Last week, we passed through Wickenburg and drove right past the Hassayampa River Preserve, but we can only do that so many times to a place before we finally decide that we have to pay it a visit, and so that’s our first stop today.

It’s a pretty little oasis here at the Hassayampa.

Somewhere between Nothing and Hope, you’ll find Aguila, and unless you are a desert farmer or just someone interested in what stuff and which places are out beyond our purview from the freeways, I have no idea what you’d be doing out here.

Horse tie-ups still in place. I guess that says something about how long this former establishment has been in ruin. Roadside in Salome, Arizona.

Kinda neat little place along the road called the “Old Brayton Ghost Town & Museum.” To visit it, you are put on the honor system, and it is hoped you’ll offer $1 per adult and 50 cents per child to help keep things going. Our loop today is now traveling through Bouse, Arizona.

Parker Dam on the California-Arizona border.

London Bridge, originally built in 1830, is now about 5,459 miles (8.844 km) from where it first spanned the Thames River. Today, it spans a small channel of the Colorado River to an island that came into being as the Parker Dam backed up the Colorado, forming Lake Havasu.

Sadly, we drove right by the Silver Dollar Chuck Wagon restaurant in Topock, Arizona, missing a “broasted chicken” dinner, but we’d just eaten an hour earlier in Lake Havasu. This is old Route 66, which at one time was the main road across the United States for those heading west. Somehow, I can’t imagine being out here in the 1930s in cars without air conditioning and services that were few and far between.

For those who took this road some 70 years ago out of Chicago and before the age of television, how foreign and exotic must this have looked to them?

In 1921, much of Oatman burned down, but the Durlin Hotel survived (not pictured). Besides having a population as large as 3,500 due to a gold find back in 1915, Oatman was put on the map after Carole Lombard and Clark Gable got married nearby in Kingman on March 18, 1939, and passed through on their honeymoon. Clark Gable enjoyed the town so much that he would frequently return to play poker with the local miners.

For that authentic Old West look, there should be donkeys everywhere in Arizona.

We are in Kingman and probably not where Clark Gable and his new bride Carole Lombard had dinner (nor did we), but we definitely like the old sign.

And this was the big payoff of the day, a spectacular sunset with crepuscular rays.

Last remnants of the golden fires of the late-day sky as we drive south back towards Wickenburg and Phoenix.

Would this be the last monsoon of the summer season near Phoenix?