Day 8: Saturday, March 25, 2016
Today we visited the desert.
We’ve been in the desert for a little while, but today we came to
appreciate it.
We started the day a
little lazy, but we finally made our way to Oatman, AZ, the ghost town that just won't die.
Oatman is down the original Route 66
alignment.
It’s
a crazy, twisty, turny
road through some mountains, complete with the remains of an ancient car
wreck where someone missed a switchback, and I was really glad I had my
Lewis and Clark
Bands.
(These, by the way, were the best
investment of the whole trip.
I bought
child-sized SeaBands for Jack, who also gets violently car sick, but I got
these Lewis and Clark bands for myself because they have adjustable Velcro and
I have tiny wrists. I have not been sick once this entire trip, and I should
have been sick all day most every day.
I
highly recommend them!) When we arrived there, Aunt Gale and Uncle Mikey in
tow, we found the town was about a block long, but it was filled with enough
people for at least 3 city blocks.
It
was a lot of fun.
There was a (fake)
shoot out in the street as the Wells Fargo was “robbed” by an outlaw.
There
were wild burros roaming the streets looking for and receiving treats
pretty much every 3 feet because there was always someone willing to
feed them. And there were giant ice cream cones.
There’s no way to go wrong on a stop like
that.
Our next stop was to London Bridge in Lake Havasu City.
This is something Jackson had learned about somewhere and just HAD to see. The real, actual, honest-to-god London Bridge
currently resides in a city in the Arizona desert.
A businessman was building a town in the
desert, and he wanted to convince people to go there.
So, when he heard that the London Bridge was
for sale because it was sinking into the Thames, he went to London, bought the
bridge, and had it taken apart brick by brick, numbered, loaded onto barges,
sailed from London to California, and then had it brought to the desert by rail
where it was meticulously reassembled using the number system devised in taking
it apart.
Now it stands in the middle of
the desert for tourists to marvel at and weird water-powered hover board riders
to perform tricks under. Uncle Mikey even discovered the cache we were after,
his first find!
Our last stop of the day was to visit some REAL desert at a
piece of property Aunt Gale owns.
Driving by, the desert looks monotonous and dead.
Up close and personal, it is a completely
different experience.
In the shade of a
mountain, we found blooming cacti, giant Joshua Trees, soaring saguaros, and
all sorts of life underfoot.
Her
property is home to a matate, which ancient Native Americans used to grind corn
and other grains into flour.
More
interestingly, it is home to a military plane wreck from the 1960s.
Two planes were practicing some sort of
maneuver over the desert when they collided.
I believe the story goes that one was able to limp back to the base, but
the other spiraled out of control and broke apart in the air, half landing
farther up the mountain where we were not prepared to climb and the rest
landing farther down where we were able to inspect it.
Both the pilot and copilot were able to
safely eject (though I wonder how safely they were able to land considering the
landscape!) and there were no fatalities, but the wreckage remains and the boys
had a really great time finding springs and wires and pieces of glass and
melted metal.
A
little boy's dreamland! Of course, it was a mother's nightmare.
Everywhere you look, teddy bear cholla chunks littered the ground, and
other cacti lurked around every corner, just waiting for an unsuspecting
little boy to forget to watch where he was walking and run right into
them. In fact, at one point, Tucker and Max both had cacti stuck to the
bottom of their shoes and Tucker had spikes going clear through his
shoes, and then while we were dealing with that situation, Jack took a
bad step and slipped down a hill, ending up with cactus spines in him,
as well! Never a dull moment!
All in all, it was a really great day. We
got to see some pretty cool stuff, and it was a lot of fun hanging out
with Aunt Gale and Uncle Mikey.
Easter Sunday. Today
was not a great day. It started off
ok. The bunny came, we looked for eggs,
we found baskets, then everyone got dressed in their Easter best and we went
for an Easter Hike up the mountain we are currently residing on and found a tiny herd of elk by a
pond. There were two playfully chasing
each other around, in and out of the water and clearly having a great
time. Then there were two actually in
the pond, drinking water and giving the others looks that I’m sure Mike and I
have given to the boys. We didn’t get
closer because Tuck was afraid he’d get eaten, but it was a pleasant walk. Later, however, things took a turn for the
worse. We have been on this vacation
behaving as though everything is fine hunky-dory. In reality, Mike’s Dad is gravely ill. That’s actually a bit of an
understatement. He has late-stage
pancreatic cancer. The really bad
kind. We only found out about this in
the few days before we were supposed to leave, and only had it confirmed while
Mike was busy passing his actuary exam in the hours before our intended
departure. We talked to doctors, family,
and friends, and finally decided to leave anyway. There was nothing for us to do, and nothing
was truly known. His doctor herself gave
her blessing. When we returned in 3
weeks, there would be more to do and still plenty of time. But today, it doesn’t appear that this is
actually the case. I had to send my
husband home to his father and family while I put on my big-girl panties and
stepped up to finish this thing without him.
I don’t really want to. This is
our family’s epic vacation. It’s not
much of a family vacation without the heart of our family. But here I sit, alone in the mountains of
Arizona, contemplating what to do with my children tomorrow to keep their minds
off the fact that their father has flown away. We explained why, and I think
they get it, but I’m getting a lot of attitude from Jack. I don’t blame him. The fun parent left. Still doesn’t change
anything.
