OK – I put that in the title to grab attention. What a cheap shot. The town I’m referring to is Oatman, NV. Oatman is famous for the burros that inhabit this community. They are great fun and draw a crowd. To get to Oatman from KIngman is a trip down the original Route 66. Unfortunately, my big Chevy pickup truck was not the same dimensions as a car from the 30’s when the road was built. The lanes were very narrow and the route was pretty unnerving. There were a lot of bling curves, no guardrails, switchbacks, etc. Couple that with pavement that was worn out 50 years ago made for an unsettling drive for me. It wore me out.

When we got close to the edge of Oatman, we were greeted by the welcoming committee.

Welcome to Oatman – you got any food in there?

It turns out there are about 16 burro’s that live in town full time. According to our source, they all have names and know their name. The one in the picture is Oliver who happens to be the Alpha Male of the town. For $1 you can purchase food for the starving 16. The burros recognize the rustling of the paper sacks. We spent a couple of hours petting the animals and feeding them snacks. What a great experience. I’m glad we made the nerve-wracking drive. Fortunately, the road going west out of town was much easier to navigate. If you look at the green line in the image below, you can see the squiggles leading into Oatman and the straight shot out the west side. It was much more squiggly than the line shows.

We headed for Baker, California. There is not much in Baker except “The World’s Tallest Thermometer”. They are proud of the fact that the temperature in Death Valley once reached 134 degrees Fahrenheit so they built this really tall tribute to that temp. Maybe that’s why there isn’t much in Baker. Who wants to live where it gets that hot?

After confirming that the temperature today was somwhere around 80 degrees, we headed for the extremely small town of Tecopa, California.

Tecopa can brag that it has a couple of nearby hot springs. I’m not sure that provides enough incentive for people to drive out here to a very desolate area on the edge of Death Valley. We wanted to do a drive by of the home base of one of our Youtube favorites – Wonderhussy. On the way to Tecopa, we did manage to drive through an area covered with Joshua trees. We don’t see those in Indiana.

We also saw a chicken. Not sure why, but I thought it was funny to include it here.

Wonderhussy protects her personal life pretty stringently so even though we found her residence, I am choosing not to show pictures of actually where it’s located. If you’re interested, you will just have to watch her channel and do the detective work that we did to find it. She wasn’t home.

While this area is really desolate, there is some beautiful scenery to enjoy.

In the far right picture above, you can see a white “light” shining in the distance. Near Searchlight, California is the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System. It is 170.000 mirrors focusing the sunlight on 3 huge solar arrays. According to Google, it produces 377 megawatts of power – about the same as a medium sized fossil fuel power plant.

Amazing what you can learn “Rambling Around”.

We are in for the night at Pahrump, Nevada.