The Mother Road. Part 7, Nevada and California

We only popped into the state of Nevada. EagleRider had booked us a night in Loughlin, from where we would ride on to California and the final leg of our 2700 mile journey along The Mother Road. Temperatures in the Mojave desert had reached 100 degrees Fahrenheit by the time we made our way from the old gold mining town of Oatman in Arizona - now a new tourist mining town - and into Nevada. Signs along the side of the road reminded us that we were still in the real world, despite having just ridden from a place that looked straight out of a cowboy film. And like almost everything else on Route 66, these poetic versions of the modern gantry’s, watch your speed, hinted of an age where the individual contributed more than the corporation. 

If daisies are your favourite flower – keep piling on the miles-an-hour. 

He carried on driving, as the train neared – death didn’t draft him, he volunteered.

A world without you in it? – carry on at a mile a minute.

Whereas Oatman's brazen attempt to extract money from the visitor was hidden behind history – something practised the world over, from Sydney to Sidmouth – Loughlin was hiding nothing. Our hotel, a large multi-storey thing with multi-storey parking, had a foyer that squeezed in a reception desk amongst rows of slot machines and a restaurant between casinos. The whole ground floor flashed, rang, clanked and chinked… and stank of cigarette smoke.

The next day again saw the temperature rise to over 100 degrees F. The route followed the line of interstate 40, deviating now and again to pass through small settlements and towns, as the desert seemed to go on and on. The land became more scrub than sand and low hills appeared in the distance. Trains, miles long and with containers stacked two high, crossed an otherwise empty landscape. Not for the first time on this trip, we started watching the Harley’s fuel gauge. A gas station with a sign on the door telling customers that complaining about the price was futile, had petrol at twice what we’d payed elsewhere, and there was even a $10 parking fee. We rode on. To be fair, the sign also told of the high cost of maintaining such a service (toilets for customers only), the only one in 100 miles of desert. The road continued straight but the surface was broken in places and we were often down to 20 mph. In fact, for a few miles it was so bad I considered riding on the verge.

Soon we came to Roy’s Café, yet another Route 66 landmark. Although no longer a proper working café, there were cold drinks for sale and, of course, souvenirs. The owner sat by the door brandishing a pistol on his belt and only left his perch to fuel up a truck that had pulled in. The Bagdad Café was next, another place with a connection to the movies, in this case a 1987 film of the same name and one it was understandably determined to cash in on. Two coach loads and several cars arrived, so we didn’t linger.

 The night was to be spent in Victorville, one of the driest places in North America, apparently, and home to some aircraft boneyards. The route had taken us away from the interstate by now and as we continued through the Mojave, a nose cone appeared on someone’s plot. The desert, a backdrop of scrub and sand and a remote bungalow with a bit of a jet airliner out front. 

Bizarre? Well, I thought so. Until we arrived at Almer’s Bottle Ranch, that is, the most bizarre sight of them all. An area of coloured bottles mounted on posts made to look like trees blazing reflected light in the California sunshine, interspersed with various other bits of… erm, old stuff. An old army assault rifle, an old vice, an old till, old hub caps, a few old metal boxes, old metal advertising signs and a decomposing jeep that looked pretty old, all stood behind a low fence at the side of the road. A lot of it, apparently, abandoned when gold mining in the area became untenable and the miners left.  We wandered through, the only people there apart from Almer himself. Every bit the ageing hippy, Almer was a quietly spoken, seemingly self-depreciating man in his 60s by the look of it, who gave the impression there was something more to the bottle collection than he let on. As a kid, his father would take him off to the desert to collect bits of debris, bottles included, so maybe it was all part of happy childhood memories. “There’s still gold out there”, Almer said, as we walked to our bikes.

Everything changed the following day. We intended to take Highway 2 across the mountains of the Angels National Forest, leaving the desert behind and dropping in to the north of Los Angeles, before reaching EagleRider by the afternoon. The weather became cool and increasingly damp. At a fuel stop before we started on the high route, anything that could be zipped up was. The liner went into my Triumph leather jacket and Sue put a fleece on below her gortex. Cloud and mist closed in as we climbed and we saw nothing of the views which must have been there. A tanker truck appeared ahead in the grey, lumbering up the slope through continual bends, its speed at times down to 15mph. Like something out of the film Duel, the rusty heap, with its long bonnet and huge wheel nuts, looked menacing in the gloom. When we eventually managed an overtake, I looked up at the driver and saw the faint outline of a face staring straight ahead. 

We climbed and dropped, weaving through the mountains but still seeing little of them. For a short while the weather broke and blue skies returned. We stopped at a viewpoint and looked down on the wooded valleys below, conifers and scrub as far as the eye could see. It was a short respite and soon we were back in the damp, low cloud, shivering after days spent in the heat of the desert. The road became slippery and bends became things to be treated with extra care. The heated grips went on. Outside Los Angeles, coming again out of the cloud, we stopped at another viewpoint and saw the city in the distance, towering out of a fog that seemed to surround it.

After a coffee stop and warm up on the outskirts of the city, we made our way in on its busy streets. It took an age to get through the slow traffic to Santa Monica. Gone were the open roads, the empty desert, the misty mountains; here were queueing cars, crowded pavements and continual traffic lights. We said farewell to Andy at the pier (and the official end of Route 66) as he had another day before he was due to return his bike, and made our way to EagleRider.

It was a sad goodbye to the Harley; I’d grown to like the motorcycle, appreciating it for being exactly what it claimed to be: a good touring companion – spacious, trusty and strong. It threw up no surprises, delivering a steady, responsive ride. It was comfortable. But, above all, I suppose, it was iconic – the American motorcycle for an American dream road. We thanked EagleRider for a seamless journey, drank their beer – I handed them the keys, they passed a couple of cans over the counter, as if some sort of anaesthetic was needed to soften the blow of journey’s end – and walked out on to the street. I'd loved every minute, every second of the trip and it was only then, standing by the side of the road, that I felt the muscles in my face relax from the smile they’d maintained for almost two weeks.