Day 17. July 17, 2016 Yuma to Globe AZ

Left hotel and drove into downtown Yuma.  Saw old prison, bridge and main street area.  Struck out for Dome and saw “bridge to nowhere”.  The road to Dome had a sign saying that it was not maintained so we had to turn around and take alternate route.  Stopped by border patrol but allowed to pass. Saw tens of thousands of covered cows along the route.  Wrote card and mailed it in Tacna.  Picked up dates at park and took them with us.  Stopped at Gila Bend store and Pam was attacked by cactus.  Passed through several rain showers (drops).  Saw old bridge and dam.  Passed through many small towns on the way to Phoenix ….none of much importance.  Saw hills covered with cactus.  Passed through Superior on the way to Devil’s Canyon. The trip through Devil’s Canyon was rugged and stunning.  We can’t imagine how Dandy made it through.  Camped at Globe at the Holiday Inn Express just past the teepee.  Mileage: 317.5  our total miles not including mine to Lenoir is 4900.

 

Started out this morning with a drive thru downtown Yuma.  The weather was cloudy and 96 this morning.  We saw several old buildings, the “Ocean to Ocean” bridge and the old prison.  We also saw a lot of covered parking.  I can understand covered parking, but we all said they should put solar panels on the top of them.  We saw more ugly fences around neighborhoods and no fences around places we wished they had fenced in.  The neighborhoods were just not what any of us think of as pretty.  The terrain is flat, flat, flat, then mountains.  This is probably and old sea bed; that’s the only thing we can think of to make it so flat.   We saw more virga and later got a few drops of rain.    We drove up hwy 95 North to pick up the road to Dome.  Just passed where we were supposed to turn, there was the “Bridge to nowhere”.   We went and saw it and took pictures.  We saw funny fruits growing on bushes that look a little like tomatoes, but we think they must be pomegranates.  We then went back to the Done Road, it looked rough, really rough, and there was a big sign about it not being maintained.  We decided not to go on it and just to go back down to Hwy 80/ I8.   I would love to come back one day in a 4 by 4 with someone that knew the area.

Back on I8/ hwy 80 we went thru the Border Patrol station.  The dogs smelled our car and they asked us if we were US citizens,   We said yes, but then we agreed that we didn’t know who in their right mind would say no…

Then we saw 10’s of thousands of covered cows.  There were covered areas with fans and mist and the cows were all under these.  It really looked strange.

At Dateland we left I8 for old Hwy 80.  We stopped in the park in Dateland and we were all excited because we all found dates.  We got out of the car to pick out the ones we wanted.  We all got in the car and took off.

The sun finally came out and it was 108 degrees.  We saw lots of cacti and several dust devils.  Then we stopped at Gila Bend.  Susan keeps laughing at me because I keep pronouncing it like it was English rather than using the Spanish pronunciation.  There was a cool store off the road and we all bought several items.  Then we found a cactus near the road and took pictures with it.   Pam fell into the cactus, and got a thorn in her.  Pam, didn’t anyone tell you not to hug a cactus?

As we were driving out of town, we passed by the Space Age Motel – part of it is shaped like the “Lost in Space” spaceship.  Then we saw the Yucca Motel.  Susan said “I know yucca is a plant but that is a yucka motel”    Lunch was in the car because there was nowhere to eat.  We made Pam a banana taco to eat.   We saw the old Gila Dam.  It looked like it failed at some point in time.  We then went over the 1926 Gila Bridge and continued onto Phoenix.   After Phoenix we got on Hwy 60 and headed to Superior.  Along the way we really started seeing cacti and saw mountains covered with them.   We made it to Superior.  I thought it was going to look more western since they said movies have been made there.  Susan said, they must have put facades on the front because it wasn’t that pretty.  Then we headed into the Devils Canyon area between Superior and Globe.  Oh my.  I really can’t imagine Dandy’s drive thru this.  This canyon was truly rugged and stunning.  The drop offs and the rock formations and the curvy roads made it so interesting.  In many places we could see the old road and oh my.  I think that our road was crazy and Dandy’s would have been even crazier.

We made it into Globe and liked it so much more than Superior.  It had a cute downtown section and history.   There were several of 40s/50s motor lodges and my favorites were the “refrigerated” ones.   We then headed to our camping spot at the Holiday Inn Express.  [I guess we can all be doctors now  😉  ]  I used 15K IHG points for this hotel and it was the only brand of hotel that I have points for in this town.   We headed to dinner and saw the Hwy 70 END sign.  Yep or local NC hwy ends here in Globe AZ.   We got a picture of the sign later.  Dinner was ok, I sure wouldn’t call it fine dining but it was food.   What can you expect on a Sunday in a small town?   We then went up to the old mine before heading back to our camping site.  We are still on Pacific time because Arizona doesn’t do daylight savings time.  Tomorrow we will lose 2 hours L.