How to do the great American road trip: Arizona
“By the way, don’t let your dog out of the vehicle in Oatman,” advised the tourist information assistant at the Kingman visitor centre. “The wild burros will bite its head and rip its scalp off.”
Dog-eating donkeys were probably about the last hazard we could imagine on Route 66, but we took the warning at face value as we set out on the original 1926 road from Kingman to Oatman, a section dubbed the Arizona Sidewinder for its 191 turns – and no guardrails – in one eight-mile stretch through the volcanic jumble of the Black mountains.
As it turned out, the advice was well judged. As the descendants of the pack-carrying animals of the miners from the 1915 gold rush, the burros of Oatman were free to wander and scavenge throughout this Wild West mining town, frequently nudging visitors for the hay-pellet treats sold in many shops. Apparently, to
