Pins and Needles

The best or worst part, depending upon how you look at it, about any road trip is having the opportunity to experience small town America.

For our final overnight stop on the way back from the Grand Canyon I had stuck a pin in the map and found Needles – a border town on the Colorado River.

According to my guidebook, just a few miles from Needles was Arizona’s second most popular tourist attraction after the Grand Canyon - London Bridge.   

Situated in Lake Havasu City, the bridge was bought at vast expense from the city of London and rebuilt, brick by brick, complete with a mock English Village in 1971. Despite popular belief that this bridge was purchased in mistake for Tower Bridge, the town’s publicity machine  is pretty quick to point out that the local entrepreneur who came up with the idea knew exactly what he was doing.   Whilst the bridge is impressive, complete with its gilded gates and tiny fountain, it says a lot for the rest of Arizona that this is it’s second most visited spot. The English Village appeared, like much else in Arizona, to have been abandoned, the pub had closed down and the door was hanging off the red telephone box.

After a brief stop, we continued on to Needles. It was easy enough to find our hotel – it was straight off the freeway exit – in fact it had a view of the freeway despite the words “….on the river…” appearing in its title.

“Let’s hope we’ve got a room around the back” – my husband said wistfully.  We did – twenty yards from the railroad track.

So, how could we spend our evening  in Needles? Did Reception have a map? This obviously wasn’t something they were regularly asked for.  The receptionist hunted around in a drawer and produced a photocopy that was practically illegible. We consulted the hotel room guide in the hope of finding a recommendation for a place to eat – yes, the diner next door, also surprisingly called something on the river, was number one on the list closely followed by Carls Jnr, McDonalds and a Burger King.

We’re used to sleeping next to the busy 210 freeway in Pasadena, so a night next to the comparative quiet of the Interstate 40 would have probably been bliss.  Instead we spent the night next to the main trans-America freight line; mile long trains stacked two containers high, clunking and trundling by all night. Not that it bothered my husband too much; he’s deaf in one ear and when he sleeps with his good ear to the pillow he hears nothing – it’s a trick he mastered when the kids were small.

Awoken bright and early by the 5.00 am cement train to Pheonix, I was desperate to find some redeeming feature about Needles; where was the river? Was there anything else to actually do here apart from eat fast food and attempt to get some sleep?  I wanted to stay and find out but I could sense a mutiny on my hands.  We left straight after breakfast.

We drove to our final stop-off at the Joshua Tree National Park along parts of the original Route 66.  Since the building of the interstate freeway, whole communities along the route have closed down – every few miles there are abandoned motels, diners and broken down homes.  Along one 40 mile stretch of road we only encountered five other cars.  The route isn’t scenic; it’s depressing.

It was with a great sense of relief that we made it safely back to Pasadena.  We’ve promised the teenager she’ll never have to take another road trip with us again and the maps, and the pins, have been firmly locked away out of my reach.