Today we took a road trip to Oatman Arizona which is around 58 miles from Lake Havasu City. Its big claim to fame are the wild Burros that roam the main street of the town, It is an old mining town that the famous route 66 goes through which is the main street. They also have old western gun fights there on the weekends and today they also were having the annual bed races. The town was full of people and Burros. The following pictures cover our day.
This is the first picture I took as we came onto Main street from where we parked the truck. These are some of the Burros that roam the town.
This is the first picture of the guys preparing to do the gun fight. The story was that they were going to rob the bank.
These are two of the gun fighters, the one on the right is carrying the bag of money they got at the bank and they are on their way to Mexico.
There was a disagreement with one another member of the gang and this poor fellow was the first one shot as the gun fighting started.
This is the guy that didn't think the guys should go to Mexico and then shot the guy above and also shot the guy you can see on the ground at the top of the picture. He is now the only one of the robbers left.
It was then that the Sheriff showed up and tried to stop the guy above. You can see the Sheriff just hitting the ground with his feet in the air after being shot. Prior to the shooting he had asked the bad guy to be sure and hit him square in the chest which the bad guy did, The end of the story was that the Sheriff had a steel plate under his shirt and he got up and shot the bad guy and the play was all over. The good guy wins again.
This is a new friend that Pat made. The Burros are real friendly.
Another picture of Pat and her new friend.
This is the Oatman Post Office and it is a real operating Post Office.
This is the main street of Oatman looking south from the north end of the street.
One of the higher class shops in Oatman.
A couple of the characters that wander around town. He had just fired that shotgun he carrying and it was very loud. She was giving candy to the kids.
This is the emcee for the bed races. He said they got him out of bed early this morning and he only had time to put his hat and boots on.
This was the first team in the bed race and they were in the process of putting the sheet on the bed and the pillow cases on the pillows. The rules of the race were for four people to push a bed with one person on it around 50 feet to where a table was with a mattress on it and a pile of sheets and pillow cases. They had to put the fitted sheet on the bed and pillow cases on the four pillows and then push the bed back the 50 feet to the starting line. This was all timed and the fastest team wins.
This was the second team heading for the table with the mattress.
This was that same team putting the sheet on the mattress and the pillow cases on the pillows.
And this is the same team on the way back to the starting line. Their time was 34 seconds and they were fastest the last we heard. We gave up watching at that point because we couldn't see all that much. I would guess there were at least 200-300 people surrounding the area where they were doing the races.
This is a scenery shot we took as we were leaving Oatman. The hills were very pretty in the sunshine, but it didn't show up well in the picture.
A second scenery shot.
And that was our trip to Oatman. Hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.
Patrick
