Week-end jaunt

Hubby wanted to take a week-end jaunt. It gets harder and harder to come up with anything new that is close by so we decided to take a trip back in our past. You see we grew up on western Arizona part of route 66; In fact I spent the early part of my childhood in the display window of my folks grocery store.........a whole other post someday.
Living in that little town of Ash Fork, our rival schools were Seligman and Williams so of course we went there often and before I40 bypassed all these little towns it was the only way to get to Kingman/Las Vegas and etc. It had been nearly 40 years since we had been down the old road to the little town of Seligman. They have worked very hard to capitalize on the route 66 interest and in fact many of the original places are still there and open. I was hoping that the Copper Cart restaurant would be open because my folks and I would often drive over and have dinner there.
I remember they had these lantern type lights and my Dad always had a rib eye steak. One time on our drive back home a rock next to the road and our car was struck by lightening...raised the hair on our arms! Well, they weren't open that day so we had lunch at

This was not original but the lunch was good. We headed on down the road towards Peach Springs. I had thought we might go to
the newly built sky walk out over the Grand Canyon and only miles from here until I checked out the price....nearly $60.00 per person. It has brought a nice hotel and restaurant to the nearly distinct little town. If fact all of the other little towns along the way were nearly distinct but hubby had mentioned how he remembered how pretty the little town of Valentine was and indeed if it would been summer instead of winter, it would have been beautiful. This little town was kept alive for years by the tradition of people sending their valentine cards here to be stamped with the little heart shaped stamp of Valentine until Aug. 15, 1990 when the postmaster was shot, robbed and left to die.
We traveled on to Kingman and then took 93 to Laughlin....the little gambling town on the river... spent the night here and came out $80.00 ahead on a penny machine!! Unheard of for me but told hubby....it is really fun to gamble when you win!

Next day we headed back towards Phoenix on 93 but then did the 89 cut off at Kirkland Junction and went to Bagdad.....another memory moment. Over 30 years ago we came here often to compete in fast draw. You come to this copper mining town and you best have all your business done by dark because everything shut down with the exception of the bar back then and when you come here, you can go no where else..... Have to turn around an go back the way you came.
I was hoping that the drive in theater would still be here because I wanted to get a picture of it to show you.....the screen was on a little hill top and then there was a gorge and you parked on another little hilltop across the way. It was quite a sight but sadly no longer there; If fact we couldn't really find anything that was as we remembered.

We undertook the curvy hills of Iron Springs road (some in snow) and on to Bucky's Casino overlooking Prescott, Az. If you have never stayed here give it a try....nice restaurant, rooms and beautiful view. Headed on home the next morning and that was our 580 mile week-end jaunt.