Day 6: Lake Havasu, AZ to Kingman, AZ - September 19, 2008

Route 66 2008 09 19_0954, originally uploaded by rhanke.

Miles: 86 Miles
Ride Time: 6 hours 3 minutes
Avg. Speed: 14.2
Total Climbing: 7200 feet
Work: 3184 kJ

The weather forecast called for 100 degree temperature in Lake Havasu and last night after dinner it was still in the 90s so it would be worth while to get an early start today.
I was down for breakfast by 6 AM and ready to go by 6:45. We climbed out of Lake Havasu towards Interstate 40. It was a mild climb with a cross wind. We turned left onto 40 west and the cross wind became a tail wind that allowed for speeds of 30 on the freeway. We only had to go 9 miles so the tail wind made it go by fast.

Turning towards Oatman we would pick up the beginning of Historic Route 66.

At first the road was in poor shape that made riding tough but after about 10 miles it smoothed out. The scenery along Route 66 went from marsh to drive river bed to high desert. It was really nice to watch the landscape change. Every ridge we climbed seemed to bring a change. I stopped often along the way to take photos of the approaching mountains, Route 66 signs and cactus.

Shortly after 10 am we reached Oatman and the temperature had climbed to the 90s. Oatman was an old mining town which has become a tourist spot because the burros used in the old mines were set free and are now wild but they seem to come into town to be feed by the tourists.

Lunch was set up in town and afterwards I had a chance to check out the town and the wild burros. Make sure you take a look at the photos. The baby burro almost looks like a stuffed animal.

From Oatman we had our first tough climb up to Sitgreaves Pass, Elev. 3550 feet.

Then it was down hill towards Kingman. I joined up with the Colorado Gang and we formed a nice pace line. It helped a lot since we had to do some more gradual climbing into Kingman. For part of the way we parallel to the BNSF tracks and it was neat to watch the locomotives go up the grade.

Our hotel was across the street from a Sonic so we made our daily stop for chocolate shakes.

Overall this was one of the most scenic rides, based on the number of times I stopped to take photos. I would have to say it is hard to capture the vastness of the landscape with my Canon G9 but it is doing great.

Visit all the photos from today at Flickr.