Visiting the Route 66 Museum in Kingman, AZ

Today we drove the Honda CR-V over to nearby Kingman, AZ to check out the Route 66 Museum located at their visitor center.

Lots of historical information, some art work and displays of the early settler days to modern transportation days.  

I liked this comparison shot

During WWII, there was a US Army Airfield here in Kingman:

That's a lot of B-29s!

Several murals depicting the road culture evoked by Route 66:

And of course, the requisite shot of one's vehicle:

After a chore run at Walmart (it was full of shopping zombies), we escaped back to our campsite to relax the afternoon away.

I successfully rigged some wiring to allow for an LED bar mounted on the VRRV's center console to light up each time the brake pedal is activated on the CR-V.  I'm still working on fine-tuning the adjustment of the braking assist mechanism you see.

This way, I know when the towed vehicle's brakes are engaged, so I don't accidentally tighten the brake cable too much.  More to follow.

About a couple of hours before sunset, I went riding along BLM Rd 7000, just to check out the road conditions.  They were fine for my TW200, though some of the more rocky sections caused me slow way down.

Here's typical conditions, the really rocky spots would grab your attention, but most of the trail was like this:

It looks like we'll be the last people to camp at this particular spot.  I spoke to the rancher who was grading the road near our camp, at first to ensure the CR-V wasn' in the way of his grader.

Turns out, he owns the surface rights to this public land from the BLM.  The BLM provides him money to pay for equipment such as the grader to maintain the trails and such.

Seems the campsite we're in, isn't a "designated" campsite in the eyes of the BLM.  The abuse of this land, to which the rancher owns surface rights, has resulted in much hassle and work for said rancher.  He introduced himself as Tex and mentioned having to remove about semi-truckloads of trash from the area around us.  

So, because previous camping swine couldn't fricking do right by others and trashed no only this campsite but other surrounding areas, the rancher will be blocking access to this site after we leave.  (I believe this is in coordination with the BLM)

Can't say I blame him.  We had a good long conversation, and Tex agreed to wait till we leave on Friday morning to start the blocking work on the camp site.  He even invited us to camp at his nearby ranch if ever we're in the area again!