Amboy, Part I

Anyone who has traveled extensively along that long black ribbon of highway called Route 66 will recognize the name of the town of Amboy. Tourists, locals, and America’s Mother Road aficionados know of this old railway stop smack dab center in the Mojave Desert.

It is that iconic place just a few hundred yards from a double set of railroad tracks to the southwest which conjures up images of past times. Towns like Amboy were vital stops for visitors who ventured from the windy city of Chicago to the edge of the Pacific Ocean.

The Mojave Desert is not for the weak-willed or unprepared. No, in the summer months the temperatures can easily soar into the triple digits making driving along Route 66 a challenge at times - especially before the invention of air conditioning for vehicles.

But it is these exact spots that remind the traveler of the fortitude and tenacity of those who went out and settled in sometimes very hostile territories - and succeeded.

Railroading was big business, moving goods from here to there to be consumed by those needing supplies or simply desiring goods from various locales around the country.

And the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad honchos knew the fastest route from large hubs, such as Barstow, would be straight across the Mojave Desert.

In the late 1880s, train engines needed water to build up steam to pump those large steel wheels along hundreds of miles of track.

So railroad stops were created and boom towns blossomed.

Towns like Siberia, Bagdad, Ibis, Bannock, and so many more once were thriving, but have now been nearly all forgotten through the decades. A sign here or there may advise the traveler of a tree as the only living entity in Bagdad. There are broken slabs of cement littering this section or that section of desert allowing those with an imagination to understand that folks once laughed and loved in these towns. And yes, deserted but well maintained cemeteries dot the desert floor giving names to those who lived and died along the railroad. And sometimes there is simply a weatherbeaten wooden cross fighting to stay upright in the blasting winds and relentless sun with no recognition of who lies below.

Many of the ghost towns have their own monuments to past residents

Amboy was such a town. A place that came into existence in 1858 as simply a watering hole for the trains belonging to the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad, later to be the Santa Fe Railway. In 1883 Lewis Kingman, a locating engineer, established the stop as an actual town and soon more and more folks were moving in.

The Church in Amboy, California

In 1926 the now famous Route 66 was completed and people were able to drive their Ford Model Ts, Pontiac 6s, Dodge Specials, or other vehicles all the way from the midwest to California. 

The love affair with cars and driving was in full gear. And the tiny town of Amboy was soon to become an iconic stop along Route 66 due to an enterprising couple who through happenstance soon made the railroad stop their home for decades.

Roy Crowl and his wife, Velma, ended up in Amboy in 1924 after a vehicle mishap, and not being able to afford the repairs stayed while Roy worked as a mechanic and other jobs and Velma became a cook at a couple of restaurants that were there at the time in Amboy.

In the late 1930s, Roy believed Amboy was going to be huge on the map along Route 66 since the vehicle traffic kept getting heavier by the month and purchased four acres of land. In 1938 Roy opened a garage, Roy’s Garage, to service any and all vehicles heading east or west out of town and soon his business was booming. His son-in-law Buster Burris, who had married the couple's daughter, Betty, went into business with Roy in the garage and opened up a parts store inside the garage. Soon though, Betty came up with the idea of their own cafe and confiscated the parts store for her restaurant.

The name was then changed to Roy’s Garage and Cafe. Soon the realization that travelers not only needed fuel, food, and repairs but also a place to spend the night gave the owners another business concept.

Cabins were built just east of the garage and cafe and the name was again changed to Roy’s Motel and Cafe.

Rental cabins to be used by guests at Roy's

In the 1940s the population of Amboy was reported at nearly 200 citizens with three small motels, restaurants, multiple garages, a church, a school, and a post office.

Amboy was certainly on the map for those driving Route 66,

When Roy retired in 1959, Buster not only maintained the motel, service station, and restaurant but also acquired the whole town which included other entities such as a Post Office and school.

Unfortunately, with progress often comes decline and that is what occurred when Interstate 40, a few miles north of Amboy was completed in 1973. Travelers now opted for the faster route instead of the single lane winding road of Route 66 which often meant stopping for trains at crossings or slowing through the towns along the roadway.

Almost all but Buster’s business closed, leaving the town pretty much empty except for a few hangers-ons.  Buster sold the town in 1995 to Walt Wilson and Tim White who used it as a film set and for photo shoots. But even that dried up, forcing the men to lose the town in a foreclosure which returned what was now a ghost town to Betty Burris, Buster’s widow.

As the town died, the citizens left derelict houses

Amboy went back on the market and finally was sold to Albert Okura, the owner of the popular chain of restaurants, Juan Pollo, in February of 2005.

Part of the deal was that Okura had to promise to preserve Amboy and reopen Roy’s. Perhaps Betty Burris did not understand that Albert was a man full of his own dreams and a lover of history.

In fact, he established the one-of-a-kind McDonald’s Museum in San Bernardino of the site where the original McDonald’s restaurant was owned by brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald.

Albert Okura knew what he wanted to do with this Amboy town which he had purchased - turn it back to how it looked in its heyday and welcome guests from around the world to come and enjoy this particular part of true Americana.

He was a man with a mission and a revamping of Amboy was started as soon as the ink dried on the escrow papers.

In Part 2 - Even after Okura’s passing in 2023, his dream is very much alive with his family and the staff working on taking Amboy off the ghost town rolls and making it a living historical landmark.

John can be reached at: beyersbyways@gmail.com

Baddeck, Nova Scotia

Lighthouse along shore of Bras d'Or Lake in Baddeck, Nova Scotia

Traveling often means discovering things that are sometimes unexpected. I’m not talking about such things as teenagers not functioning as humans before noon, or when your wife mentions that a restroom would be welcomed ‘soon’ which translates to means 'right now’ when the nearest town is an hour away.

No, those things are just facts.

It is those moments when traveling when one person turns to the other and utters, “Wow, check that out.”

Laureen, my lovely wife, and I had one such experience as we entered the town of Baddeck in Nova Scotia.

Baddeck is a quaint town sitting along the shores of Bras d’Or Lake. Despite its French spelling, the name is said to have originated from the native Mi'kmaq meaning ‘the long saltwater’, which stretches all the way to the Atlantic Ocean.

One of the wharfs along the water in Baddeck, Nova Scotia

Baddeck looks like a Hallmark setting. A beautiful wharf with fishing boats, trees, and green grass stretching to the shoreline, fancy restaurants, vintage hotels, and a princess gazing into the distance for her prince.

Laureen told me that it was not a princess but a woman who dropped her phone into the water and was yelling at her husband to get it. But, I will stand by my story - her blonde hair was flowing majestically in the slight breeze as she scanned the horizon for her White Knight.

I’m a romantic, all truth be told.

The original Post Office in Baddeck where Bell would mail his correspondence

The town of Baddeck was founded in 1908, but the history goes way back to the 17th century when French missionaries started a settlement in nearby St. Anns in 1629, twelve miles to the north.

It is rumored the French declared, “Les Anglais ne connaîtront jamais cet endroit.”

Well, the English did find the area during the 18th century when the French were forced to give the whole territory to the British Empire.

It is also rumored that the French may have said, “Au diable les Anglaises.”

So, as Laureen and I entered the town to locate our hotel, we passed a large sign that suggested we may enjoy visiting a certain museum. 

And this is where that unexpected thing when traveling happens: it was the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site.

And as any good American, even though technically we were still in America, you know what I mean.  I was flabbergasted.

“They need tourism in Cape Breton so badly that they stole our inventor of the telephone?” I asked Laureen.

What next? This is where Sasquatch is seen more frequently than in the state of Washington, or Area 51? And he is really guarded by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police?

Turns out that Alec, as he liked to go by, had traveled to the Baddeck area years in the past and had fallen in love with the town.

The young Bell had started his life in Scotland but due to health problems, including the death of his two brothers to tuberculosis, his mother and father decided to move to the United States for a better climate.

It worked, and the young man soon became an inventing genius.  

At 18 years of age as he was working for a man who sold corn, Alec developed a method of instead of having manual labor shuck the stalks, a machine could do it.

It worked and Alec is credited with the saying, “Ah, shucks.”

As the years wore on Alec became more and more a man of invention. His father worked with various methods of assisting those without hearing actually to communicate and Alec made that part of his life goal. He became a speech teacher helping those, including Helen Keller.

In fact, his wife was a former student of his who was barely capable of hearing - but due to the extraordinary work from both his father and himself, Mabel was able to speak and read lips to the point that most did not realize she had any hearing issues.

It should be pointed out that Bell’s own mother was deaf but learned how to speak through the research and study by her husband who handed this down to his son.

Bell established the American Association to Promote Teaching of Speech to the Deaf in 1890 and is still doing wondrous things to this day for the hearing impaired.

So, we wandered into the Alexander Graham Bell Museum and were blown away by what we learned.

The Alexander Graham Bell museum in Baddeck, Nova Scotia

In 1876, when Bell famously yelled into the telephone mouthpiece, “Watson, get me a ham sandwich.”  Life changed for the entire planet.

And that set Bell into the history books, which also made him a fabulously wealthy man.

A point learned at the museum was that Bell did not care that much about money. He enjoyed the benefits for humanity but when one of his inventions, and he had countless, went public he dropped interest and moved on to the next idea.

Missing Scotland, Bell convinced his wife that they needed to find a place that would bring that sense of home back to him.

They traveled here and there, with his newfound funds, and happened to stop by Baddeck on one of their adventures.

With the lure of the green hills, tall trees, huge estuary, and rivers, this was the place for him. 

Mabel and Alec settled on a point called Megwatapatek, named by the Mi’kmaq meaning ' Red Head’ due to the reddish sandstone rocks at the end of the peninsula.

The Bells purchased 600 acres and built a beautiful home there and other residences for family members. The property is still owned by the descendants and no non-family members are allowed unless they are guests.

Looking across Bras d'Or Lake at the Bell estate

I tried, even showing my press pass. 

I did not know how cold the waters of the  Bras d’Or Lake were in late June until the security personnel tossed me into them.

The museum was enlightening into the life of Alexander Graham Bell.

Most think of him only as the inventor of the telephone, but he was so much more.

He had a total of 18 separate patents and 12 he shared with other brainiacs which included devices to assist the deaf, phonographs, multiple telegraphs at one time, photographs, metal detectors, and so much more.

We spent hours within the large museum marveling at this and that. All the inventions Bell was involved in were amazing. His wife once said that got his greatest creative ideas by floating in the waters by their house in Baddeck while smoking a pipe, an event that could fill an entire day.

A mockup of Bell's private study in Baddeck, Nova Scotia

He always carried a small notebook and scribbled notes in it constantly.

I suggested Laureen take that stance when I was floating in our pool at home with a cold adult beverage but her eyes rolling stopped that idea.

Bell even got into human flight.

He loved kites and often over the peninsula where their home was, the folks in Baddeck may have seen a dozen various colored and shaped kites skirting the breezes above their land.

The fight for dominance of who could put a human into the air was intense - some guys by the name of the Wright Brothers were doing it but everything was in secret, but Bell believed in publicity.

So, on February 23, 1909, Bell along with a host of like-minded fellas, launched the Silver Dart into the air off the shores of the Baddeck estate, creating the first powered heavier-than-air craft in Canada with a human.

A few years later, Bell and those engineers around him came up with the first hydrofoil concept of a plane that could take off and land on water.

On September 9, 1919, the vehicle took off from the waters of Bells Home and reached a speed of nearly 71 miles per hour.

A replica of Bell's hydrofoil on display.

Though through the years the concept would become indispensable for the military, when the First World War was done, there was not much interest in Bell’s idea.

It was decades later that the military realized Bell was far ahead of almost everyone and now hydrofoils are utilized by all branches of the service.

 In a fitting farewell for one of the United States' most prolific inventors, during his funeral after his death on August 2, 1922, every phone in North America was silenced in tribute to the inventor.

Even in death, Alexander Graham Bell was to be noticed.

For further information: Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site (canada.ca)

John  can be reached at: beyersbyways@gmail.com

Tidal Bore Rafting on the Bay of Fundy

John R Beyer near the Bay of Fundy in Nova Scotia

According to Ed, “Retirement, as I view it comes in three realities. Go-go. Slow-go. Or, No-go. I am going to enjoy the first as long as I can.”

Ed is a full time RVer, along with his wife Trish. They winter in Florida and spend the rest of the year wandering here and there.

This particular here was where my lovely wife, Laureen, and I caught up with the two along the Shubenacadie River which empties into the Bay of Fundy.

The weather was warm for Nova Scotia in mid-June and we were ready for an adventure on this natural phenomenon known as the tidal bore, the shift between low and high tides in the Bay of Fundy.

We had donned our life jackets and were just awaiting instructions from our white water river guides before climbing aboard the small red Zodiac rubber raft with a 60 horsepower outboard attached aft.

Derrick, the man at the helm, announced that we would be traveling out toward the bay while the river was at its shallowest.

“I know it looks like all the water is gone but we will navigate through some channels cut out naturally by the ebb and flow of the river which will give us all a great chance to see how marvelous this experience can be.”

A view of the bottom of the Bay of Fundy after water recedes

In the past, I have run white water rapids on the Colorado River, the Kern River, the Stanislaus River, and the American River - so this should not be too much of an experience in all reality. 

Riding an incoming tide from an ocean? 

The Bay of Fundy has two extensive tides that retreat into the Atlantic Ocean twice a day - roughly twelve hours apart. The tide goes out and boats that have been photographed millions of times are seen sitting on the muddy floor of the bay. Then a few hours later the tide returns and the boats miraculously start to float beautifully upon the waters waiting for their owners to get on board as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.

Laureen Beyer standing on the floor of the Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia

So, here we were near the small enclave of Green Oaks, approximately 60 miles northeast of Halifax getting ready for our four hour cruise along the Shubenacadie River.

Old Railroad bridge spanning the Shubenacadie River, Nova Scotia

“Sounds like a Rolling Stones song,” I mentioned to Laureen as we made our way down a rather steep incline to the floor of the now empty river. “I can’t get no satisfaction from my Shubenacadie. I can’t get no . . .”

“Stop,” she replied. 

“The mud can get a bit slippery here,” said Steph, a guide who would be accompanying us on our wild rapids journey.

I smiled but then suddenly found myself sliding down the path to the river as though I had just donned a pair of snow skis for a downhill slalom. I was out of control.

“A hand here,” I yelled. 

“I think Laureen pushed me,” I said when regaining my balance next to the Zodiac.

We had signed up with Fundy Tidal Bore Adventures for this excursion along the Shubenacadie to see what all the hub-hub was with these Bay of Fundy tides.

I had never heard of a tidal bore. Though, it is very true that I have met a lot of bores in my life, and perhaps one or two by a tide, but this phenomenon was new to me.

The definition is quite simple: ‘A tidal bore, often simply given as bore in context, is a tidal phenomenon in which the leading edge of the incoming tide forms a wave (or waves) of water that travels up a river or narrow bay, reversing the direction of the river or bay's current. It is a strong tide that pushes up the river, against the current.’

Huh?

We had witnessed the water in various rivers upon our travels in this region of Nova Scotia over the past few days to marvel how a river or bay is full of water and then within a couple of hours you can be having a lobster roll on the dry bed.

In fact, the lobster rolls were delicious and backed by a cold Nine Locks Dirty Blonde made eating on the muddy floor of a waterway that much better.

When the water retreats and then returns to fill in the bay or river, the fluctuation can be amazing. These tidal bores only occur in a very few remarkable areas around the world and usually have a difference of about 20 feet between ebb and flow.

The Bay of Fundy is one of the grandest of them all, with a difference of sometimes over 40 feet - in fact at Burntcoat Head Park, approximately 40 miles west of Green Oaks on the Bay of Fundy, 54 feet of water difference is not uncommon.

Some people actually surf the Tidal Bore on the Bay of Fundy

We were off heading toward the bay as our captain, Derrick, piloted the small raft with great expertise finding this channel or that channel.

“Look up at the tall cliffs surrounding us,” he directed. And we did. “When the tidal bore comes in it will not be long until those cliffs are only a few feet above us instead of the sixty they are now.”

Suddenly a bald eagle soared out of the tall green trees atop those very same cliffs and circled high above us. 

"You’ll see a lot of those today,” Steph said, and in fact, we counted at least fourteen flying high and wide across the Shubenacadie in the next four hours.

Soon we were beached along a huge sand bar in the middle of the river. “We’ll be here for about thirty minutes until the tide comes in, and then it’s off to the races.”

“I read that the tidal bore can be only a few inches in height as it comes in,” I said to Ed and Laureen who were standing near me. “Doesn’t sound very thrilling.”

We chatted about this and that when suddenly we all noticed the once dry sand bar was quickly going under water and we were ankle deep in the incoming waters. The tide was coming in at a rate of about two inches a minute.

“Let’s get aboard,” Derrick said as we all climbed back into the raft and took our positions sitting on top of the inflated sides. “Make sure to hold tight to the ropes behind you when we actually hit the tidal bore.”

Warnings were given to all us customers not to bring any personal belongings upon the raft - cell phones, cameras, jewelry, car keys, or anything else of value. Morgan, the owner of the company, had told us before casting off that the waves would be so brutal that it would be nearly impossible to hold onto anything but the ropes looped around the exterior of the raft.

“I’m sure this will be a nothing burger that we paid good money for,” I skeptically replied.

Forty minutes later they could hear my girlie-man screams all the way to Prince Edward Island.

The tidal bore was anything but boring as it smacked straight into the waters of the river and with the narrow channels filling up, created pockets of swirling masses of white water, and our raft bounded into the air like a fish fighting for its life.

“You noticed when the water was out there were dips here and there across the surface of the river,” Derrick yelled across the raft. “That is what’s creating the rapids.”

At this point, I had swallowed enough of the Shubenacadie to become a local and we weren’t done yet.

“Now, off to the washing machine!” Derrick yelled, as he throttled the raft to maximum velocity.

In moments the entire bow of the raft, where Ed and I happened to be sitting was engulfed in mammoth waves. It was thrilling. It was wonderful. It was scary, as I lost my grip of the rope with my left hand and ended up on the floor of the raft, which happened to be full of water.

“I can still see the top of the boat,” Ed yelled. “Is this all you got?”

Derrick took the challenge and plunged us head first into the first set of six footers which ran over the length of the Zodiac. I lost count on how many sets there were. 

That is when, for the briefest moment, I hated Ed.

It was probably the best ride of my life. Nerve wracking and all, but to experience a tidal bore so up close and personal was beyond marvelous.

Fishing boats get stranded twice a day on the Bay of Fundy

We survived and I had to agree with Ed - this trip to Nova Scotia was going to be a Go-go. 

For further information: https://www.tidalboreadventures.ca/contact

John can be reached at beyersbyways@gmail.com