Route 66 Tour Recap

After our rider’s meeting at GO AZ Motorcycles Scottsdale, we headed towards the Beeline Hwy north to Winslow.  On route, I lost my gas cap.  Looks like I didn’t tighten it down all the way while getting gas before the ride.  Luckily, after it flew off, I didn’t have any gas leaking out of the opening at the top of the tank!  We continued on to Winslow where Philippe kindly donated a rag to keep the fuel in after a fill up along with keeping debris out.  Unfortunately, I was riding around with a malitoff cocktail between my legs!  In Winslow, we had lunch at the Turquoise Room at the La Posada Hotel after our group wandered around town and took the necessary “Standing On The Corner” photos at the park dedicated to the Eagles famous song.  After lunch, the group proceeded west on I-40 for the most part and getting a piece of Route 66 through Flagstaff.  In the meantime, I broke off from the group and headed to Grand Canyon Harley-Davidson for a new gas cap.  AKJr lead the group from Winslow through Flagstaff and in to Williams while I had a small group follow me to the HD dealer.  After purchasing a skull gas cap, we were on our way to Williams for our stop for the night.

The main hotel in Williams was the Canyon Motel & RV Park just at the outskirts of town on the east side.  It’s a retro motor lodge with a couple old rail cars that have been transformed into rooms.  One is a caboose that you can have all to yourself and the other has three units.  It’s also an RV park that none of us took advantage of…  While the original plan was to BBQ onsite, it was decided that because of low temps at night and high winds, that we would have dinner in town at a restaurant.

Bright and early the next morning, we all met at the Shell station on the west side of town near the freeway and headed out towards our next stop in Seligman.  We detoured off of I-40 to roll through the town of Ash Fork on a piece of the original Route 66.  In recent history, Ash Fork has been a dumpy town not worth stopping at.  Today, it seems like there is some money being invested and a couple of restaurants have opened.  With a little more progress, it may be worth a stop on a future ride through there.  After cruising through Ash Fork, we got back on I-40 for a short stint and got off at Crooktown Rd.  This section of Route 66 is very typical and scenic and has my imagination going back to the 1950’s when people were regularly traveling this road on their summer vacations.  We shortly arrived in Seligman where we had breakfast at Westside Lilo’s Café on the west side of town.  After a delicious, hearty breakfast, we continued west with a stop at the famous Hackberry General Store, through Kingman and for a stop in Oatman via the infamous Sitegreeves Pass.

After taking in the sights, donkeys and gunfights in Oatman, we all then made our way to our hotel for the night, the Colorado Belle in Laughlin, NV.  After a few drinks at the bar and a nice dinner at the buffet, some of us did a little gambling before turning in for the night.  The next morning, we all met at the motorcycle parking lot at the Belle and headed off to Topock, AZ where we would have a nice breakfast outdoors by the pool at Topock66.  After breakfast, we were all on our own to head back home.  One rider called California home, so he took off west on I-40.  Some of us had never been to Lake Havasu, so they headed south to have lunch and check out London Bridge.  Most of us headed back to the Phoenix valley via I-40 and to US93 through Wickenburg.

Overall, this was one of the best Route 66 Tours we’ve done.  The combination of a couple of new wrinkles in the ride, perfect weather and great people made it really fun!  Let’s do this again next year, but in reverse!