Kingman 3 Day Route 66 Trip:

Kingman 3 Day Route 66 Trip:

Day one--take the back way from Mesquite through Overton for beautiful sightseeing and then over the Hoover Dam on the 93 to Kingman. Visit the Route 66 Museum for a very good learning experience about the old "mother road". http://www.kingmantourism.org/Kingman_Tourism_Content/Kingman_Museums/Historic_Route_66_Museum/ Have a meal at Mr. D'z Route 66 Diner and sample their wonderful sweet potato fries and homemade root beer. Yum! Enjoy a little rest in Locomotive Park before retiring for the night.
Next day: Head due east on the the old Route 66 (I-40) towards Flagstaff and stop at a most interesting spot in little over an hour--Grand Canyon Caverns. This place has the most unusual cave to visit. It is 200 hundred feet down and super dry. I don't want to spoil the surprises, but it was really interesting and our family really enjoyed it. Afterward the gift shop and café brought a welcome treats and barbecued burgers. We drove back to Kingman via Peach Springs (makes us wonder if the Disney Movie "Cars" uses some of these places in their cute movie). We then headed out after a brief rest at the hotel to Oatman, http://oatmangoldroad.org/index.html a little mining town preserved in its glory with live burro roaming freely through town. It's reached by following Route 66 West. The road moves and curves the landscape and is really a treat in and of itself. The mining town is really cute and the kids enjoy buying a bag of carrots and feeding the wild burro (except you are never allowed to feed baby burros). The burros are super people friendly. You can eat here and shop here and then head back to Kingman for the night. Notice all of the old mines along the way.
Day 3 we went to Lake Havasu and went on their Dixie Bell paddle boat tour of the lake. http://www.go-arizona.com/Lake-Havasu-Dixie-Bell/ Then we walked the promenade past the London Bridge. We had a lunch in Lake Havasu and headed back to Kingman to enjoy a few more local museums in town. Our kids wanted a second trip to Mr. D'z Diner for homemade root beet. It's a fun trip to learn about the neon past in Kingman, see the pretty waters of Lake Havasu, go down deep into the Grand Canyon Caverns and feed wild burro in Oatman. We paid very little for 3 night's lodging. It's only 3 hours from here and you see a whole lot for not much money. Our kids still talk about this quirky adventure and look forward to doing it again some time. I recommend watching the Disney movie "Cars" before traveling--it makes it more fun for the kids and the adults in reference to the "mother road" of Route 66. We also bought the sound track and listened to it and it matched our adventure real well! It was fun!

DJW