Strength and Beauty, Met Together (Part Three)

If you missed the first of this series, start with Part One here!

After two relaxing nights at Pasadena’s Saga Motor Hotel, it was time to say farewell and start our trek back east. We started Wednesday off right with breakfast at Andy’s Coffee Shop, a no-frills diner less than a mile from the Saga. It’s been there since 1960 and has its fair share of regulars, including our friend Ian Bowen. We had another great visit before we parted ways – him to the Santa Monica Pier and us to Barstow. But Samantha and I stopped again in short order, just a few blocks away.

Econoprint has been providing printing services for more than four decades and recently received a grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Preserve Route 66 program for some paint and facade work. But beyond being a legacy business, this is the shop that prints and ships the EZ-66 Guide – the best turn-by-turn resource guide for anyone wanting to stick to the historic alignments of the Mother Road! I planned to just say hello and thank them for the work that they do, but Darwin, the owner, and his wife Rose were very happy to talk about their projects and the work they do for the National Historic Route 66 Federation, the publisher of the EZ Guide. Darwin is even an artist himself and has created a series of greeting cards that are available at the front counter. It was a wonderful visit!

I’ve gotten to a place in my life where I struggle with a loose schedule. Even when I try not to over-program a trip, I trend towards multi-tasking and I get anxious if I’m not moving fast enough. Bless Sam – she sees when I’m starting to spin and calms me down. In this case, it was leading us to the botanical gardens at the Huntington. She’d had the good fortune to visit some years ago for a James Joyce conference but I’d never even heard of the place. The gardens cover 120 acres and feature themed areas that cover multiple biomes from around the world.

It wasn’t long before I was completely saturated with both wonder and heartache. Mom would have absolutely loved the gardens and I’m sure would be telling me all about the plants we were walking past. Sam and I spent an hour and a half walking the grounds; eventually, my grief was replaced with gratitude and I was much more relaxed. The gardens are just incredible and a must-see.

Even though our afternoon was filled with a lot of driving in heavy traffic, the walk through the gardens kept me in good spirits. We stopped for lunch at the Mitla Cafe in San Bernardino. Surprise, surprise: it’s another grant recipient from the National Trust, this time through our Backing Historic Small Restaurants program. I hadn’t been able to stop on previous trips even though it’s a pretty well-known landmark so I was extra happy we were able to work it in. This Mexican-American mainstay has been on Route 66 since 1937 and the food is phenomenal.

We had one more planned visit for the day and that was at the California Route 66 Museum in Victorville. Our friend Delvin was a docent there for a long time and although we got to visit with him briefly out at the Road Runner’s Retreat lighting event almost a week earlier, we wanted to spend a little more time with him and check out the museum. I hadn’t been inside for ten years, which is difficult to believe, but it was Sam’s first time.

Our final stop of the day was a place Sam has been dreaming about since she first saw photos of it: Bottle Tree Ranch. If you’re unfamiliar with this roadside forest of glass and metal, it was pieced together by the late Elmer Long. This parcel of land in the desert landscape contains scores of metal “trees” that are filled with colorful glass bottles and other salvaged items, from typewriters to road signs to full-fledged cars. It is a labor of love, a whimsical, colorful forest amidst the desert landscape. After Elmer’s passing in 2019, his son Elliott took over and continues to care for the site today.

We overnighted in Barstow and continued east the morning of Thursday, November 13th. We finally had a day where I hadn’t scheduled ANYTHING. We could get up and get around at our leisure! Of course, I still woke up before 6:00 AM local time.

After a slow morning, we continued into the desert. When we got to Newberry Springs, I was excited to see that the door of the Bagdad Cafe was open; we got to visit with the folks inside. They were super friendly! I’m glad the location is still standing but it’s clear that it needs a lot of work to get back to full working order. Preservation never ends. On that note, when I mentioned the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the gentleman inside whipped out his phone and showed us photos of the 2018 caravan he took when it came through!

We had a wonderful lunch at the Ludlow Cafe (a charming little diner and one of my faves) before stopping again at Roy’s Cafe in Amboy. Although we had driven through Amboy five days earlier, it was pitch black nighttime. It was my first time back since John Cerney’s great roadside murals had been installed across the road from the station and they didn’t disappoint. It’s a great tribute to the late Albert Okura, whose son Kyle continues to work on bringing the town back to life.

We crossed into Arizona, losing an hour of time in the process, and then proceeded onto my favorite stretch of 66: The Oatman Highway. It’s hard to really nail down my ABSOLUTE favorite part of the highway that dominates so much of my life, but the twisting two-lane through the Black Mountains has to be it. It was a quiet drive for the most part, though of course we met several bands of burros that were curious if we had food for them. Alas, we did not. The sun was still up but Oatman had already begun closing down, so we passed through without much fanfare. We stopped and got out of the car at Sitgreaves Pass, the highest point on Route 66 through the Black Mountains. The view from the summit there is just remarkable, accentuated by how peacefully silent it was during our short visit.

One descent into Kingman later, we arrived at our destination: Tin Can Alley. This new “attraction” is a garden of vintage Airstream trailers that can be rented out for overnight stays. Each trailer is named for a different Arizona community and the interiors have been beautifully refurbished into modern, retro accommodation. Sam told me very quickly that we can stay here ANY TIME we come to Kingman.

Well, that’s good, because we had TWO night booked there…it’s just that it was separated by a night in Seligman. I wasn’t sure how our schedule was going to shake out on the drive, so I had already booked a night at the Aztec up the road for Friday night. But we’d be back, and the final trip report from this California/Arizona trip is posted here.