We had a good location while staying in Laughlin, Nevada. We were wedged in there between California and Arizona and were able to take short trips to interesting places. One thing we did was take a trip down Historic Route 66. I've always wanted to do that for some reason. Now that I've done it, I won't want to do it anymore. It's out of my system. It was fun, the road was very narrow and curvy, and popped in and out of small hills. I felt like I was on a roller coaster when Steve said he was starting to get sick. I thought he was joking, but Sami seconded it and before we knew it, Leo (our dog) threw up in Steve's lap. Yep, it all happened that fast!
We took the road to a living ghost town in Arizona called Oatman. It was an old mining town in the mid-1800s and when the mining ended, the miners just let their burrows go and left town. The burrows survived and hung around in the old ghost town that was nestled up in the hills. Their off-spring still roam the streets and folks go up there to see them and feed them carrots.
There is about 100 people who live there now and sell T-shirts out of the old, run down buildings that are still there. The most exciting thing that has ever happened there is Clark Gable spend his honeymoon in the hotel. It was a tacky little town, but the burrows were overly friendly and would sometimes follow you into the stores if you carried a carrot! One of them chased Samantha around until she threw her carrots down on the ground! She made a scene, but it was really funny.
Another activity we did from there was to hike a canyon called Grapevine Canyon. We had some folks tell us it was a good place to go, but we had no idea how incredible it would be. We took a wash into the canyon and at the mouth of the canyon there were hundreds (I'm not exaggerating) of pictographs all over the rocks. I've never seen anything like it and I doubt anything will impress me more. After we got home, I looked it up on the inter net and they believe that the pictographs have been there for 1000 years left by the ancestors of the Mojave Indians. The rocks were amazing, huge rocks that balanced on smaller ones. I think God did that just to make us wonder about it! The kids loved climbing all of the different formations, and looking at the pictographs left by the Indians. It was one of our favorite places to go while we were there.
I have long wanted to see the London Bridge that is in Lake Havasu City and I finally got to go there. Before we went, I looked up the history on it and was a little disappointed to know that it wasn't the original London Bridge. It was built in London in 1825 because the original tower bridge was "falling down", then again in the 1960s London needed to build another bridge to accommodate the larger flow of traffic and put this one up for auction. In 1968, a man in the US bought it and had it brought over to the States. Each brick was labeled and it was reassembled in the desert near a lake called Havasu in Arizona. Once the bridge was complete (three years later) they dug a canal from the lake to the bridge and now they have a nice little island city out there in the desert. It was still really fun to go and walk on and under it. Auby understands that we've been to the London Bridge, but didn't go to London, which is surprising because he thinks he's been to a birthday party in England, but it was only Marshall, Texas!
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