Stuart Day 4

Five more minutes and I'll have room for another burger

Neville on the Two-Lane Blacktop

My 88-year-old biker pal

Another early reveille and by 6.30 Steve was on the hotel treadmill. Two miles later, he was  complaining about blisters, poor thing! We walked into the breakfast room, where local guests and the owner were glued to the TV. Steve asked with nonchalance and seeming innocence: 'Anything on the news?'. You can imagine the triumphal response! By 8 o clock we were on the road and after a bit of fiddling about managed to find the old R66. So, with MP3 players fully charged and the car stereo turned up to 11, off we went. And what a day we had. For the most part, the road is in pretty poor condition and you trundle through deserted and derelict communities. We were mainly running alongside or near Interstate 40 and the railway line, which used to provide employment for many of the communities. We were surprised at how much traffic was on the tracks, all of it freight. Just about every 5 minutes, a huge mile-long goods train comes trundling along. The first point of interest was Bagdad Cafe, the location of the 1980s cult movie of the same name. The road was generally fairly quiet, apart from literally thousands of bikers on Harleys, many of them from Germany. Amboy was interesting - another formerly thriving town now deserted but recently bought, the whole town including an airport, by an entrepreneur for $400,000. It failed to reach its $995,000 reserve on eBay! While we were at Roy's, an icon of R66 that used to employ 90 people, we noticed that the petrol attendant sporting a gun and I also got chatting to a bunch of bikers who rolled in. They explained that everyone was returning from a 5-day meet somewhere in Nevada. One of them was 88, a WWII vet and still cruising around in his leathers on his 3-wheeler Harley. We lunched in Needles, one of the hottest spots in the US. Temperatures reach 120 in the summer but it was only 86 when we were there. Talking of the weather, we actually saw a cloud briefly today! We then took a big loop through amazing back country terrain to Oatman, a hick Wild West town with wild burros roaming the streets. It was in the Oatman Hotel that Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, in an attempt to escape Hollywood, spent the first night of their honeymoon. Unfortunately, the suite was being refurbished so we couldn't see it. Some of the locations in the town were also featured in 'How The West Was Won'. By now we were in Arizona and the next highlight was the Hackberry General Store, a treasure trove of rusting old cars and R66 memorabilia. Could have spent the day here. And so on to Seligman, where we managed to get the last room in Canyon Lodge. We spent most of the day on R66, probably the only time we'll do this, and it was just superb.