Days 7 and 8

After spending Saturday (Day 6) at Grand Canyon, we drove three hours west of there, and spent the night in Kingman, AZ.  I saw on my map that we could drive on Route 66 for about 60 miles before connecting to Hwy. 40.  Since we can't pass up an opportunity to take the scenic route, that's what we did on Sunday (Day 7).  I expected to be driving through some little, old towns with old Route 66-type motels and diners, but that is not at all what we saw on that stretch of road.  In the first place, much of it was barely a road--the blacktop is just kind of fading away, and is hardly more than gravel.  In the second place, there were no towns of any kind for the first 30 miles.  What we saw was landscape that was astonishingly remote and quite beautiful.  

We came to the town of Oatman, and couldn't believe what we were seeing.  The street was gravel, I think; maybe it was blacktop; I couldn't really tell.  The buildings are straight out of the old West.  The sidewalks are even wooden!  There are lots of shops with Route 66 paraphernalia in them.  After that, with about 30 miles left to drive, we came upon a detour; so, unfortunately, we had to leave 66 and drive on a regular county road until we crossed over into California, and got on Highway 40.

On 40, we drove for at least a couple of hours through the Mojave Desert.  It looked exactly like I would expect it to look--miles and miles in every direction of sand and sand and sagebrush, with hazy mountains in the far distance.  We saw several trains.

Eventually, we got to civilization--meaning, California traffic, as we made our way toward the coast.  For a few days, we'll be in southern California, in the very pretty city of San Clemente, where Aunt KeeKee lives. It was important to us that we arrive here no later than the afternoon, because my sister-in-law, Barbara, had a concert scheduled for that evening.  The concert was well-attended and was really wonderful.  I'm always so proud to be sitting in the audience, watching Barbara charm and entertain everyone in the room.  She was a big hit, that's for sure.  

Today is Monday, Day 8.  This is a day for all of us to relax and slow down a bit.  We (Mom, Aunt KeeKee, Chris, Barbara, John and I) went to the nearby town of Dana Pointe, where we spent some time at the lovely marina.  The weather today is picture-perfect--about 75 degrees and completely sunny.