homeward bound

Got up early this morning, skipped the shar and hit the road, thinking we'd put on some miles while it stayed (relatively) cool.  The thoughts ran something like this:  if Dapple couldn't deal with the afternoon heat, we'd find a town, let her rest, and amuse ourselves sightseeing or junk shopping or even check into a motel, sleep some, and plan to run in the evening/night to catch the cool. We were gearing up - well, I was gearing up - for the long run across the Mohave desert to Barstow, where there's not much of anything on the highway and you KNOW the temps are going to be fierce.

We stopped in Winslow for brunch at La Posada, an enchanting restored railway hotel.  It would've been easy to while away the afternoon there - the grounds are charming and the restored inside featured several art museum rooms and a large traveling display of the Women of Winslow.  But we didn't have the day to spend, so we settled for wandering downtown and through a small museum, and of course visiting the famous Corner before we got back on the road.

The highway out of Kingman was a holy terror for me, steep, windy, narrow, and cliffside - replacing my roasted-alive and flash-fried fantasies with thoughts of tipping and rolling into a flaming ball of Dapple at the bottom of a canyon.  Fun, that.  Of course Road Warrior is amused no end by this, but HE'S driving.  I'M on the cliff side.  Dapple the Brave choked some, but made it to the top, where we BOTH took a rest.

The top of the road made it worthwhile, though - a totally unexpected little kitsch western town, right there at the top of B*F* Nowhere Mountain, and it's full of BURROS.  We did see some burros on the drive up the mountain, but I didn't get photos, and Road Warrior kept assuring me I'd see more, and of course I thought, "Well, how the hell does HE know?"  But he did know, because he's been to Oatman before.  The burros just wander the street and hang out, though from the look the one gave me I do not think they are exactly TAME.  Anyway, the town looked like a Disney town, way overdone, and the idea of wandering irritable burros appeals to me for some reason. 

It was downhill from there, literally and figuratively, as it had been a very long road day and M was driving through Big Rig Hell, where the trucks go by constantly at very high speeds, and dark is NOT your friend.  We crossed the border back into our home state at Needles, where we gassed up and noted the time and temp - 7 p.m. and the thermometer can speak for itself.

After failing to find an RV park in Barstow,  or any RV park farther on that had BATHROOMS (Hey, I don't ask for much, but...)  we found the Boron Motel and turned in.  A decent day for Dapple the Brave.  She does stumble some, and hills and heat are difficult, but she set sail across a long desert today and brought us all the way here.  A pat on the back for the old trooper.  Oh, and Dapple, too.

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