Day 16: Kingman to Baker

Another lovely morning in Kingman. I tell you, life is pretty rough when in the middle of winter you can go around in short sleeves. That's how far south I am. For the curious, here is what $45+tax/night gets you in Kingman:

$45/night. Note the lovely 50s decor: lamps, bed head, etc. The lamps were attached to the desks too!

So I left Kingman via Rt 66 which took me past the canyon and then out into the open desert. Things are pretty flat out here. I had an idea from the maps that after a while the road would curve and there would be some good bluffs to view things from, but didn't quite work out that way. The highest things for most of the drive were highway overbridges! So I caught a single container train from a highway overpass…

 

Continued on a bit further and took another exit down to a wash. Ended up crossing the wash which was a new driving experience. For the uninitiated, out here in the desert you don't have "rivers", just "washes" which occasionally turn into raging torrents, and then back to dry sandy washes 24 hours later. Here is one such wash:

They're quite pretty usually, but I wouldn't want to be stuck behind one when it rains.

So anyway I went in and explored and found a great wee spot, and knew from the radio there was a train on the way. Well it soon rounded the corner and *&@*# was it moving fast! Easily 100kmh, possibly more since it was a "passenger" train consisting of a single 4000hp loco, an ex sleeper carriage, and a track inspection carriage. Imagine my disappointment! Here I was expecting a nice big freight train and I get a 2 carriage inspection train instead. I did get a friendly toot though, I guess they haven't heard how dangerous I really am :-)

Inspection carriage with big track viewing window / Interesting con-trails.

I drove back out to the freeway and continued on to Topock, where I crossed into California and changed timezones again. Back to only 3 hours ahead of NZ now. Caught the special crossing the Colorado River, the same river that created the Grand Canyon.

If only I had a saw to cut down that sign…

Special crossing the Colorado River / Nice water plane!

I continued on and was soon stopping at a compulsory checkpoint. Apparently people coming from Arizona are suspicious? The customs agent asked where I'd come from so naturally I said New Zealand, which got a confused look, apparently he wanted to know where I'd come from today . As soon as I said Kingman he wished me well and that was that.

Another 5 minutes and I was in Needles, California. Interesting town, split in half by the railway line with a single single lane under pass to link the two halves together. Great planning! Managed to always be on the wrong side of the yard to catch the inspection train, but caught a manifest leaving the yard so that was nice.

Oh yeah, notice the palm trees? "Cold" here doesn't really register on our sensors.

I quickly decided Needles had nothing to offer me, so set course for Baker. Headed off and vetoed the GPS' decision to take the Interstate the whole way. Soon found myself waiting for the above manifest to catch me up.

He wasn't hard to chase, doing only slightly above a fast jog here. Continued on and came to a crossing where I again waited for him. About 10 minutes later he came growling around the S curve and into view.

I was delighted when a huge RV pulled right up to the railway crossing, completely ruining my photo. Couldn't they see the lines on the road? At least they'll be deaf from the Dash-9s horn which by law they have to blow the entire time the loco is on the crossing. So there is some justice; you ruin my photo, the BNSF will ruin your ear drums :-)

I count 3 different power sources for this crossing: a tank of propane, solar cells, and a pair of wind turbines. Talk about redundant!

On we continued, and I decided I wasn't in that much of a rush to get to Baker, so took a slight detour via Rt 66 and the Mojave Desert, as you do. Got some good video of the trains crawling along here, apparently it is on quite a grade (a slow cyclist was pacing the train). No sooner had I decided to head back than I stumbled on another.

Finally back tracked and got back on the road to Baker. Suddenly I was surrounded by Joshua Trees, which look a lot like cabbage trees, only more stunted.

Crested a hill and was looking out over an incredible valley with great strings of transmission lines looping off to infinity.

As I continued down the perfectly straight road I spied a tiny black line inching its was along the blue void, turned out to be a train.

Was quite a sight to see it crawling along. Here is a shot of the road. In Nevada they wouldn't dare have the dog leg in it, it'd just be laser straight from one horizon to the other. And yes laser sharp, Nevadans know how to build roads.

At the bottom of the hill there was a dried up lake which looked great:

Fisheye for the photo geeks.

On I drove and eventually met the I15. What a contrast to Nipton Rd!

Drove over a few very high lumps and lost about 2000 ft in altitude before arriving in Baker. Baker. Hmm. Why did I decide to stay in Baker????

I drove in and did an initial run by of the town, and initial signs were bad. First off, where was the railroad? Oh… it doesn't pass anywhere close to here. Oops. Secondly, if you removed all the fast food chains and petrol stations all that would be left are trucks! I found a motel and went inside, where I learned it was $55/night. I was a little shocked by the price, so said I'd look around and come back. She said good luck but there are no other motels in town. What/!? Yes, they've all died she explained, we're the only ones left. She continued her sob story about how "that president" had told people not to go to Vegas, twice , and like sheep they'd listened! And not little towns like Baker are drying up. Poor Baker. Trust me, it's not because of anything the Obama School of Financial Responsibility has said.

I then learned that their wireless only worked if you were close to the office, so she kindly put me in room 10… which was nowhere near the office. In fact it was almost as far away as you could get. I went in and found that it had a tile floor and a strange smell, not unpleasant just strong and strange. I tried to open the windows but, get this, they'd glued/welded/painted them shut. Yeah great, here I am in Baker, halfway between nowhere and Death Valley in the centre of the Mojave Desert and you don't have opening windows!??!?! WHAT?! So I left the door ajar and sprayed some deodorant around, which improved things for a while.

Now don't get me wrong, the room was tidy and clean, and I was happy to find I could just get internet reception on the very corner of the bed. The trucks lining main street I could handle, I guess. Over here all the line-haul trucks have sleeper cabs so the crew can sleep wherever they want to, which often is Baker it would seem. But because of the heat they keep their engines running to keep the air conditioning going, so now we have the entire main street lined with trucks idling! Between them and me is a single pane of glass. Wonderful.

I went off for dinner and was upset to find there was only one non-chain "restaurant" in town, and that itself was still a fast food place. I wanted a sit down meal so flipped a coin between Denny's and Arby's and went for Arby's, justanotherburgerjoint . Burger was cooked but cold. Wonderful.

Back at the motel I was very upset to find someone had parked their car next to mine and now I couldn't get any internet reception. I found that if I sat at the back of the room with the screen on a 83° angle and my body at a very uncomfortable lean I could just get reception most of the time, but then a truck moved out on the road and I lost all reception, unless I stood on a stool and held the laptop to the window with the blinds out of the way (oh yeah the blinds didn't work properly either). Then another vehicle arrived and that was it, no more reception for me. $55/night and they can't even get internet to the rooms. Mark from Helper, Utah charges me $35/night (including tax) and he has full signal strength everywhere. (He also has many more customers, and there aren't any interstate highways for hundreds of miles. Curious indeed.)

By now the smell in my room had been replaced by a stagnant mud smell that reminded me a little too much of sewage ponds. I opened the door to get some fresh air in, only to find the whole of Baker smelled the same. Great.

In the morning I awoke and had to make a 3 line change to PatronBase, but it took me a whole hour of cruising the town to find a wireless network that "worked", and that took literally 30 seconds to type a single character, and then would randomly disconnect all too frequently. All this and only if I held my laptop out of the car window as huge trucks thundered past. It was that or drive for 2 hours to Barstow or Vegas. During my cruising I passed two other motels; so much for the Wills Fargo being the only one in town huh?

Two hours later I'd made the change. I tried to fill my tank but fuel was very expensive here and every pump refused me because I don't have a zip code and 12345 wasn't working like it usually does. Well Baker doesn't deserve any more of my money anyway. So goodbye Baker I sighed as I roared onto the I15 and out of town. (Make no mistake, I definitely roared out of Baker!)

There is a reason Baker is dying, and it's not Obama's fault!

Nope, you'll find it's because it has become nothing more than a glorified truck stop with a dozen different (but really identical) fast food chains, a dozen petrol stations, hundreds of idling trucks, a sickly stagnant mud smell, a handful of overpriced motels, terrible wireless, motelliers who will tell you to your face (lie?) that there are no other motels in town, and so on.

Why anyone would choose to stay here I can't imagine. I can only assume that every other visitor here has either had a broken down car/truck, or has, like me, mistakenly believed it'd be like any other small American town and be a pleasant oasis of calm. Not so!

(As an aside, when I reached Vegas I looked up reviews for the Wills Fargo and other Baker motels and they were uniformly bad, some even made my review look kind!)

So I think Baker's problems are entirely their own doing. Frankly, it might be best if Baker withers up and dies.

Next stop… VEGAS!