Episode 5 - Christmas and West to California

Christmas at Bullhead

Well Christmas has come and gone in Bullhead City. It was a very quiet Christmas, we spent the day over at Laughlin, had dinner at one of the casinos and spent some time walking along the boardwalk which stretches from one end of the town to the other along the Colorado River behind the casinos. They go out of their way decorating for the season but it is hard to get into the mood of Xmas when it is warm and no snow.

The big thing that was missing though was our friends from home and no Boxing Day Open House.

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West to Ludlow, Calico and Barstow

So to get back out of the doldrums we decided to go travelling in the truck. We headed down to Needles, California which is about thirty miles away and traveled west on highway I-40. We planned on checking out some caverns on our way but the name we were given for them was wrong so we missed them which means that we will have to do that another time. Our first stop was at Ludlow Calf.. Ludlow now consists of a service station, a restaurant, a lot of empty buildings and a population of 30 people. It seems that the same old story of a town at one time depending on mining and the railroad to survive has turned it into a near ghost town.

Back on the highway again we headed for Calico, a silver mining town that flourished up until the early 1900's. Walter Knott, (the same family that started Knott's Berry Farm) had worked some of the mines took over the town and restored it. They have done an incredible job and it is well worth visiting.

We were there about three hours and the day was coming to an end so we looked for a information centre to see what else was in the area. We were only a few miles east Barstow and in our ignorance figured we would find a centre there. Well we did but it was on the west side of town in a factory outlet centre. This meant taking Interstate I-15 west which at the time didn't seem so bad except that once we found the centre and got the info that we wanted we now had to get back on I-15. We were only two blocks from the highway BUT that two blocks took forty five minutes of bumper to bumper traffic to manoeuvre. We were going so slow that we ended up carrying on lengthily conversations with folks in the cars in the next lane. The only negative time in the line-up was a semi behind us that decided that if he blew his air horn somehow that we would all get out of his way. After ten minutes of air horn music he realized that his theory wasn't working and gave up.

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The plan was to travel back on Interstate I-15 to just east of the California/Nevada border and take shortcut back to Searchlight and then back to Bullhead City. Well as all good plans sometimes have to be altered, we ended coming back on highway #40. While sitting in traffic in Barstow we found a radio station that was giving out road and traffic reports for the area from Los Angeles to Las Vegas and down to Needles. Having plenty of time to listen to these reports and finding out that the traffic was tied up to the California/Nevada border we thought it best that some how once get on the Interstate we should find a way of getting back on highway I-40 and leave the Interstate for the others.

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At this point in time we realized that we were getting hungry and that we had passed a diner just on the outskirts of Calico so that seemed like a good plan to find it again and stop and eat. Now this dinner was called Peggy Sue's and was set up like a '50s diner with the counter, juke box playing and waitresses wearing bobby socks and saddle shoes. We had chocolate milkshakes and hamburgers and for a short period in time we were in the '50s.

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Our trip back on I-40 was mostly uneventful except when we stopped at the rest area. The first rest area was closed for repairs and after 150 Km we pulled into the stop and the parking lot was like a WalMart-Mart lot so I guess everyone else had the same idea.