Route 66: Kingman to Las Vegas

We started the day with breakfast at Mr. D’z, another famous American diner. Next stop was Bad Gass, a motorcycle repair and collectibles shop where they had, among other things, Elvis’ golf cart that he used to get around Graceland.

First stop outside Kingman was Cool Springs Station, a restored old gas station that burned down and was then exploded for the Universal Soldier movie, but was later restored and was the inspiration for the gas station in Cars. A true God-forgotten place in the middle of nowhere, selling lots of Trump caps!

The road from here onwards though was quite amazing – beautiful turns over the Sitgreaves Pass, also nicknamed the serpent as it makes 199 curves in 8 miles. It was considered so dangerous at some point that they closed it down (because of the risk of accidents) when route 66 was decommissioned!

We enjoyed the ride and managed to reach the other end unscathed. Oatman is an interesting place, also somewhat God-forgotten if not for the donkeys or burros, who seem to be a big tourist attraction in town. It used to be a gold-mining town, but the gold finished a long time ago. We spent about an hour there looking at the shops, the donkeys (a baby one with a note on its head not to feed him and one that kept visiting the shops) and the local pub / hotel where Clark Gable and Carole Lombard had their honeymoon. As we were waiting for the others to come back to the cars we saw a roadrunner that had some straws in its beak and literally made a dash to the other side of the road. There were more very friendly donkeys as we left the town.

Next stop was at 39 degrees in Bullhead, a city that is half in Arizona and half in Nevada. It has casinos but only in the half located in Nevada. From the cool inside of the cars we had a few glimpses of the calm, clean Colorado river and people jet skiing.

Hoover Dam was the next stop. Just driving there was quite interesting with the large bridge and multitude of power lines. We saw a movie first which was done in a very different style to the one we saw about the Arch in St Louis. It was quite patriotic and covered how the dam was build, but with no mention about the environmental consequences or the work conditions and deaths among the workers. As soon as the movie finished, we were hearded to the elevators and went down to visit the power plant, followed by the exhibition in the visitor centre.

The best part of the whole experience though was driving over the Dam, and then over the bridge that is a bit further away, to see it from up high. Apparently before 9/11 it was possible to do a circular drive over the bridge and then back over the dam (or the other way), but tourists are not allowed to do this anymore since 2001.

Las Vegas was our final destination for the day. As we arrived, there was quite a lot of smoke to one side and we later read on the news that a building that was still being built (but nearly finished) caught fire. We drove past the famous entrance sign and snapped a shot in passing. We found Vegas busy and kitsch, but definitely an interesting place to see. Coming into the city, we drove past Mandalay Bay where the shooting happened years ago, the airport, then past the Great Pyramid, Eiffel Tower, Trump Tower, Bellagio before reaching our hotel, Linq, located on the strip. The hotel was quite an interesting experience as it was massive, it had lots of poker machines on the ground floor and vending machines selling pizza and cake slices!

We didn’t spend much time in the rooms, went out for dinner and then a wonder around the strip before catching a taxi to go to the Old District where there was a lot of noise, light, performers, lightly-clad ladies offering to have photos taken with them (for a fee of course). We walked up and down and then came back to the strip just in time to watch the fountain show at Bellagio before heading back to the hotel.

A summary video is here.