Back to Arizona

Day 28  Saturday, 30^th April 2011

There was a cool refreshing wind blowing as we left El Centro but that soon changed into very strong gusting blasts as we headed North on the North Lake road towards Coachella. We had to take the Interstate 10 east for  30 miles or so before we could catch the 195 north through the Joshua Tree National Park.

I had visited the park a few years back with a retiring work mate, Jim Mason, but it was in the middle of summer then and much hotter than it was today as we went over the mountain top. We had been in search of Cap Rock back then, a place where Gram Parsons was cremated by his friends – if you don’t know the story have a look here under the section headed "Death".

We weren’t looking for cap rock this time, just some more fuel which we found at the exit of the National Park at Twenty Nine Palms.  This gave us enough juice to carry on along the Twenty Nine Palms Road (route 62) until we got to Parker where we skirted the river that separates California from Arizona up to our resting place tonight, Lake Havasu City.

Lake Havasu City’s claim to fame is the fact that it is home to London Bridge that was sold to an American back in the 1960’s or 1970’s and rebuilt brick by brick in Arizona. There was a myth flying around that he thought that he had bought Tower Bridge but that rumour appears to be totally untrue. For social history buffs click here to read the story.

As luck would have it just after we checked into our hotel a large army of bikers turned up and set up a BBQ outside our motel door. These guys were a mixture of a couple of bike clubs of mostly ex Marine Corps who met up for a shindig and we just happened to be at the right place at the right time. We stood and chatted with a lot of the guys for a couple of hours, they were very interested in our trip and also a bit miffed at my “I Love Libya” sticker. I explained that we put a sticker on the bike only if we have visited the country (on the bike) and this seemed to put the matter to rest but I did agree to cover it with a club sticker when we pass through and visit them in Las Vegas



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