Route 66 - Day Seven - Sedona, AZ to Santa Monica, CA!

Sedona - a town your mom would love. You drive down through Owl Creek Canyon, and hit a touristy town full of New Age stores, spas, and B&B's. Hotels & motels are more expensive here, too. The drive through the canyon is worth it, but unless you're 50+, you probably won't want to stop here. Hence, I have no pics.

Williams, on the other hand, is a definite stop on the Route 66 trail. A lot of older stores, diners, cafes are more preserved and photogenic. Some are a bit kitschy, but hey! That's Route 66!

Seligman (pronounced 'Slig-man') is a mix of the two: a lot of tour buses stopped there, so we had to manoeuvre around people for only the second time on the trip (the first being at the Grand Canyon). But the town is very unpolished, and the shops are fantastically tacky!

I went into the malt shop, which was worth the drive alone. From the 'Sorry, we're open' sign, to menu items like 'Sundaes - male or female', it promised to be a good place to order something. A young British couple were in there just after me, who were doing a four day trip south from Vegas.

The whole process was like a Marx brothers movie, with Groucho behind the counter.

Jeff: Is it too early to order a malt? (note: it was 10:30 a.m.)
Groucho: It's never too early to order a malt!
Jeff: one peanut butter malt, please.
Groucho: Is it too early for this? (He pulls out a mustard bottle and squirts it at me; the British couple screams. I'm a bit startled, until I realize it's a yellow string that shot out at me)

The couple and I laugh. I pull out a $20 bill to pay for the malt.

Groucho: That'll be $20.
Jeff: What a coincidence! I have a twenty right here.

Groucho takes my twenty, and gives the change to the British couple. He hands me my malt.

Groucho: You want a straw?
Jeff: Yes, please.
Groucho: Here you go.

He hands me a bundle of straw from underneath the counter.

How could you not like a place like that? I only wish we stayed longer.

Oatman: I think this was the start of Ivan's bad mood. We had a really nice drive into it through the Black Mountains. Sure, it was touristy, but it was also cool in a quirky way. There were wild burros wandering the street. I loved it (although once they learned that I didn't have anything to feed them, they didn't have much use for me).

Ivan, on the other hand, liked the idea of it until he realized he'd have to step around piles of burro poop. NOT impressed. I believe there were very few burros in Stoney Creek to prepare him for this.

We ate at the Oatman Motel. It's definitely a odd place: the walls are lined with dollar bills (70 000 of them, according to our waitress), all signed by customers who staple them up. Clark Gable & Carole Lombard stayed here for their honeymoon night in 1939 (presumably before the walls were cluttered up with dollar bills. Here's a vid:



Our waitresses were really friendly. I asked one if there were any wall bills signed by famous people (I did see one signed by 'Justin Bieber', but I'm doubting it was his). She showed me one above the bar, signed by 'Ronald Reagan', but she had heard two stories about it:

• one was that Ronald Reagan signed it when he stopped by in the late 70s/early 80s
• the other was that two guys signed it: one named 'Ronald', and the other named 'Reagan'

We ordered food: mine was a pulled pork sandwich, which was okay, & Ivan ordered a burger & fries, which he did not like one bit. Once we were done, we graffiti'd up some Washingtons and stapled them to the wall (if you ever go there, mine's on the wall in the restaurant on the other side of the bar, near the floor by the stairs).

Iv wanted to take off ASAP, so we drove down the Black Mountains to cross the Cali border at Needles. I gotta admit at this point: this part of the trip was the least interesting. There's a lot of rough land through this part of California on the I-40 to the I-15, without anything to look at. We decided to stop at the Bagdad Cafe, though, in Newberry Springs.

Note: DO NOT STOP AT THE BAGDAD CAFE. Drive by for a picture, at the most, but don't go in! If you've heard of the movie 'Bagdad Cafe', this diner is featured in it. When you walk in and see the locals that are slouched around, you are more likely to think of 'The Hills Have Eyes' or 'Wolf Creek'.

I'm pretty good in most situations, and will end up being in places that maybe I shouldn't, but this was one of the few places I've been where I thought, "I wish I didn't come in."

The place was dirty, the cook/guy who served us was dripping with sweat, and the locals gave us some crazy stares and smirks. We ordered drinks, and got the hell out of Dodge. On to Santa Monica.

I slept in the car after that (fortunately, Ivan was driving), and we got into Santa Monica around 8. Hotels there are much more expensive than we were seeing, but I found one for $70. It was in an okay neighbourhood, but was on the wrong side of dodgy for Iv's taste. The place was clean, but all walls were painted white, there was a bare fluorescent ceiling light, and the beds were the loudest, squeakiest beds you'd ever sleep in (imagine a rusty gate with a speaker hooked up to the hinges).

I've stayed in worse, but this was the icing on the cake for him that day. The aftermath the next morning was as follows:
Jeff: So how'd you sleep?
Ivan: Well, if anyone asks, I can tell them what staying in jail feels like.

For the record, there was no soap dropped.