Well today was day thirteen of the “Dudes on the Mother Road” journey down Route 66, and the one thing that stuck in my mind was “HOT!!!!!!!!!” The desert in California is really hot. It is like Africa hot. Tarzan could not stand that kind of hot! I know I stole that line, and I know I am simply grasping the obvious, but did I mention it was hot today? It was also one of the great days of exploration on the Mother Road. Mike and I like ruins. I mean barely recognizable ruins, and we saw plenty of that today.
Needles is another town that has plenty of Route 66 history. We were impressed by the sheer size of El Garces. We decided to take the Pre-1931 alignment through Goffs. Goffs is a lonely place in the middle of nowhere and was a scene that Mike and I would come to recognize in other places on the road throughout the day. Fenner was the last outpost of civilization for miles, and consisted of a gas station/convenience store. While I was going inside to purchase some fuel (I could not fill the tank because we had to get gas at Roy’s!) a guy came running out yelling and screaming. He was running after a tractor-trailer truck that was leaving the parking lot………..apparently without him. I still wonder how that turned out in the end!
Now we were on the National Trails Highway. This is a very barren stretch of the Mother Road, but one that is full of history, ruins, and surprises!!!! We found Essex, Danby, and Cadiz Summit easily enough, and Mike did some serious exploration of the Cadiz ruins. It was a very large site and must have been impressive in its heyday. We drove through Chambless and made our way to Amboy. We snapped some photos of the Roadrunner Café and sign and made sure we left two pairs of “Dudes on the Mother Road 2010” sneakers at the shoe tree (though I believe we left them at the shoe tree whose trunk is damaged and not the “new” shoe tree closer to Roy’s”. If someone can confirm which tree is the real shoe tree, I would appreciate it!
We stopped at Roy’s for some fuel and a shirt and continued on to the tree that marks the former site of Bagdad. The site we enjoyed exploring the most was Siberia. We found an immense set of foundations and ruins on the south side of the road. Mike noticed that there were rocks lining the entryway into what was probably a gas station and other foundations which may have once been a café, as well as smaller foundation slabs that appeared to be cabins. About a mile down the road on the north side of the road we found the remains of a “modern” gas station, complete with the bay beneath the garage. It was filled to the top with old oil filters! This site also had the rocks lined up, and we noticed this same pattern along the modern road and other “dirt” roads that seemed to criss-cross the current road. Was this the original National Trails Highway? It seems that there were alignments dated to 1917 (known as the National Highway) and even prior to that (known as the Santa Fe Trail).
We found the remains of the Ludlow Café and the Whiting Bros station in Newberry Springs. We arrived at the current “Bagdad Café” but just weren’t hungry to eat. There is another detour east of Dagget that takes you to the north of town, but the detour ends at the intersection where the uniquely shaped former café sits waiting to be rescued. We made our way into Barstow knowing that tomorrow may be the end our western journey. The Santa Monica pier awaits!
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