29 Palms and Joshua Trees

 Wednesday, May 5 (b) for Tuesday, May 4, 2021

A day of driving and seeing -- along Route 66. We started our from our hotel in Needles, went into the town and found a little museum. 

Sorry, not too much to see there, though we did have some discussion with the ladies who ran the museum. They must not get too many customers, because they talked us to death!

We were in the desert, for sure. We stopped at the desert oasis, for the "last gas" for a while. You can see that is how it is priced. As an aside, we have not paid as much as $4.00/gallon yet, though we are getting close!

We passed through a number of small towns, and our guidebook alerted us for a few things to look for, but we were pretty disappointed because many/most were gone. However, we found a little fun in Amboy. Our opening picture is of the sign for Roy's Motel and Cafe. The bottom line is that Roy's right now is only a convenience store and a couple gas pumps. But there is an interesting story.

A man named Albert Okura made a fortune in Juan Pollo restaurants, which specialize in rotisserie-style chicken. In 1998, he purchased the location of the original McDonald's, which opened in 1948, but was now in foreclosure. He restored the restaurant and created a museum there, too. He eventually decided to get involved in the revival of Route 66, and in 2005 he bought the TOWN of Amboy (supposedly off eBay!) for $425,000. My sources for this are Wikipedia and the gentleman pictured below, who works for Mr. Okura.

Randy was fascinated with the work done on the lobby for the motel business, which is the only part of the motels which is done, but done very well, as you can see.

The little "cabins," which are the motel rooms, are in various early stages of reconstruction. Randy took the pictures of one of the cabins that was open.

                                        

The convenience store is quite nice, with most of the standard souvenirs, curios, and snacks and drinks.

The gentleman below was my main source of information. Forgive me, if I got his name, I have already forgotten it. He serves as mayor, fire chief, police chief, and postmaster of the town. He is also a military veteran.

He was going off-duty, and said this was his fire chief's vehicle.

He also told the story that when Mr. Okura bought the town, the U. S. Postal Service was going to de-activate the post office, and remove all the equipment. Somehow Mr. Okura went to court and got that stopped, so it is a working post office again.

We continue on through the desert until we came to the town of 29 Palms. We stayed in one of those old-style motels, but as Randy said, we were no longer on Route 66, so we can't count it!

After settling in a bit and getting things out of the car, because it was just darned hot, we headed to Joshua Tree National Park. I had visited the park for the couple days I was working at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Cener Twentynine Palms in 2005. I was very impressed with the Park and wanted Randy to see it.

We started at the Visitor Center and Museum, and looked around and talked to a couple of the Park Rangers. We didn't stay too long, because we intended to return later in the evening.

We had a great meal at The Rib Company, and returned to our room for a bit.

Just before dusk, we returned to the Park. We weren't too sure where we wanted to be, but we wanted to capture the Park at sunset. I have a picture on our home PC that was my desktop background for many years, which I took way back in 2005. We didn't get exactly what we wanted, but still have what we hope are some good shots. But first -- as we were traveling to some of the trail areas, we found a jackrabbit, long ears and all. (Sorry, not a jackalope.)

We were there before the sun got too low, but it went down fast, because of all the mountains on the horizon.

I had heard of creosote for many years, but had never seen it -- this is it.

Randy was especially happy with this picture, especially when we found a post card that looked very similar.

As we say, a picture cannot duplicate what we saw -- the haze in the air produced a neat almost rainbow effect of gradual blue - magenta - coral colors.

We very definitely did NOT walk 7.5 miles, and unfortunately did not see any bighorn sheep, either!

In the next entry, you'll actually see Joshua Trees in the daylight!