA site that the proprietor was a hockey fan, but when I showed up this sat prominently on her desk:
Sidney Crosby, Troy Polamalu & Marc Andre Fleury
I knew she was quality people. We immediately hit it off. We talked about the penguins and the steelers seasons. She was awesome, and moved from the Burgh’ to Florida, then came here on a visit and bought the Seligman KOA. She’d cleaned it up a bunch, the bathrooms were straight up immaculate. After we bitched about the old coach, cheered on the Pittsburgh Steelers defense and talked about how theres a terrible towel in the Snow Cap, I went out set up my tent just as the sun set. Ahhh, It felt good to know where I was sleeping.
Seligman KOA with the Street Glide - Home for the night...
After I got the tent set up and I was situated, I rode the 2 miles to the other end of town to get me some chicken fried steak and I slowly rode through town to get some night pictures of the neon signs, just like I’d pictured when I first thought of this trip. Not a ton of neon, but I got what I could:
Route 66 MotelSupai MotelStagecoach 66 MO E
That night, I sat in my tent and had intended to post on my blog, but forgot the password for the wi-fi, so I watched a few episodes of Sons Of Anarchy on my laptop and fell asleep by midnight, assisted by a few snoots of Tennessee whiskey I’d bought at the Jack Rabbit Trading Post. My first day in 3 months with the street glide kicked pure ass. It was smooth, and quite honestly I couldn’t be happier to ride again. I knew tomorrow was going to be colder than a witches tit in a brass bra, but what the hell. I’d figure it out. I just had to beat the storms that we’re coming inveitably and get home.
Bellemont is another great route 66 place for me. It’s only 10 miles from Flagstaff, and I’ve stopped here often as it’s the only harley dealership till Kingman. There’s also a bar and grill next door that’s really clean and big, so I stopped in for a beer as it was the afternoon and I needed a Guinness.
No Vacancy Sign, from the 1969 Movie "Easy Rider"
Right over the pool tables is another reason I came into Bellemont. Have you seen Easy Rider? If you haven’t, then X out of your browser, shut off your computer and run down to hollywood video and rent it. It’s a classic. Not only did it change the movie industry, its got some of the best riding scenes with some of the best music around. At the start of the movie, right after the credits Wyatt and Billy go to get a room at the Pine Breeze inn after riding all day, and the man comes out, takes a look at them then closes the door and turns on the sign above. Thats the very sign from the movie, and I had to see it. The people here are one of a kind. I walk in from out of nowhere, and at least 3 people came up and introduced themselves and we talked. The bartender was even very nice and listened to my stories. Theres just a good feeling here. I’d love to be here with Mrs Zip on a friday night. That’ll happen.
I stayed for a couple brewskis then took a few pictures and headed on down the road. It was getting colder and windier.
Before I left, I had to come get a picture of the Pine Breeze Inn, from the movie Easy Rider again.
I’ve got other pictures here, from a previous visit last year with some screenshots from the movie.
