Lions and Tigers and Bears on Route 66 - Oh My!
Stopping to check out Headicus Giganticus.
Today we got to check more notches on our fan belt as we traversed pieces of Route 66 in Arizona. We started in Needles California, and headed east all the way through Kingman where we found the “Power House Visitor’s Center.”
Kingman was cool with a great diner and the Power House museum. We got some home-made root beer from Mr. D’s Route 66 Diner which was fantastic.
The Power House Visitor’s Center is the home to Route 66 Association of Arizona and also has a gift shop where we found that there are passports available that you can have stamped all along Route 66. There is both one for the entire Route and also an Arizona-specific version. We got both and started getting them stamped there at the Power House.
Across the street from the Power House is Railroad Park where a steam engine sits in retirement along with a caboose.
Inside this large museum, which was the source of power for the area and even provided juice to help build the Hoover Dam, is an expansive collection of Route 66 memorabilia. There are well done displays and historic artifacts. Oddly enough there’s even an entire room dedicated to electric cars which, I guess, makes sense in a former power plant.
Peggy awaits a tasty meal at Mr. D's Route 66 Diner
The people who staff the museum were extraordinarily friendly except for the one guy manning the ticket booth to the museum. When someone came up and asked if they took credit cards he just pointed to the sign saying they don’t. Fooey on you, too.
As we came across landmarks like Giganticus Headicus I realized we are just scratching the surface of Route 66 in Arizona. We’re absolutely going to have to come back as we couldn’t drag the trailer up the mountain to Oatman, for example. The Route 66 book we got at the Power House museum showed pages and pages of things to do and we have only seen a few of those.
That means we’re going to be back, but not in June for Pete’s sake. Temperatures were in the 100s most of the day and barely dipped below 80 at night. I’m absolutely grateful for our Soft Start RV which lets us run the AC in the trailer on a single 1600 watt generator and that little generator was working!
Keepers of the Wild
The stop I’ve been most looking forward to thus far is Keepers of the Wild, a roadside attraction where they have an incredible assortment of exotic animals that live here. The animals are very well taken care of on 175 acres with a staff of people who look after and feed them well.
They’re also a Harvest Host location so this is where we spent the night. I may amend this in the morning as our very chipper and informative tour guides told us that the lions and tigers make quite a racket around 3-4 in the morning. I’m looking forward to that.
There is also a double track of freight trains right across the road and I’m going to enjoy that, too, though I’m not as convinced that Peggy will share my joy of the sounds of the railroad. We shall see.
Keepers of the Wild is a sanctuary created by a gentleman who used animals in his magic show in Vegas. Over time he realized that the animals weren’t living their best lives and he set out to fix that. Two locations later he now has 175 acres of land with habitats for a variety of exotic animals including lions and tigers and bears. Oh my.
But there are monkeys, camels, tortoises, birds of all sorts and more.
For $30 you can take a guided ride-aboard tour with very informative tour guides who shuttle you all over the park explaining how they got the various animals and what their lives are like now.
The afternoon tour is when you get to see the team feeding the animals. Many of the larger cats get whole turkeys which they first lick and then start eating whole, bones and all. Apparently the bones are good for their teeth and are something they’d eat in the wild. Heck, our house cat eats rodents whole so I guess this makes sense.
Interestingly some of the animals came from other sanctuaries that didn’t make it, some were people’s pets and some were in abusive situations. The stories are incredible too but being just a few feet from a lion or a tiger or a bear that’s separated from you by two fences is pretty incredible.
In some ways this place is like those vintage tourist traps that dotted Route 66 in days of yore but, here, you feel good about furthering the care of the animals by buying a t-shirt or taking the tour. Instead of carnival hucksters selling snake oil you get informative tour guides sharing how exotic animals were rescued and now live their best life.
