| Although we started off on I40 heading west we soon turned south
on AZ95 which we found was also part of historic Route 66. At one time we
had thought we would travel that, but this has really been the first time we
have touched it. |  |
 | So we came to Lake
Havasu City. This is a fairly new town in the middle of the Arizona desert
built on the edge of a reservoir, and occupied almost entirely by snowbirds
and retirees. However its main claim to fame is
that they bought and re-erected London Bridge. Perhaps they thought they were
buying Tower Bridge but no. It sits in the middle of town surrounded by a
few other tourist traps including Big Ben chiming. It didn't sound quite
right to us. Neither did the stand selling beef jerky... |
| But the bridge looks good. It is a bit shorter so I guess they
had a few bits left over. Their river is not quite so wide as the Thames.
They installed the bridge on dry land then extended the lake to flow
underneath it. It was actually a beautiful and very restful scene. |  |
 | The lights on the
bridge were cast from cannons from the Napoleonic wars. I suspect the
significance of that is lost on most of the tourists passing through. |
| They also had some heraldic lions which are replicas of those
which surround London itself. |  |
 | Moving quickly on we
came to Parker Lake and Dam. There is also a de-silting plant to remove the
deposits picked up on the Colorado's passage through the Grand Canyon. The
white bits in this picture are extended roofs on the trailer town at the side of the lake.
This did not look to be such a wealthy area for housing although there was a well
looked after golf course. |
| The land got a bit desolate and desert from there on as we
reverted to heading west towards Joshua Tree National Park and Los Angeles.
Basically there was 100 miles of nothing except a virtually straight road
and salt flats. Back to mirages.... |  |
 | After 100 miles you
get to a town called '29 Palms' (it seemed a bit odd to have a number in the
name of a town). This has a visitor centre for the Joshua Tree
National Park and marks the northern entrance. We didn't visit it this time but
may try to on our way back towards Phoenix. This collection of cacti were at
the visitor centre. No Joshua trees though, they only grow in one half of
the park (Mojave). The other half (Colorado) is some 3000ft higher, so has a
completely different ecology. |
| Which all means you have to head down. At the bottom of this hill
is the San Andreas fault. The road got progressively busier from 29 Palms to
Joshua Tree and now down to join Interstate 10. |  |
 | The road threads
through a gap in
the mountains here, surrounded by a wind farm.
It must get pretty windy here but today we only saw five rotating out of
what must have been 500. |
| No wind means smog and we started to hit it fairly soon. At this
point we are still 50 miles from Los Angeles, in a traffic jam which was
moving real slow. The next 30 miles took over two hours. Now why did we come
here? |  |
 | The
site we finally arrived at (and stayed at for the next week) was Prado
Regional Park just outside the town of Chino. |
| This wasn't quite the gatekeeper but could well have been. It was
very tame and came close looking for food. |  |
 | We did walk round
the lake one day watching the various birds which stop over here. |
| And most unusually we found a spider spinning a web on the
outside of the camper. This one was almost an inch in diameter. We left it
alone, and it had disappeared by the following morning. |  |
|