Route 66 “Mother Road” Museum

Located in the historic Casa del Desierto (a beautiful 1911 Harvey House) at 270 E. Virginia Way in Bristow, California, this museum features vintage cars, photographs, and artifacts detailing the highway’s legacy.

Barstow, California is a major desert hub along historic U.S. Route 66 (Main Street). It is perfectly positioned midway between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. The Mother Road offers several distinct historical, lodging, and museum attractions.

There is also a railroad museum and NASA Goldstone Visitor Center located in the Harvey Building as well.

Calico Ghost Town Regional Park

Calico is a ghost town and former mining town in San Bernardino County, California, United States. Located in the Calico Mountains of the Mojave Desert region of Southern California, it was founded in 1881 as a silver mining town, and was later converted into a county park named Calico Ghost Town.

This was an interesting journey into a mining town with various stores depicting period times and also had a train ride to view various mining operations, an opportunity to mine for silver for yourself and several eating places.

Skyline Drive-in

We traveled this evening to Barstow, California to the Skyline Drive-in. They actually have two screens and show two movies at the same time. You listen to the audio on your FM radio with no more speaker poles. Who knew there were any drive-ins still operating in this country. Our day time temperature was nearly 100 degrees and we watched the movie starting about 8:35pm sitting in the truck with windows down and getting cool. This area is part of the Mojave Desert and gets warm during the day and cools down in the evening and overnight. At midnight it is now 67 degrees.

Meteor Crater National Landmark

As we were traveling from Holbrook, Arizona we ran across this Meteor Crater Natural Landmark in Winslow, Arizona. An individual attempted to mine this site for the volcanic rock several years ago and failed to find anything of significance. The mining site is surrounded by the fence you see in the image here. The astronaut is a 6 foot replica in a space suit for a visual representation of the depth of this crater. We will post a rim shot without the 25x photo for your comparison. The astronauts use this site to train for the moon landings both past and upcoming.

Lowell Observatory

We traveled to Flagstaff, Arizona for an afternoon tour of the Lowell Observatory. Unknown to us they had a Dark Sky Planetarium which we toured and were able to attend an evening show after dark to observe the stars. We were able to see Venus and Jupiter through the observatory telescopes in great detail and then the evening show from an outdoor Planetarium with heated seats and all. This included a watch across the sky for stars, constellations and a view of the International Space Station crossing our view. This was a great stop for us and one that we would encourage you to see if at all possible. An additional fact – the rover in the picture was used for the landing and exploration on the planet Mars.