Sunday we decided to take a drive on old route 66. Route 66 was one of the original highways in the US highway system and covered over 2000 miles between Chicago, Illinois to Southern California. Most of the road fell into decline during the 1950s and 1960s as modern interstate highways were built. During the last few decades many sections have been revived and in some cases the old hotels, restaurants, billboards and neon signs have been restored. The section we drove on was only desert and hills.
After an hour or so we were feeling a little disappointed but then arrived in a gem of a town, Oatman, AZ. Oatman was a mining camp during the gold rush in the early 1900s. Today it is an old western town with burros roaming the streets and gunfights staged daily. We roamed around the shops petted the burros and had lunch at the Oatman Hotel. The walls in the restaurant & bar at the Oatman Hotel are coved with dollar bills. Visitors autograph bills and staple them to the wall. The story is that this started in the gold mining days when a miner would put a dollar bill on the wall on payday and that would cover his tab until the next payday.
