Rebekah Hope | Memories and Melodies from the Mississippi Coast: On the Way to Colorado

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We were sad to leave Yosemite and the beautiful country around it, and we would have been even more sad if we knew what it was like where we were going. Desert. Miles and miles of nothing.

And heat. You know that heat wave in the Southwest about a month ago? It followed us. Everywhere we went, people told us they were having record temperatures.

Oh, well. It made Colorado seem absolutely gorgeous! (Which it is! But even more so to us!)

Last sight of green before the desert...

We passed a huge wind farm!

Yes, this happened. Again. :)

We saw this mirage as we were driving on Edwards Air Force Base!

And then we saw this. And we screamed. And then we begged Daddy to turn around because we HAD to see it. We're aviation nuts in my family, remember. And this is no ordinary airplane.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce to you...

The SR-71, HABU, The Blackbird, The Lady in Black, THE SLED.

The SR-71 Blackbird was used as an aerial reconnaissance aircraft from the mid-1960's until it was retired in 1990. Let's just say, that's all classified, top-secret stuff. :) It flew at 78,000 feet and the pilots wore space suits! And when they took the last one to the Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., they went from Los Angeles to D.C. in 64 minutes. With an average of 2,145 miles an hour. Yep. :) Our dear "Mississippi Grandmother" is a good friend of one of the pilots, Brian Shul, who published two incredible books (with amazing photos!) about The Sled. (Check them out: Sled Driver and The Untouchables.)
Sarah and I have spent hours pouring over those books at Grandmother's house (in fact, I just looked at them today), so when we saw the SR-71 parked at Edwards we had to check it out!

Edwards was used as a test facility for new aircraft, and is where Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier!

This Sled was so dusty...it was sad. The maintenance guys kept them so clean when they were in service.

A replica of Yeager's plane! They had a great museum there!

We saw a beautiful sunset over Edwards the next morning as we were leaving.

A B-52, silhouetted in the early morning light

It wasn't long before the temperature climbed 30 degrees...

...and then we got to this place. Lake Havasu City. Don't go there in the summer time. Just take my word for it.

It was the only place we could stay in between Edwards and Flagstaff, and its main attraction is the real London Bridge. I'm serious! London Bridge was quite literally falling down (it wasn't made to withstand automobile traffic), so the city of Lake Havasu bought it. It was disassembled, shipped over, and rebuilt in 1971.

The light poles were made from melted-down cannons from Napoleon Bonaparte's army!

This is why I told you to not ever go to Lake Havasu City in the summer time. It was 122 degrees at the hottest part of the day, and it cooled off to about 100 that night. Or maybe 95. It felt like being baked in a kiln.
It was awful.

Needless to say, there was great rejoicing when we got to Flagstaff the next day! It was a balmy 90 degrees and it was wonderful. We ate a celebratory dinner at a well-recommended local place called The Horsemen Lodge. The food was SO good, y'all. And it's a really neat place.