Burros and Bridges and Bungles, Oh My!

Moving day is coming up next week... I'll be off to Vegas for February. Time to reflect on some of the places caching has led me here in the tristate area.

Grapevine Canyon is a sacred area for the Yuman and Numic speaking indigenous tribes on Spirit Mountain near Laughlin NV and features over 700 petroglyphs. They were created between 1100 and 1900 AD.

It isn't without its share of naturally sculpted wonders:

Oatman is a ghost town in the Black Mountains of Arizona. It was posthumously named after a woman who was kidnapped as a child by a Yavapai band of Indians who murdered most of her family, later sold to the Mojave tribe and released after 5 years. Oatman bills itself as "the ghost town that ain't dead yet". Wild burros roam the streets, and many of the stores sell burro chow. There are signs in English asking people not to feed them on the wooden sidewalks, but no signs in Burro telling them they're not allowed inside...

Got Chow?

Here's a scenic vista on the outskirts of town:

Many of the creosote bushes on the way into town had been decked out for Christmas:

Arizona Christmas Tree

Lake Havasu City is home to the old London Bridge, which was disassembled, shipped over and reassembled as a tourist attraction. I can see the seasonal wreath, but the Old Girl just looks out of place with palm trees...

I discovered some soldiers' graffiti dated 1942 under the bridge, and found out later that it was two Americans who left it when posted in London:

In Golden Shores, AKA Topock, I got to not only drive ON Route 66, but THROUGH it:

And in the spirit of "leave 'em laughing", I visited the Von Schmidt State Boundary Monument, a site of monumental Government ineptitude. When the line dividing California and Nevada was surveyed in 1873, an iron column was erected at this line's southernmost tip.

A later survey found that the original marker was 3/4 mile south of where it should have been (ah... what's a measly 4,000 feet between friends...?). When in 1974 California and Nevada each erected their own monument here to commemorate this original erroneous survey, Nevada's plaque included not just one, but two critical California place name spelling errors.

California Knows Their Own Place Names

Nevada Doesn't