Day 38 Summer 2010 Park to Park Road Trip

Today is a turning point in our summer vacation…as I look at the car this morning, I see that it is pointed in a North East direction. This can only mean one thing… we are heading for home. The vacation is not over, but every day that passes now will bring us a day closer to when we have to return to work in September. Not a pleasant thought… so lets forget about that and go to Las Vegas instead.

When we planned this trip several months ago, we had decided that when we leave Needles CA that we will head for Hurricane UT and just drive around Las Vegas and avoid that traffic.. Well last night I got to thinking that it would be a fun thing to stop in Vegas for an hour and go and see the setting of one of our favourite TV shows.

So we leave Needles CA behind us and cross the border into Nevada. We drove past the large solar generating plant near Searchlight NV. We saw this 2 years ago when we were leaving Las Vegas and heading to Lake Havasu AZ. The layout has grown since then.

Shortly after that we could see the skyline of Las Vegas. Yes, that is air pollution that is hanging in the air.

The purpose of our alteration in plans and driving into Las Vegas today is to visit the Gold & Silver Pawn Shop. No, we are not running out of money and need to pawn something so that we can continue our vacation… If you don’t know this Pawn Shop, then you don’t watch Pawn Stars on the History Channel. This TV show documents the daily activities of the owners and employees in the Pawn Shop and the weird and wonderful things that people bring into the pawn shop to either sell or pawn.

We parked in the pawn shop parking lot and immediately noticed that there was a line-up to get inside. Seems we are not the only ones who watch this show, and the pawn shop has become a tourist attraction. We lined up and waited about 1o minutes before we were allowed to enter.

I guess what surprised me the most was how small the place actually is. Obviously when they are filming there are not 100 fans milling about inside, perhaps that is what made it seem smaller in size than what I had imagined.

We wanted to buy a souvenir of our visit, and there were several different styles of T-shirts that we could have bought, but they were out of our sizes. I asked if they had a hat pin for my pin collection, but no, they didn’t have any hat pins. We followed the line to the back of the shop were we got to pose with Chumlee. I said “hi” to him, and said “it is nice to meet the famous Chumlee”, but he said nothing and just posed with us for this photo. I guess the shop has finally found something productive for Chumlee to do that even he could not screw up, but he really seemed bored with the whole “posing with the fans” thing. All in all, I wasn’t expecting to see any of the stars of the show, they do have a business to run and can’t be standing around all day posing for photos, so having this photo op with Chumlee was a bonus. Apparently the “Old Man” was in the back, but he had already been out on the shop floor posing for photos.

Here is our photo with Chumlee.

We left the shop and headed to our destination of Hurricane UT. By the time we get there, we will have been in 4 states today and moved into a new time zone. California, Nevada, Arizona and Utah.

The scenery was flat and desert like as we headed North out of Las Vegas.

We saw the Welcome to Arizona sign as we passed from Nevada into Arizona.

The scenery gets more interesting as we head towards the State line of Utah.

Here is the Welcome to Utah sign as we entered Utah.

Tomorrow will be an interesting day and I hope that we can get some good photos. We are going to visit an observation area and hopefully see some California Condors.

Till then, if you would like to see all of todays photos, you can click on this link to my FLICKR site.

Day 37 Summer 2010 Park to Park Road Trip

This morning we leave our hotel in Yucca Valley California and head back North to Barstow CA. Our plan for today is to drive along Route 66 from Barstow CA to Needles CA.

Two summers ago we drove Route 66 from Needles CA to Joliette IL so here is an opportunity for us to fill in one of the pieces that we have not driven.

As anyone who has driven Route 66 will know, the train tracks follow the Route very closely, certainly that is evident out here in California. Every 15 minutes or so, we see another train on the tracks.

We saw this old worn out sign, I wonder what it said during the hay days of Route 66.

And here comes another train…

This was all fenced off, but I suspect that it was an old Agriculture Check Station at one time. When we got to our hotel for the evening I checked online and found out that, in the movie “The Grapes of Wrath” which took place on Route 66, the Joad’s were stopped at an Agriculture Check Station at Daggett CA and this station is just on the outskirts of Daggett, so this is indeed the same station that was used in the movie.

We like that CA has painted Route 66 shields on the pavement, it re-assures us that we are on Route 66.

We stopped at Roy’s Motel & Cafe in Amboy CA to take some photos and to buy a hat pin to add to our Route 66 collection.

An abandoned business between Amboy and Needles CA.

And another train heading Westbound.

More abandoned businesses.

Then we pulled into Needles CA. and stopped at the Wagon Wheel Restaurant and Gift Shop.

We enjoyed our drive on Route 66 today. Sometime in the future we will have to complete the section from Barstow to the Santa Monica Pier. There are also other alignments of Route 66 that we should drive, such as the alignment that goes North to Santa Fe NM, we bypassed that in 2008 and took the shorter alignment.

To see all of our photos from today, you can see them by clicking on this link to our FLICKR site.

Day 35 Summer 2010 Park to Park Road Trip

Back in 2008 we drove Route 66 from Needles California to Joliette Illinois. So since we are in Barstow California, it made sense for us to visit the Route 66 Museum in Barstow. Unfortunately, the museum is closed today. It is only open on the weekends. We did stop and see the Harvey House and drove past some of the Route 66 businesses. We will return to Barstow in a couple of days because we want to drive from Barstow to Needles California and fill in that part of Route 66 that we did not drive in 2008.

We left Barstow CA and headed towards Joshua Tree National Park. We will visit the park this afternoon and return again tomorrow.

We entered the park and showed our annual pass.

There wasn’t much to see once we first entered the park, but then it got interesting as we started seeing some Joshua Trees.

We started seeing some desert cactus.

Then the part of the park we were in totally changed from desert cactus to dramatic rock formations.

This next rock is called Skull Rock. Sure looks like a skull to me.

These rocks remind us of giant potatoes.

So if you like Rocks and Joshua Trees and Desert Cactus you will enjoy Joshua Tree National Park. We would like to come back to this park again, but come back in April when all the Joshua Trees are in bloom.

After our visit to Joshua Tree National Park, we met back up with Patty at the hotel in Yucca Valley CA. We had dinner at a nearby Sizzlers Restaurant.

There are many more photos that we took today, so if you wish to see the rest of the photos, click on this link to my FLICKR site.