Rick's Space

We have a new family member! Gordo! Named after Gordita, because Taco Dog just didn't sound right! ;)

He is an older Chihuahua, and is a very pretty dog. He is fairly well trained too! His name was Gizmo, but we wanted to name him Gordo. This boy can fetch, jump, sit, he stops when you psshhhh him that he is doing something wrong.

Mocha is our girl, and now we have our boy. And she has someone to play with!

Me and Laura joked about if we get one more, we can name them “Earth Wind and Fire” but two is our limit. We don’t have a big enough house for that!

Photo gallery for today

I’ve been working like a mad man lately, and haven’t had time really to post. However, this weekend we are probably gonna do a day trip, and that means a blog entry and photos, so stay tuned!

And Gary J comes in monday, and we are having dinner tuesday. I am excited!

Also, it was almost 70 degrees today!

When we moved here, we missed approx 1/4 of Route 66, since we went up to Hoover Dam and on to Las Vegas. The few things we didn’t get to do is go from the Mojave Desert to Amboy Ca, all the way past Barstow, CA.

We decided to get out of the house and do just that! Driving south of Las Vegas, we made our way down to Nipton, CA. Nipton is the gateway to the Mojave desert. It has a bar, a post office, and an old hotel which was renovated into a bed and breakfast. We went down through the Mojave Desert to route 66, which runs alongside I-40 for most of the way. I thought the desert would be mostly sand, but I guess that’s only in the middle east. Here they have lots Joshua Trees and cactuses. The mountains are off in the distance, and you can see for miles! The Mojave road has lots of dips in it as well. It was fun driving in the desert.

After finishing the desert, we stopped in Oro Grande, and Cima, CA. It is three buildings exactly. One is a store, which we stopped in and bought chips and stuff to munch on. There are cows out back of the store. These are the first cows I have seen since arriving in Las Vegas.

After that, we went through Kelso, the sand dunes are incredibly different than the rest of the area. Travelling to Amboy, stopping at Roy’s Cafe. Roy’s looks just like the pictures we’ve seen on Eric’s Scott66 blog. We stopped at the “Shoe Tree”. It’s a tree where they hang old shoes. I wish I would have brought some with me. It’s strange to look at. I guess I missed the bra tree and the boxer tree.  We decided to pull off the road to view a train on the tracks. There was two old classic cars from some people doing the same thing. They were really nice looking, so we parked next to it. My brand new car was so dirty, it looked older than those two!

Following the National Trails Highway which is the Post 1931 alignment of Route 66, was a stop at the Bagdad Cafe. The cafe is named after the movie of the same name, of which is a town along the Route 66 we took. The town is gone now, but the cafe moved to Newberry Springs CA. We didn’t stay to eat at the cafe, only going in for a minute or two to look around.

Once you get to Ludlow, CA. The road changes names to Ludlow Rd. After about a mile or so, it becomes a dirt road. With our tires already bad, I didn’t want to take the chance on it, and we backtracked to Ludlow and went across the bridge of I-40 to continue down the National Trails Highway again. The trails hwy goes on for a few miles until it jumps across I-40 again then it meets up with the dirt end of Ludlow Rd, and regains the Trail name. There is a lot of dips in the road there, and lots of pot holes too. The kids loved going 70-80 on the dips. I always loved that when I was a kid too.

You can take it to just about the beginning of Barstow CA. Then it runs into the US Marine Logistics Base. Obviously, we couldn’t go through the base, so we backtracked again to I-40, taking it for one exit, then getting off on Main St in Barstow. When we hit the end of the exit, we notice a sign for Calico, CA which is a ghost town. So we turn to go there, and we see this cool 1950’s Diner, “Peggy Sue’s 1950’s Diner”. We decide to go there to eat, since we haven’t ate lunch or dinner yet. They have a 5 and dime store inside which had a TON of Betty Boop stuff, so Laura of course wanted to buy everything, and we actually did not buy a thing! Money is tight currently.

We decided to skip Calico since the sun was starting to set, aiming to get more down on Route 66. We took Main St all the way through town and down for a ways to the town of Victorville. This is where Route 66 meets I-15 again (once in Barstow, then again in Victorville). There was a cement plant in Victorville with lots of lights on it, all white, which lit up the night. Very cool. It was getting dark, so we decided to jump on I-15 and take that all the way home. It was a 13 hour journey, because I-15 got backed up and at a stand-still for over an hour. And I thought that would be faster, but it would have actually been faster to take Route 66 back that way.

View Full Album

Christmas was nice! It was semi-warm, and you can go up to the mountains to see the snow. The kids got MP3 players (Sansa Fuze 4GB with 2GB Micro-SD cards). Laura got a digital camera, and I got indoor / outdoor slippers!

View Full Album