An Excursion to Siberia, California – 2014
Welcome back!
What is this, five weeks in a row? Pretty awesome, right?! The only problem is that I need to get back on my feet or I’m going to run out of stories. One of my favorite travel tales is the time that my brother and I took our dad to Siberia without telling him. I mean he obviously knew that we were going on a road trip but we didn’t tell him where. My brother has this innate ability to find remote places in the desert, most of which have literally been forgotten by society as a whole. This trip was probably the first time that we fully witnessed his talent. Yes that’s right, he discovered Siberia, CA.
So we hit the open road with our dad refusing to tell him our final destination. We made plenty of stops before arriving so without further ado, let’s drive!
Our first stop on the trip was the Route 66 museum in Victorville, CA. Unfortunately it wasn’t open though so moving on. Ok calm down, you’ll get to see it in my next post (another road trip)! But here is a picture of the outside of the building:
After the museum we headed straight into the desert. You know one thing that you find on a regular basis in the desert is abandoned structures, especially when traveling along Route 66. So naturally we stopped many many times. I’ll spare you the never ending slide show of dilapidated buildings and just share the highlights. Here is building number one from this trip:
When you take a Route 66 trip you have to plan well, there are very few places to stop for food or gas. Plus the road overall is in terrible shape. I had to retighten the rear spoiler on my car after two trips. So we cautiously pushed on until we arrived in Daggett, CA. We of course made sure to fill up:
I always like to find an abandoned gas station for a quick photoshoot. I just think it’s cool to see a newer car in such an old and abandoned setting. We also were introduced to Mugwumps. They even drew us a picture for reference! Make sure to let me know if you ever run across one of these little guys:
After Daggett the road continues for about 12 miles before crossing under the 40 and depositing you in Newberry Springs, CA. We stopped and took a few pictures, here’s one of me looking incredibly overweight:
The cool thing with Route 66 is how deserted it is. That may sound weird to some people, but if you grew up in Southern California you would understand. It’s nonstop traffic and people 24/7 so it’s a nice change of pace to hear the sound of silence. And there are some places along the Route that are absolutely silent. In fact in my next post you will get to hear an area so quiet that my digital camera’s zoom function is audible in the recording!
Just down the road from Newberry Springs is the Bagdad Café. At first we were wondering, “how does a cafe stay open in Newberry Springs, CA?!”. But the worker inside cleared that up for us. Apparently large groups of tourists from other countries come in by the busload at various times of the year. They literally flood the café with business. A big reason for this is probably the fact that a movie was filmed at the café in 1987. The movie also features, and I quote, “the most desolate motel on Earth”. We grabbed some pictures of the motel as well as the café:
Thankfully I was able to take these pictures of the motel because it was either demolished or burned down since then. It was a good thing that we stopped at the café too, the lady inside told us that we should get back on the 40 as opposed to continuing along Route 66. She said that the road was so bad up ahead that we were pretty much guaranteed to cause major damage to the car. So thank you Lord for sparing my car! You have to do that on occasion when taking a trip like this. Someone has been repaving it little by little, but many miles of the Route are in severe disrepair.
Once we left Bagdad and started traveling down the 4o, I didn’t really stop to take many pictures. For one thing there really wasn’t much to see and for another it was incredibly hot that day. But here is one more picture of an abandoned building and also one of my car on the side of the road:
Siberia is about 45 miles East of Newberry Springs so it was a decent trek. When we were finally in the vicinity my brother guided us in manually using a map on his blackberry. It was so remote that we couldn’t find an exact location. He was able to get us to the road that leads to it, but it was unpaved so we had to walk the rest of the way.
So after many hours in the car we officially arrived in Siberia, CA and it was breathtaking:
Our dad was definitely amazed that we had wasted spent this much time to find a place like Siberia. Here is another picture and this is literally everything:
My brother and I couldn’t stop laughing at our dad’s reaction. It was like he was in disbelief that we had spent all day trying to find a town that only had one wall remaining. Our timing was impeccable as well. You see one of the only reasons that Siberia is still listed on a map is because the railroad line runs directly next to it.
And we were fortunate enough to arrive right when a train was passing through, here is a quick little video of the train:
Once it left we walked back to the car and took some more pictures. I took plenty of empty road pictures:
We didn’t bother taking any pictures of Bagdad because there was absolutely nothing to see, plus it was starting to get dark. We did make another stop in Amboy, CA though. There’s a funny story behind that first stop actually. We took another family vacation one time to the Calico Ghost Town in Barstow, CA. While there we picked up a local paper that was advertising Amboy, CA. They said it was a hop skip and a jump from Calico and was recently reopened. So naturally we decided to make the trip. Well it turned out that it was nearly impossible to locate and the road was atrocious, but we finally made it. There were some other cars there and we decided to drive by the motel in front. All of the sudden some guy by Roy’s Cafe throws his hands up in the air and goes storming inside.
So we made our way to the café expecting to get something to eat. Come to find out it isn’t open for business yet. In fact the guy starts going off about how he’s trying to film a movie and he can’t understand why so many people keep driving by. So my dad shows him the ad in the paper and he was livid. He said something like, “where did you get this? Who printed it?!” Someone had taken it upon themselves to advertise Amboy without consulting him, it was pretty hilarious in a way. The man did sell us some t-shirts though so that was cool.
Anyways we stopped there again on this trip and I grabbed some pictures. This time it truly was renovated and back in business, however they were closed at the time:
I grabbed this really cool picture of my car with the train in the background:
And that pretty much sums up this trip. We had a very uneventful drive through 29 Palms and arrived home very late and very tired. Overall these Route 66 trips are always a blast.
In my next post we take a family vacation to Needles, CA! So stay tuned for more awesome content. Until then this is Greg, over and out.