Steppesister
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Dec 27, 2013
Q is for: Quite the Drive!
With over 2,400 miles yet to go on the journey to our home-to-be, we needed to keep making progress on our trek. Our goal was to get to Ashfork, AZ, but not by any old run-of-the-mill route. It’s a fine line cramming as much as possible in and being utterly ridiculous in the pursuit of “a lot”. Somehow we managed to do both. This obscure detour we ended up on was altogether accidental, however. Mostly anyways. It also ended up being one of the more entertaining. Aside from the brief moment the entertainment almost kicked our teeth out.
I last left off with us crossing over the not-so-mighty-anymore Colorado River into Arizona from California and we began the northerly road towards Ashfork.
I chose it not for what we’d encounter, as I did barely any research on this particular road, but rather for the fact it was NOT on I-40. I had honestly wanted to avoid interstates as much as possible and take roads I’d either not been on before or wanted to see again, The “Oatman Highway” being the former. Leaving the relatively flat landscape of the River Valley, we began to climb steadily. The more we climbed, the more we twisted and turned.
As always on the this roadtrip we were looking for wildlife and it wasn’t too long before we actually found some. Sort of, anyway. I spied a pile on the road and where there’s piles, there’s bound to be horses.
“Son, I see poo. Keep a lookout for wild horses! Who knew?!"
Oh yay!! Wild horses!!
Okay, donkeys. Donkey’s will do. Close enough.
Sure enough, off on the rocky, cholla-speckled hills were donkeys grazing on… nothing. I mean, what is even out here that donkeys would find tantalizing?
Tourist handouts, of course!
We spied more donkeys, some walking right on the road, and when I got to a random desert intersection, my tourist inner-self kicked in and, just like millions who’ve gone before me, I pulled over and hissed at Zach, “GRAB OUR CARROTS!”
“MOM!”
“I don’t care if we starve in the desert for lack of rations! THIS IS WILD DONKEYS! They’re hungry!! Starving, I tell you!”
I rolled down my window and the most intelligent of the bunch sauntered its way over and eagerly gobbled up the 2 or 3 carrots I held out. Since he nearly ate my hand off as well, I guessed he was also the greediest of the bunch.
No sooner had I held out handful #2 than an ancient codger, older than the ore in those hills themselves, pulled up his dilapidated van and scolded me for feeding the donkey carrots. Mumbling something about sugar and digestive issues, etc… I thought to myself… <dude, these things will eat a shoe. Please.> But before I could protest, he pulled out a bag of donkey goodies (who knew they made such a thing!) that were much healthier (than the garbage they eat from the dumpsters in town?) “Here try this, Fred really loves these!” <Gobble, gobble>
“Oh look! Here comes his fat cousin Charlie* (*names changed to protect donkey anonymity). Careful of that one, he’s the jealous sort.”
Zach and I took turns risking amputation by donkey teeth and were having the best of donkey-bonding time. I can confirm that petting wild donkeys on a bright desert highway makes for a really great vacation activity.
That is until Fat Charlie shows up.
Did you know that donkeys can move at Warp 9?
I didn’t either.
I don’t remember the Donkey Man’s name, but when Fat Charlie kicked his shoe off fighting Fred over the donkey biscuits <--insert un-family-friendly play on words joke here>, I figured that was our invitation to leave. I happened to like my teeth and oral surgeons cost a lot of money. Sigh…. somehow I found it therapeutic to pet the flea-ridden beasts of burden. But time to move on….
We finally came to the old Wild West town of Oatman, Arizona famous for its not-so-wild-anymore donkeys. It was rife with tourists and definitely NOT our cup of tea, so we kept on going, pausing once to take a peek at one of the mining sites/shafts of the Para Co. who actively mines gold in and around Oatman. If you are reading this late at night and suffering from severe insomnia this LINK ought to help you out by providing you with some excessively dry reading on the mining pursuits of Para.
As I mentioned earlier, I had done little to no research on this route, so it was a wonderful surprise to come upon a succession of several more Historic Route 66 towns with varying degrees of kitchy-ness. We stopped at each of them, of course. It must be done. At the hamlet of Cool Springs, we whetted our whistles with a bottle of Route 66 soda. Well, Zach did. I chose unwisely with coffee soda pop and literally gagged on it. I did give it a good old college try and took one more swig then tossed in the garbage. Such a bummer.
Unbeknownst to us, we'd just finished one of America's more notable highways- the Sidewinder Highway, aptly named for its twisty nature and the presence of a particular species of Viperidae. But I wouldn't know about that as I was wholly unsuccessful in locating a single one on this entire 4,000 mile journey even with active searching.
The highway takes you through Sitgreaves Pass- a very picturesque drive if you ever happen to be out that way. The websites I looked at mention it as a favorite for motorcycles, should you be into that.
Crossing I-40 again and hopping onto Rte. 66 again north of the freeway we came upon Hackberry, another historic town kept from cardiac arrest with tourist dollars. This one was a bit more developed with merchandise, a hefty array of snacks, both hot and cold, and photo opps. We spent a fair bit of time amusing ourselves with antique cars, gas pumps, and other relics. Yes, my son rolled his eyes when I asked him to take my picture. Sorry, kiddo, you agreed to travel with me.
One other reason I had chosen to take this lesser-traveled road was for the fact it went through Peach Springs. (Okay, I did do a tiny, very tiny, bit of research.) I had heard that there were some good views of the mouth of the Grand Canyon from there.
There very well could be, but I wouldn’t know for sure. The hike approaches ended up being WAY off target for reasonable-side-trip-for-us. Aside from distance, the one road that goes to the canyon’s edge from Rte. 66 goes through the Hualapai Nation and, while it may be open for the casual traveler, more often than not traversing Tribal lands requires permits or Tribal guides and I just wasn’t able to pre-plan or figure that out. Ah well, it’d already been a long day of travel and we were ready to settle down in a luxurious hotel room, have a hot bath, and good meal, and a bedbug-free night.
Too bad we’d score 0/4 on that.
But, you’ll have to tune in next time for The Adventures of Sleeping in Ashfork on Steppe Knows How to Pick ‘Em!
(not the actual poor choice of Steppe)
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