We climbed for several hours with lots of traffic passing us. Whew what a long climb! Just as we reached the city limits, a tour van passed us alittle too close and then promptly stopped in front of us. Ahhh.... so we stopped and waited with several cars behind us on the narrow road. We finally realized that the "tour guide" in the van was telling the people in the van about the scenery, old buildings. We passed him shaking our heads, wondering why he needed to be 20 feet in front of us to tell them whatever he was telling him. As soon as we got around him, several cars were stopped on the narrow road looking at the burros that run wild in the city limits. Ok people they are mules/burros, we have them in Ohio, it's not really that big of a deal. We finally got around them by passing on the left. When we road into the small touristy town, there was a lot of people walking around looking at the old buildings etc. But all of a sudden WE became a tourist attraction, as people saw us and said, "we passed you three hours ago!". We at lunch at the old Oatman Hotel. It was a really neat old hotel, where apparently Clark Gable and Carole Lombard spent their honeymoon back in the day.
Before we left we watched a "bank robbery" happen. Don't worry the good guy won again. Leaving Oatman we had a steep four mile climb to the top of Sitgreaves Pass at 3550 feet. I stopped counting the switchbacks. It took awhile but we made it! The downhill reminded me of the downhill from Going to the Sun Road in Glacier Park. Good thing for our old drumbrake. The wind was sort of whipping too which made it much more exciting. The ride into Kingman AZ was a long slog up another grinding hill. I think there was a tailwind but sure couldn't feel it. Kingman was 1300 feet higher than when we got to the bottom of the downhill from the pass. Not a terrible climb since it was over 20 miles. By the time we got to Kingman we were pooped. We had an exciting moment just before reaching the city limits, when three cars came up behind us and the third one didn't stop soon enough. He hit the brakes and skidded a bit but thankfully it wasn't too close. When he went by we noticed he was on the phone. Grrrrr.........
We had planned to stay at the KOA in Kingman but when we got to town and stopped for a break, I checked the map and saw the Kingman was separated by a huge hill and guess where the KOA was?? I looked up and saw the Arizona Inn across the street, looked at Hap and said what do you think? He said absolutely! There was a lot of traffic and we had quite a time just crossing the block, but we made it. Whew what a day! We walked across the street (thank goodness everyone had gone home!) for dinner. No problems sleeping that night!
