Home Again

I am going to try and probably miserably fail to describe to you the beauty that we witnessed on our journey into Arizona by way of Nevada.  We even rode a few miles into California, just so we could say we did.  

We experienced a wide range of temperatures, starting out so cold that my summer riding jacket over two shirts left me shivering. By the time we left Nevada it was 108 F – 43 C. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

After spending a night in the Excalibur in Vegas we picked up our trusty steed at Eagle Rider.  The 2012 Harley Davidson Electra-Glide doesn’t come cheaply for a week but it does come with unlimited mileage. Eagle Rider Las Vegas turns out about 100 bikes a day in the peak season and this is definitely peak.  We chose the Electra-Glide because of its extra storage – the so-called “pizza box” behind the passenger seat.

We deliberately planned an easy first day, booked to spend the night in Kingman, Arizona, one of the few remaining intact sections of the legendary Route 66.  It’s also known as The Mother Road. It’s one of the original US highways, built in the 1920’s but once the Interstate highways started taking most of the traffic, the ol’ Route 66 was no longer considered relevant.  With truck traffic off on the bigger highways, Route 66 is an excellent place for bikers to travel.  There are souvenir shops and historical points of interest dotting the route but there are just as many abandoned relics from when it was the only way to move goods through the area.

Gus’s Dance Hall used to be a going concern.

Cactus life really changes in the desert as does the climate.  The Kingman area is populated by these short and spiky ones I nicknamed Beaker Heads after the crown of my favourite Muppet.

And there was a lot of this – bare land with beautiful mountains in the distance.  Sometimes we could see two or three layers of mountains but the camera never seemed to capture them nearly as well as the eye did.  It was a beautiful, serene landscape in which to rumble on a bike.  Kingman is a nice town of about 30,000.  Nearly every type of business imaginable is named after Route 66!  Like the song says, we sure got our kicks.  But it was cold.  It dropped to well below zero overnight and since we’re early risers, we started out our days in pretty crisp conditions.  Derek was fine with the wind blocked by his Free-FM jacket but it was whistling right through my layers and making me shiver.  So who would have imagined that a one-legged rider would save the day for me?  That story tomorrow.