By Tom Neal
Bigfoot Trails Basecamp | Independent Adventure Media

Anyone who knows us—and any of you who actually read our posts rather than just look at the pictures—knows that we love road trips.

So when we got a call from the London Bridge Resort in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, a place we like to call home, and a place I wish we wouldn't have left, we were interested.

We had stayed at the resort about four years earlier and loved it. It's friendly, nice, and located right on the channel next to... yep, you guessed it—the London Bridge.

There was one catch, though.

We had to sit through one of the hour-and-a-half timeshare presentations.

We are not interested in timeshares at all, but to get four days and three nights for less than the cost of one night during the normal off-season?

Well, hell yes. We'll sit through this presentation!

With crazy schedules and a lot of responsibilities going on, it was difficult to come up with a date.

Then I told my wife, “Why don't we just leave this weekend and go?”

This was on a Wednesday.

She called the resort back and booked the days Tuesday through Friday. I had a doctor appointment Friday, and our business had an event to attend Saturday, so we decided to roll out of town at 4 a.m. Sunday morning.

I plopped into bed about 10 p.m., my brain going 100 mph as usual, and fell asleep around 1 or 1:30 a.m.

The alarm went off at 3, and I proceeded to pack up my wife's SUV with our gear. We generally pack light, so it went quickly.

We hit the road just after 4 a.m.

It was difficult getting Jahanel out of bed, even for a play day.

I have made the drive to and through Las Vegas many times before, using three different routes. Google decided to show us a “quicker” route to Vegas, and we wanted to make the drive from Olympia, Washington, to Vegas in one shot again, so I trusted Google Maps on this one.

We shot down I-5 to Exit 57 and stopped at our favorite truck stop, Gee Cee's. We topped off the fuel and filled our bellies with some snacks. I like stopping there for dinner better—you get a lot of food for a good price—but breakfast would do.

We jumped back on the freeway heading south to I-205, then I-84 east for a short way.

We exited the freeway and followed the signs for Highway 26 and Mount Hood.

I have been on this highway a few times before on the motorcycle, and it's a nice road to cruise down.

We did hit snow and ice for about 30 miles, which really messed with my GPS estimated arrival time.

I was going to beat the original arrival time by almost six minutes, and by the time we got out of the snow, I not only lost my six-minute gain, but lost another three minutes.

But I don't play around when it comes to snow and ice.

We saw one car folded up in the ditch. It still had paper plates on it.

Oops.

So we followed the two-lane highway through central Oregon and saw a lot of areas I had not seen before.

It was cold, a little windy, but overall an uneventful drive through, which we appreciated at the time.

Eventful drives make for much better stories after the hassles are over.

We crossed into Nevada and ran through the desert, stopping only for fuel and snacks.

Originally, GPS estimated that we were supposed to arrive in Las Vegas around 9:30 p.m. That estimated time is running straight through and does not account for fuel stops.

We arrived at the Stratosphere at 10:05 p.m.

There are plenty of times when we like to just cruise and enjoy the area, but for the most part, when we have a destination trip, we run hard so we can get checked in and enjoy the destination.

Keep in mind, I had been up since 3 a.m. with only an hour and a half of sleep, and maybe a total of four hours of sleep over the past two nights together.

I was ready to pass out in the lobby waiting to get checked in.

My wife surprised me with our room.

I was expecting the typical room with a king bed, but nope. She booked us a suite for the two nights we had to kill in Vegas before we could get checked in at Lake Havasu.

Once I saw the room, I woke up again.

This was damn near the size of our house, or so it felt for the moment.

We got cleaned up and changed, then went downstairs to grab our first meal of the day.

The restaurants at the casino were all closed except for the café, which was fine. We had a bite there.

The food was pretty decent, no complaints, but the waiter was something else. Very friendly, funny, and fun. He could dish out the jokes and take the blows, and we had a good time.

After eating, we hit some games before heading back to the suite to crash after midnight.

We're not big gamblers.

In two days there, we spent $25 gambling. My wife won $24, I lost $5, so we damn near broke even.

Our first full day back in Sin City, we cruised around.

We went to Count's Kustoms to check out the collection of rides at the shop. I wanted to submit an application to work there, but Jahanel just kind of glanced at me with the look like, “Hey, you're an idiot. They're NOT gonna hire you!”

She didn't actually say those words to me, but that was “The Look.”

We followed that up by cruising some back-city streets into sketchville, but we tend to do that when we travel.

Hell, we went down Crenshaw Boulevard and through Compton at dusk one day.

If you don't know Crenshaw and Compton, you obviously have never read or watched anything about the L.A. gang scene.

Check it out.

But that's another story. You may have to wait for the book on that one.

As far as we're concerned, Las Vegas is a shithole.

We still love going down there.

Whether it be Fremont, the Strip, or cruising around town, we still enjoy the hell out of it.

We did find a restaurant that we both fell in love with.

Service was great.

Food was AMAZING!

I had never had bacon cooked like this. It was an appetizer that I saved to put on top of my burger, and HOLY SHIT, it turned into the BEST burger I had ever eaten.

And I eat a lot of burgers!

At the time, I wasn't sure if I wanted to reveal the name because we wanted to keep the secret to ourselves.

Yep, greedy.

One hint: it's not on the Strip or Fremont.

We made it an early night to bed, around midnight, because we knew we needed to be up early to get into the Peppermill for breakfast. The place is always packed and generally has an hour wait or longer.

We woke up, showered and packed up our belongings, checked out of the room, and got over to the Peppermill.

Lucky for us, there were two spots at the counter to sit, so we grabbed those.

We had never sat at the counter there before, and we were quite entertained. The staff there are always on the move!

Food was pretty okay this time, not as amazing as the last time we were there, but still okay.

The entertainment made the breakfast worthwhile.

Now, it's off for Hom...

...er Havasu!

As we made our way south out of Las Vegas to Highway 95, we enjoyed the beautiful sunshine and warmth, something we didn't have when we left Washington.

Just past the turnoff for Laughlin and Bullhead City, we crossed into California, and soon found Interstate 10 and headed east.

We took a little detour north and decided to go to the small old mining town of Oatman.

A place I had wanted to go to for a couple decades now, but never made it.

The drive up and down the other side was great.

As for Oatman itself, we didn't stop.

There were hundreds of visitors acting like complete jackasses, much worse than the burros who live in the area.

We dropped back down on the Golden Valley side and stopped at a cool little gift shop.

After spending some time and coin at the gift shop, we finished off the Oatman loop and made our way down to Lake Havasu.

It's been four years since we last were here.

Sure doesn't feel like it, but it's true.

I drove past the house we stayed at for a few months and the shop I worked at, but this was just a relax-and-decompress trip, and a chance to dry out our Washington rain-soaked bodies.

We spent time doing things I never thought I would suggest.

We enjoyed foods and critiqued the food everywhere we ate.

Anyone who knows me knows that food doesn't excite me, but my wife enjoys it.

I did this for her.

We also went to every thrift store, Goodwill, and pawn shop in Lake Havasu.

She enjoys doing that too.

I don't mind it to a point, but I played along on this trip and came home with a few books that seemed interesting.

Of course we had to do our evening sunset walks along the channel like we used to do every night when we lived there.

We had to visit “OUR PARK.”

Everyone else calls it Rotary Park, but dammit, that's our park!

One thing we wanted to do but didn't get to was hike SARA's Crack at SARA Park.

By the time we remembered we wanted to do that on this trip, it was 2 in the afternoon and 96 degrees.

So we just went to SARA Park, walked in a little over a quarter mile, and at least got to say we made it there this trip.

Next time down, we WILL make the time early in the day to do the hike into SARA's Crack.

Two restaurants we REALLY enjoy in Havasu are Cha Bones and Juicy's.

Cha Bones is ALWAYS busy when we go, and the wait is usually an hour or more, so we just walk down to the channel and enjoy the water and views.

The food is always great, the service is always great, and the atmosphere is always loud.

But we always leave there with full bellies and very happy.

The next morning we had breakfast at our other favorite place in town.

I am not a huge fan of pancakes. My wife makes them the best, and nothing else compares.

Until now.

She has some serious competition with Juicy's!

I generally just get the traditional two-egg breakfast with bacon or sausage, hash browns, and an English muffin.

This breakfast was packed full of food, and Jahanel had to wheel me out of the place on a dolly.

I got three eggs, four pieces of bacon, two sausage patties, a big slab of ham, hash browns, an English muffin, and two big buttermilk pancakes.

I couldn't finish the ham or half of one pancake.

Everything else I devoured.

And I wasn't giving up on the pancake.

I kept trying!

On our last morning in Havasu, we just cruised through our park one last time, then hit the highway north out of town and fueled up at the Love's truck stop at I-10.

The plan was to run Highway 93 through Nevada into Twin Falls, Idaho, and catch I-84 to Portland, then home on I-5.

Originally, I was planning to run hard through the night because we had another event we had planned to attend another three hours north of home.

But I had to get home, unload the car, and repack it with stuff to sell at the event.

As we were cruising through Nevada, I canceled the other event.

And we decided to stay the night in another place I had wanted to stay.

Some may think we are stupid for this one, but whatever.

We don't care.

After seeing a biker movie decades ago called Roadside Prophets—not really a great movie, but it's okay—I had wanted to stay in Jackpot, Nevada.

There is a hotel called the Four Jacks, and as many times as I had passed this place in the past, we never stopped.

You may look at this place, see its age, and pass on by.

Hell, why not?

Twin Falls is an hour away with nicer rooms.

In actuality, I was happy with the room at the Four Jacks.

Yes, it was old, but the history of the town and the hotel is what makes it a cool place.

It was clean, and that's the most important thing.

The carpets were old, but this was one of less than a handful of hotels where I would have been willing to sleep on the floor if I had to.

Not many places I would be willing to do that.

The Four Jacks was okay.

Food in the small restaurant was pretty good, and the waiter was awesome—very friendly and exceptional service.

We slept in a bit the next morning and hit the road about 8:30.

The drive was pretty uneventful.

Again, nice at the time, but lacking for great stories.

Till next time, keep it between the lines.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tom Neal is the founder of Bigfoot Trails Basecamp, an independent adventure media project built around real experiences. He’s spent most of his life around vehicles, motorcycles, racing, travel, and projects that tend to take longer and cost more than originally planned.

After decades of doing all that stuff, he’s learned that the best stories usually aren’t the ones you planned. They’re the people you meet, the places you stumble across, the things that go wrong, and the moments you never expected.

That’s what he wants to capture with BTB.

He doesn’t want to write about adventure from the outside. He wants to go experience it, then tell you what happened.

Bigfoot Trails Basecamp | Independent Adventure Media