Special care must be taken when riding into the desert. The Mojave, which Route 66 runs through, is Death Valley’s kid brother. It’s dangerous. The last time I was through it, it was 115 degrees. That’s nothing to take lightly.

I made sure I had enough water. I unzipped the vents in my jacket and riding pants, I put on my summer gloves and wore only a tshirt under my coat. Sure, the temperature was only 55 degrees now… but soon it would rocket to a deadly cauldron of fire!

I rode out of town until Route 66 dead ended and took the interstate to where I could again pick it up. The searing sun overhead wasn’t either. However, some very lovely rain clouds coated the sky. The swelter that should be under my black riding jacket was missing, instead goosebumps coated my arms.

It’s ok, I thought, I’m prepared. Soon, it’ll be a billion degrees and I’ll be cool as ice.

The strange little town of Goffs was my first stop. And good. Because the traffic between the interstate and Goffs was horrible. I didn’t remember such a thing being so on other trips. But then I realized that I was also on US 95, which heads to Las Vegas, Nevada. That would explain the traffic. And when Old 66 and US 95 went their separate ways, all was better.

The distances in the desert are all very exaggerated. Things that seem small, are actually rather large. Things that seem far away take very little time to get to. There is not sense of proportion in the desert. What seems like it should only be a mile or so away is actually ten. This creates such a surreal environment.

And since surreal is what I’m after, Goffs fit the bill.

It has been a ghost town since well before World War II. Route 66 bypassed it in 1931. But a recent resurgence, the restoring of their original school, has put Goffs on the Route 66 map. The often bizarre outdoor museum/sculpture garden certain helps.

Folks definitely should come for the history. I’ve heard that the school is now a museum. But since it’s open by appointment only, I’ve never been in it. A foolish handy man had left the gate open, so I took advantage and walked around the grounds.

Old pieces of machinery were placed along the paths. A windmill dominated the dry, sandy landscape. Most of these things represented pieces of the culture history of the Mojave Desert.

The flattened VW Bug and the weird robot guy under a loading dock and surrounded by 1960’s gas pumps didn’t make sense, but somehow fit.

I’m sure there was much more to explore, but thought that I should be going. I mounted up and off I rode for… Fenner? Fenner wasn’t much of anything. But it did have a gas station, the last until Amboy.

Here is where some rain fell. Yes, even in the desert, I can’t escape the rain. It was only a drizzle and only lasted a few minutes, but it was enough to make the desert smell of spring. We have that in Pennsylvania too, after a rain storm in April. But here, it was amplified. I stopped the scooter and just took it all in.

In Fenner, I fueled up and bought a bag of chips. The gas, by the way, was $5.68 per gallon. I guess if you need gas, you’ll pay anything. I didn’t mind. I’m perfectly ok with gas being $10 per gallon. Maybe people would finally rethink how they travel.

Probably not.

I crossed the interstate after filling up, rode about five miles and then hung a left onto National Trails Highway. This was the post-1931 alignment of 66. It’s about eight miles long and I had to turn around, but that’s ok.

There’s not much there at all. However, I strongly suggest seeing this. The road descends from the interstate above an amazing desert valley. You can see fifty miles in any direction. Even with the low-hanging rain clouds, the view was unbelievable.

This alignment, like the pre-1931 alignment, pass through Essex after connecting.

Essex, for what it’s worth, is gone. Originally, it was a railroad water stop. But since diesel locomotives need no water… and since there’s I-40, Essex dried up.

That’s not exactly true. In 1977, the population of Essex was 35. All 35 residents wrote the Los Angeles Times and claimed to be the only town in America without a television. Johnny Carson got wind of this and invited all 35 of them onto his Tonight Show. A Pennsylvania company that manufactured television translating equipment donated the good and finally, in 1977, Essex discovered television.

This is a lonely road. Even on a holiday weekend, Memorial Day Weekend, cars are scarce. I took many of my pictures while standing on the road. I’d often cross without even a thought of looking. Out here, in the silence of the day time, you can hear a car coming from nearly a half-mile away. You can hear a train from several miles away. Sound, as well as silence, is amplified.

The road was less lonely for the regular travelers of Route 66 through the 40’s and 50’s. Several rest stops provided the denizens of the original Route 66 with a place to enjoy a lunch with their family – in the middle of the desert. The idea worked some of the time. Just not in the summer.

One of these rest areas, between Essex and Cadiz Summit, is still being used to house a handful of plaques explaining the history of Route 66, the natives and the land. In all too brief essays, you learn that this desert is and never was deserted. Thousands of years before Route 66, this land was lived on by ancient cultures, ancestors of the native americans, who also inhabited the area. Before any of them, gigantic pre-historic mammals like the woolly mammoth and saber toothed tiger called this not-yet-desert their home. And before that, dinosaurs of various enormities!

All this from a tiny, bullet-ridden plaque. And a bit of modern archeology revealed cement foundations that used to support the picnic tables at this very rest stop! Wonderful. Actually, it was pretty cool.

Far off in the distance, a train passed. It was barely visible. I took a picture and in it, you can hardly see that it’s there at all.

Along the road, from Essex to Amboy, for years now, people have left messages written with stone for the amusement of themselves and their fellow travelers. Mostly, it’s names, spelled out in your typical desert rocks. Sometimes, people brought their own stones, painting them bright blues or yellows, so that their own names would stand out above others.

This goes on for miles. In 2004, we did our own, spelling BunMonMou – the name of our trip¹ In 2006 I looked for it as I did today. But it’s gone. Or I probably just missed it. There are hundreds along this road.

I’ve mentioned before how much I enjoy seeing the thins I saw in ‘04 and ‘06 in ‘08. One of the places I was looking most forward to was Cadiz Summit.

When we were there in 2004, it was a heavily spray painted building. In 2006, it was a heavily spray painted building with a couch and TV sitting out in front of it. I wondered how long that would last.

The answer is – they’re still there, in spirit. The TV has been hacked to pieces and is now impaled upon the several tires it once sat upon. Rise up, oh old tires! The couch has met a similar end, it’s broken and beaten carcass left to bleach in the sun, several yards from where it served as a prop for some artist somewhere.

The history of Cadiz Summit is even more spectacular than the graffitied remains. You can read a bit here. The pictures and stories are really fun. Does anyone ever check out the links I post in my entries?

Up over the summit sprawls the valley that holds the towns of Chambliss and Amboy. Much of this valley used to be used as an artillery range during World War II. Chambliss was the largest town between Needles and Daggett. It’s now, like most other Mojave towns along Route 66, a ghost town.

Chambliss is the home of the often photographed Road Runner’s Retreat. Every business in Chambliss is closed.

On the horizon, shortly after Chambliss I could see the Amboy Crater. The Amboy Crater looks like a cone volcano, not a crater. And that’s what it is, a cone volcano.

But before reaching this tiny volcano, and even before reaching the town of the same name, you pass three very important trees .

The bra tree, the boxer tree and the shoe tree.

All trees are what they seem to be. In the example of the bra tree, it is a tree filled with braziers.

The boxer tree is filled with boxers.

The most impressive, and the longest in existence, is the Amboy Shoe Tree.

I’m not sure how these came about, but every time I see one, I wish I would have brought an old pair of shoes.

But at the very least, I can admire the artistry and the surreality.

From the Shoe Tree, you can see Amboy, and more importantly Roy’s. Roy’s is finally reopened! And while it’s not a fully functional Motel Cafe, it does have gas. The prices aren’t ridiculously as high as you’d expect.

I was able to fill up and walked around the site a bit. A man in a forest ranger’s uniform who was packing a pistol was pumping gas. It was a bit odd and he almost seemed to be a volunteer, but who knows?

I had some ambition to make the three mile round trip to the top of the Amboy Crater. I wanted to. And the temperature was perfect for it – it was hardly over 75 today. But even though I stopped and contemplated it, I declined. Maybe someday I’ll finally do it, but not today.

The Amboy Crater is one of the most recently formed volcanoes in America. The most recent eruption seems to have happened around 500 years ago. The lava field is large, but not as large as the next volcano, just down the road.

I’m always impressed with the nothingness of Bagdad, California. At one time it was a huge mining town, specializing in copper, silver, borax and gold. Huge wagon trains hauled the stuff out of it back then. And even after the mines dried up, Route 66 kept Bagdad on the map.

Now, there is nothing left of it except for a tree. Just one tree. There are no foundations, no old buildings, no nothing. It’s gone, leaving a small solitary tree as a reminder.

The farther west you go on Old 66, the closer the interstate gets to you. At first you’ll see it in the distance, catch the flash of an 18 wheeler chugging down the highway. But as you near Ludlow, you are right along side it, like a frontage road.

As I pulled into Ludlow to grab a few pictures, ten or so motorcyclists on brand new Harleys with their brand new leathers were filling up at the gas station across the street from where I sat. A couple of them pointed and laughed at me on my little scooter. I motioned with my hand that they should laugh more and they stopped.

Now, what I don’t understand is this. I have, for the past twenty-six days, and 4,000 miles, ridden from Pennsylvania through some amazingly nasty weather, slept on the cold ground, shivering myself to sleep. But because I did it on a motorscooter, it’s somehow not as hardcore as buying a $40,000 bike, dressing up in $1,000 worth of leather and only taking your toy out on really sunny weekends?

I’m sorry, if you think what I’m doing is funny, then what they’re doing is unbelievably hilarious. Actually, what they’re doing is just moronic. They are morons. The real motorcyclists treat other folks on two wheels with respect. And while I’m not out here doing this for some weird respect kick, I find it sad that these poseurs have such tiny penises self-esteem that they have to compensate by laughing at me.

Ride on, weekend warriors!

Ok, so anyway. I crossed the interstate, riding along side it as a frontage road until I crossed it again on Lavic Road, so named because it’s the edge of the Mount Pisgah lava field. This field is huge. And Route 66 rides the outside of it and even dashes through it a bit near Newberry Springs.

Home of the Bagdad Cafe. The Bagdad Cafe used to be in Bagdad, way back a long time ago. It was where everyone from everywhere gathered. Well, when that closed, the legend continued until some guy made a move called the Bagdad Cafe. It was filmed in Newberry Springs at the cafe that would soon be renamed Bagdad Cafe.

I’d normally stop here, but there was a tour bus – and not wanting to deal with 60 people, I took a few pictures and rode on. The last two times through, we stopped and were the only ones in there. I liked that. But on this holiday weekend, that’s not going to happen.

Before I knew it, I was in Daggett. And this was my turn off for the KOA a mile or so away. Just like that.

I didn’t mean to plan the trip this way, but nearly every stop I’ve made has seemed natural. What I mean is, each segment was different than the one before it. The segment before Oklahoma City is vastly different than the one before it. So stopping in Oklahoma City made sense. Springfield, IL, Albuquerque, NM and even Amarillo, TX all felt this way. But Daggett isn’t a place to stop. Today, Victorville should have been where I stopped. But it wasn’t. It’s Daggett and it’s awkward.

Tomorrow is my last day on Route 66.
Tomorrow I will see the Pacific ocean and my 24ish day trek down the Mother Road will come to an end.

The trip then will take on a new life, a new meaning. But the thing is, I don’t know what that will be. And I don’t know how that will affect me writing this blog. I suppose we shall see.

Here are my pictures today.

Miles today: 187
Miles total: 4287

1. BunMonMou stood for Bunny, Monkey, Mouse. I was/am the Bunny, Nikki was/is the Monkey and Ashley was/is the Mouse. [↩]