To California and the Mohave Desert

We left Laughlin, NV and motored on to Barstow, California. We drove most of the day through the huge Mohave Desert which is a very impressive sight. This area was much bigger than I had expected and is measured in the many miles.


I was amazed at the mountains which had no vegetation on them at all. A very desolate, but enchanting area and a beautiful one.

Upon arrival at Barstow, we went to the Fred Harvey House which was built in 1911 as a rail hotel and inn. Unfortunatley, the house was closed (it is open on the weekend), but it was a beautiful building that now houses two museums.


While the museum was closed, there were several great rail displays outside, so all was not lost!


I always love to get up close to engines and equipment, so this was great.

Laughlin, NV -- a true entrepreneurial success

We spent the last two days at Laughlin, NV which is right on the Colorado River and next to Bullhead City, AZ. This is a casino-oriented town, but a real study in one man's vision and entrepreneurial drive (part of the following from www.visitlaughlin.com ). This started after the Davis Dam was completed which controlled the Colorado River and created Lake Mohave directly above Laughlin.

In 1964 Don Laughlin, owner of Las Vegas' 101 Club, flew over Laughlin and offered to buy the property. In less than two years the motel and bar, now called the Riverside Resort, was offering all-you-can-eat chicken dinners for 98 cents, play on 12 slot machines and two live gaming tables. Guest accommodations were available in four of the motel's eight motel rooms. The Laughlin family lived in the other four rooms.

Don's current facility is shown below and called the Riverside Casino. Amazingly, he is the only person I have ever heard of that built and donated a huge bridge to the community!

South Pointe was renamed Laughlin when the U.S. Postal Service inspector insisted Don Laughlin give the town a name-any name-in order to receive mail. Don Laughlin recommended the name of Riverside or Casino, but the postal inspector used Laughlin instead.

As the area continued to grow, it was clear a bridge from Arizona to Laughlin was needed, so in 1987, Don Laughlin funded and built the Laughlin Bridge at a cost of $3.5 million. He donated the bridge to the states of Nevada and Arizona and the bridge carries 2,000 vehicles daily. This has enabled the area to really boom and now there are 14 casinos in the area including this one, the Edgewater.

We enjoyed our visit (and left a few bucks with Don's facility) and visited the growing area. We will be on our way to California tomorrow, but would enjoy returning sometime.

The Planes of Fame Air and Auto Museum

As we drove up to the Grand Canyon, we passed a small airport with several classic aircraft outside. Naturally, we had to stop and check it out on the way back and found the Planes of Fame Museum . I had to take a picture of the Constellation and then went in to see what they had. I figured I would have to come back later since we had Cody, but lo and behold, dogs were welcome! Cody was thrilled (and got in free!).

This was a surprisingly good museum with many interesting and unique aircraft. We were able to spend a couple hours here and learned quite a bit about the different aircraft. The engine that Orinda is standing next to, powered the huge B-36 aircraft and generated over 3,500hp.

Rick and Cody really liked this WWI fighter homebuilt reproduction. It looked like it was about 50% of actual scale and probably flies great.

This Jenny was magnificent and showed all the components that made up this WWI trainer. The woodworking is outstanding and must have taken many, many hours to complete.

Orinda and Cody also liked the A26 which was in excellent condition.

There was an unexpected bonus at the Air Museum and that was a great collection of classic cars including this 1923 Maxwell which had just been full restored.


This Model T truck was also in great shape, but it looks like Cody is getting tired after his long day. Time for him to head for our coach.

The Grand Canyon -- what a great experience

We spent the night in Williams, AZ which is on I40 about 60 miles south of the Grand Canyon. We wanted to visit the Grand Canyon and so drove up early in the morning on the excellent road (Hwy 95). It took us about an hour to drive it and after clearing the admission gate (we have a Golden Access Pass so it was free), went to the El Tovar lodge for breakfast. This is an original Fred Harvey lodge and prides itself on excellent service and amenities. Orinda was delighted with the excellent coffee and breakfast as you can see!

After a great breakfast, we took Cody and walked around the edge of the canyon. The Grand Canyon is a beautiful place and so big that it is hard to really grasp. The average distance from the South Rim (where we were) to the North Rim is about 10 miles. The Canyon is about 5,000' deep!

We really enjoyed looking at the very colorful rock layers and the amazing views. Cody had a great time meeting other folks and taking a very close look at the native squirrels that were not afraid of him at all.

TinkerTown Museum -- a true Original!

We traveled a bit to the east of Albuquerque to visit a unique museum called TinkerTown. Created by Mr. Ross Ward, this museum offers something for everyone. There are walls made of bottles, wonderful carved figures, complete miniature towns, and much more.

We started the tour in the eclectic carved town -- TinkerTown -- which has several "suburbs" including a circus, old west town, and many more that come alive at the press of a button.

There were also several old coin-operated machines such as this "one man band" which operated like a very early juke box. What a cool deal this was.

One of the last exhibits was one of the most interesting to me and that was Theodora R a sailing ship that was sailed around the world over a period of 10 years. This voyage is recorded in an interesting book Ten Years Behind the Mast by Fritz Damler

We had a very interesting and enjoyable visit at Tinkertown where one man's hobby grew into an amazing museum.

A Visit to Petrified Tree National Monument

We left the wonderful Balloon Fiesta and headed to Holbrook, where we stayed at the OK RV park. This was a nice RV park and was very easy to get into and out of. I would recommend it as an overnight or a couple day location.

We took advantage of Holbrook's location to visit the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert National Park. This is located about 20 miles to the east of Holbrook and is an easy morning's exploration. We started our tour at the Painted Desert Visitor Center, located on the north side of I40. The terrain is beautiful and most of it consists of red sand/rocks in many unique formations. This area reminded me of the Badlands of SD, only with red as the main color.

We enjoyed the vistas and the Desert Inn, closed during this time of year, but open in the summer season. We continued on the park drive until reaching the site of the original Route 66 which ran through the park in bygone years. Rick and Cody enjoyed posing next to this old car relic and thinking about how the road transformed our country in the early to mid 1900's .

As we passed south of I40, we found an overlook that featured these amazing petroglyphs which were carved about 2,000 years ago at a place called Newspaper Rock. These interesting pictures are actually carved into the surface of the rock and have endured the years very well.

A bit further on, we began to see the petrified trees. These were amazing and much more numerous than I expected. We were impressed with the size of the petrified logs, some of which were about 3 to 4 feet in diameter and many feet long. Obviously, this had been a very fertile rainforest many years ago.

We saw almost no wildlife, except for several very large ravens such as these. They were obviously not very worried about us. We also had the chance to see several petrified trees up close and, as you can see, Cody, the photo dog, really was impressed by these logs!

Last Morning at Balloon Fiesta -- Spectacular!

We needed to leave today to continue our trip west toward Long Beach and expected to be up and on our way fairly early. However, we realized that it would be difficult to get the motorhome out when most folks were at the fiesta, so decided to drop by the Balloon Fiesta to see what was happening.

WOW -- this was a spectacular day as once again, hundreds of balloons took flight. What was really great was that the balloons were released a row at a time so we could move up and down the field to watch all of them depart. As a result, we were able to watch hundreds of balloons launch over a 2 hour period.

I really enjoyed all the balloons and the special shape ones were really interesting. It is hard to describe the field as all of these balloons are unpacked, prepped, inflated and then launched while thousands of spectators and crew mingle together. I would say it is controlled chaos. Finally, the "zebra" (launch official in a striped shirt) gives the OK to launch and the balloon smoothly rises into the air. Amazing!

The Balloon Fiesta was a wonderful experience and was much more impressive than we expected. I will be sure to return, hopefully many times!