Holiday USA SW Road Trip in Apr 2022: Day 7 – San Diego to Lake Havasu City

We finally left at 10:30 after the football finished.  It was a long 300 mile drive, estimated to be around 5hr in duration.  Vick had done a great job in splitting it down into three (roughly) equal sections, each about 100 miles and about 90 mins long.  Each ended with a Starbucks visit!

The first section ended at El Centro.  The weather was gorgeous; no clouds in the sky and it was nice and warm at 23 deg c.  It was Interstate 8 all the way to El Centro, so the drive was easy going; plenty of opportunities for overtaking.  Good progress all the way through.

The middle section ended at Blythe and the whole drive was quite stunning.  We drove through North Algodones Dunes Wilderness, which was a desert.  We drove through a sandstorm and we saw no other vehicles on our side of the road the entire trip, so we were completely unimpeded.  It was starting to warm up, so by the time we had reached Blythe, it was up to 29 deg c.

The Starbucks at Blythe wasn’t open to “off the street” orders and the restrooms weren’t available, so we drove down the road to Taco Bell and used their facilities in stead!

The latter section took us to Hampton Inn at Lake Havasu City, also referred to as London Bridge due to the focus of the area being a bridge which had been purchased from the City of London for $2.46m to attract tourists and retirement home buyers to his properties there. 

The bridge was originally built in the 1830s to span the Thames. In 1968, the bridge was bought by Robert P. McCulloch. McCulloch had exterior granite blocks from the original bridge cut and transported to Lake Havasu City, a planned community he established in 1964 on the shore of Lake Havasu. The Arizona bridge is a reinforced concrete structure clad in the original masonry of the 1830s bridge. The bridge was completed in 1971 (along with a canal) and links an island in the Colorado River with the main part of Lake Havasu City.

What happened to the original bridge in London?  By 1962, it was not sturdy enough to carry the increased load of traffic; the bridge was sold to make way for its replacement.

Follow the whole story here: Holiday USA SW Road Trip in Apr 2022