‘Get your motor runnin'
Head out on the highway
Looking for adventure
And whatever comes our way’
But, ‘Born to Be Wild’ we are not.
It’s time to get moving’. We’ve been in San Diego for a month and, tho’ I could always stay in San Diego for longer than 30 days, I’ve got a great trip up the Pacific Coast and it’s time to start to move. Of course, we can’t move too fast since we don’t want to get to Washington state in time to climb Mr. Rainier in the snow. Luckily there is lots to see in between San Diego and Seattle that we can stall long enough for spring and summer to arrive before we do.
Our first installment is from San Diego to Quartzsite then on up to Lake Havasu for the annual Pyrotechnics Festival. Knowing we didn’t have far to go, we took our time getting the RV ready for travel, filled with propane at the campground and then headed out. Didn’t want to start too early on a weekday and get caught in the morning rush. As it was, we were leaving at 10:30, perfect time. It was an uneventful trip from SD to the big Q and we landed on the desert in time to relax a bit before dinner.
The next morning we walked over to a local booth where we had ordered 2 signs back in January when we traveled through on our way to Palm Springs. And, did we see the Thrifty Ice Cream booth across the street? Does the sun rise in the east? You bet we saw it and bought a breakfast desert. Ummm. We’d better get out of here. And, we were off, for the very short trip to Lake Havasu, about 78 miles up the road. We had reserved a place in the State Park in town, close to the waterfront, rolled in and set up camp.
Gotta explore the town and we were off to the waterfront where - we found that for $2.00 we could ride across the lake and back. Round trip for $2.00. Whoo-eee, my kind of ferry ride. Over at 5:00, back on the 5:30 ferry. Now, of course, the ferry owners expect you to stay on the other side to eat in their restaurant and gamble in their casino. Which - everyone else on the ferry did. They all streamed off the ferry when it landed. Only 2 stayed put for the ride back. Actually, when we got on the ferry, we had no idea what was on the other side but, the couple standing next to us filled us in. That’s Lake Havasu City on the shore beneath the mountains.
Note the shorts and t-shirt. It was a beautiful day.
Back In Lake Havasu, we walked over the famous London Bridge. Now, we’ve all heard of London Bridge, if not in history books then in the children’s jingle.
Remember how we used to join hands, arch our arms up to form a bridge for someone to circle under them as we sang this song And when the song was done we trapped the person under our ‘bridged’ hands? Remember that? It was way before my time but I’ve heard about it. Yeah, right.
‘London Bridge is falling down
falling down
falling down
London Bridge is falling down, My fair lady.’
But, how many of your realize that it really was falling down? Well, maybe not falling down but sinking into the Thames with all the traffic that was crossing it. It was built in ’31’, no, not 1931, but 1831 and designed for horse and carriage traffic. Not lorries. The British Government decided to sell it, firstly to the highest bidder, of course, but also to someone who would preserve it the way they thought their history should be preserved. Robert McCulloch of Lake Havasu presented the winning bid of $2,460,000 (double the $1,200,000 that London figured it would cost to cut the granite so it could be used again + $10,000 for each of McCulloch’s 60 years - pretty scientific, huh?) Hey, buying the bridge was easy. Oops - now to get it dismantled, transported to the US and then reassembled - in the right order. They carefully took the bridge apart and marked each stone with numbers to signify where it belonged on the bridge. While they were doing this, they found older markings on each stone. It seems as if the original builder, John Rennie, had assembled it the same way.
First the bridge was shipped by boat to Long Beach, CA, through the Panama Canal. Then overland to Lake Havasu. Now, when you think of a bridge, don’t you usually assume that it is going to be over water, that it will connect two sections of land that are divided by water? Well, not here, not yet. See the peninsula in the picture? That’s where the bridge is going to go. No water there, only sand.
But that was what they built the bridge on right at the narrowest point in the peninsula, then they removed all the sand under the bridge and - voila, a channel and we’ve got an island that needs a bridge. And - we’ve got a handy bridge. Pretty slick. It was completed and dedicated in 1971. And, what a tourist attraction. People come from all over the world to see it: we heard Japanese, German, French, why, we even heard some Texan.
But, that’s enough for the night. We walked back through the park to our RV for dinner and relaxation.
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