Grand Circle Tour of the Canyons - 3

Day Five - Kingman to Kingman - Tues

Tried again to get to the Grand Canyon - via Phoenix, then Flagstaff but no luck and a horrendous, terrifying drive. Snow and ice on the roads, trucks and SUVs whizzing past far too fast with their invincibility cloaks on.

Day Six - Route 66, Oatman, London Bridge - Weds

Spent the day around Kingman as I didn’t believe the roads would be clear enough to drive to the Grand Canyon, even though the tourist info guy said they were OK, but after yesterday I didn’t want to risk it. So it was a Route 66 day, I drove from Kingman to Oatman, which is an old goldmine town and now a ghost town, well ghostish town, it’s more of a tourist trap now than anything else. The drive along this small section of Route 66 was spectacular, going up through the mountains, along windy roads with switchbacks and steep drops.

Oatman was in the middle of nowhere, with burros walking down the street, they’re descendents of the original gold mine burros, but are wild now, so can kick, bite and generally be unfriendly, so I kept my distance but watched some braver (or more foolish) tourists get closer and feed them, one or two got bitten as well. There’s not much of a feel of gold about the town, apparently they have gun shooting displays during the day, but not when I was there, it was mainly tourists and burros walking the main, and only, street.

After Oatman I drove south, still along Route 66, down from the mountains onto the plateau, which was very much desert like, with areas of the road prone to flash flooding, you can see where the creeks would flood the area, plus there were lots of cactus and the views of the mountains all around were awesome.

Further south still is Lake Havasu City, which I carried on to. It seems to be mainly famous for one thing: London Bridge. It was bought by an American entrepreneur and it is said that he thought he was buying Tower Bridge, but that could be an urban myth. It is quite funny when you get to the bridge, as they seem to have set up a sort of little England, with City of London dragons at the entrance to the area and a pub, phone boxes, letter boxes (though not the cool letter boxes) and attempts at half timbered buildings. It’s all very weird as none of it really resembles London, let alone England at all, the hot sunshine (yay, it was warm), palm trees, cactus really seemed out of place. But it was fun and there were plenty of pigeons to make me feel at home.

Day Seven: Kingman to Hoover Dam, via Williams and the Grand Canyon entry - Thurs

Attempt three to get to a canyon, preferably the Grand Canyon, so I drove along the I40 towards the Grand Canyon Village exit in Williams. Made it 200+ miles along the I40 to the Williams exit and took the turning to be confronted with ice on the roads, so it was another case of turning around and heading back the same way I’d come. I think I know the I40 better than I ever wanted to. So much for the guy in Kingman’s Arizona tourist centre saying the day before it was fine to get to the Grand Canyon, there was no way I was risking another terrifying drive on icy roads, rain was also predicted that night, so the roads would probably be slick the next day.

In light of this, I headed towards the sun and Vegas. On my way from Bryce National Park to Kingman, via Vegas I saw a cheap hotel on the 93, with a casino and the best shrimp cocktail in Nevada, with rooms at $14.95 I thought I’d stop there. It’s right next to Hoover Dam so I could mooch around the dam and stay in a cheap (but not too shabby hotel, cheaper than the hostel in Vegas) before heading back to Vegas and the Stratosphere Hotel on Saturday night.