I didn't have the camera with us today. It seemed so unlikely that we'd need it because our plan when we left the house was to drive to Needles (99 miles) on Michael's day off so he could have a work meeting for about 45 minutes, we could go to the library (our Bookmobile operates out of Needles and we missed it last week), and Darcy could play at a playground for a while before we tumbled out of Needles back to Cima.
But then ... Michael's colleague said, "You've really never been to see the London Bridge?" Because, as it turns out, the original* London Bridge (of the "falling down" fame) happens to reside about 45 miles from Needles in Lake Havasu City, Arizona.
"Why?" you ask. Well, you can read all about it here, but the long and the short of it is that the London Bridge started sinking a little more than a century after it was built. Those crazy Brits decided they should probably replace it before it became a causeway instead of a bridge, and the bridge was put up for auction: "And if you believe that one, I've got a bridge to sell..."
Anyway, someone decided that having a big ol' stone bridge connecting mainland Arizona to an island in the Colorado River that had previously been a peninsula before a channel was dredged out so the bridge would have a body of water to cross was the Best Idea Ever.
And so a large quantity of money was given to London to take apart the bridge. It traveled across the Atlantic, through the Panama Canal, and across the desert to Lake Havasu City. Because that's what you do with bridges when you're done with them. You send them to the middle of the desert.
So the camera was desired when we admired the bridge from the walkway along the river (ok, the dredged-out-channel). It was wanted while we walked across the bridge to have lunch at a brew pub. And it was desperately needed when, to appease our "I want to ride in a boat PLEASE" daughter, we took a boat ride across the river and back with a few passes under the famous bridge.
While our gondolier serenaded us with Italian love songs and told us all about his invention, the EZPlunge.
Oh, I see you doubt this part. But it's true! Dave-the-singing-gondolier plies his craft (see the double meaning there?) in his homemade gondola (because, he says, there's a three to ten year wait for gondolas actually made in Venice) in Lake Havasu City.
And that's why I should have had my camera. How often in my lifetime do you think that I'll take a gondola ride on the Colorado River underneath the vintage-1831 London Bridge? I'm guessing just the once and there I was without a camera to prove it.
On an only semi-related note, I'm in the middle of The Grapes of Wrath now. When I got home (from my simple trip to Needles) and read for a while as Darcy and the very extended Wright family buried me on the couch, I got to the part of the book where Tom and Pa and assorted others wash and rest in the Colorado River in Needles.
*Ok. So everything near the bridge wants to make it the "original", but in truth, this was a replacement for the one that had heads on pikes, etc. But it's still pretty old and completely freaky.
No comments:
Post a Comment