Destination: Newberry Springs - Route 66, Petroglyphs, and more (with Karla Claus)

Hello everyone, this is Howard Fox and welcome back for another episode of the Outdoor Adventure Series podcast. I am back in Newberry Springs, California. It is actually Sunday, and yesterday there was the Newberry Springs birthday batch to celebrate the centennial anniversary of Route 66. A huge event, very successful event, a lot of great food, a lot of great booths, some great music. We actually did an interview with Ryan Bodine and also toured a uh a sculpture garden with Mr. Chen. And those episodes are going to be up as well. And before I head back to Las Vegas, now it is Sunday. It's beautiful weather out there. It's getting hot. I wanted to take some time to really introduce you in a little deeper way to the woman who has helped make this episode series with Newberry Springs come to fruition. There's a little story behind how that even got started. But I have the pleasure right now of introducing you to Carla Claus. Now she is the vice president of the Newberry Springs Chamber of Commerce. I'm going to let her share other facets of her life. Let's just say she is a serial entrepreneur. But for right now, Carla, thank you so much for joining me on what really is the it's the final podcast for this series with Newberry Springs.

The best is last, right?

I saved the best for last. I'm actually sitting in Carla's home. She actually her husband have a property that literally sits on Route 66, which is kind of cool. Such an iconic roadway. And Carla, as I had shared earlier, is the vice president of the Chamber of Commerce. I actually met Carla really by happenstance. I was watching a video uh of Wonder Hussie, who has very well known the desert uh adventurer, and they were having uh uh kind of this mock wedding at the barn, which is where the festivities were yesterday. And there was Carla, and I thought, well, why don't I reach out to Carla? And I think within an hour you responded to my email, and the rest, shall they say, is history. But first off, tell us a little bit, Carla. One, as the vice president of the Chamber of Commerce, what's is your role and responsibility?

My role and responsibility is to support the growth of tourism and businesses throughout our little community and focusing really at this point on Route 66 development. We're trying to build the awareness of Newberry Springs as a destination and also a place to move to for families because we have land, we have clean air, we have room for the kids, lots to do, and a really wonderful community. As I have love found loving living here, I love a lot of the people. It's kind of fun when they, oh, hi, such and such, I saw your car. And the same for me. So it's really a tight-knit community, but it's a wonderful community.

Excellent. Yesterday at the uh at the at the birthday bash, it was really great to see again and chat again with many of the folks that I had interviewed. Paul, Paula Deal, we had Keller, we had John Burrell, John Burrell. Jackie and Christine, and then the I saw Gene Rordellas. Jean and Ron, yeah. I did not get to see Ron yesterday.

Yeah.

Diane, and it was just really a lot of fun. And I really, as someone who came into the community to work on a project, I actually felt the connection here, and I really appreciated that. Uh who knows, maybe someday I will be a single guy living in Newbury Springs. That's which opens up another challenge, but that's okay. But as the with the Route 66 celebration, really putting Newberry Springs on the map as a place to stop by, more so than visit the bar and have a good piece of pizza, a burger, some adult beverages, you've got the Baghdad Cafe just down the road a little bit. But I would think that here in Newberry Springs, there's a lot of other opportunities for folks that maybe someday will come here, maybe stay at one of the bed and breakfasts, the RV parks, but also partake in other activities here. Not just so that Newberry Springs is not just a drive-thru destination, but rather a place, hey, we're gonna stay for a day or two.

Right.

What are some of those ideas?

Well, some of those ideas involve the house that you were mentioning to create a visitor center and a park-like environment where it'd be day and night entertainment with lights and sparkly tree lights. Actually, I'm acquiring 40 metal palm trees that will also light up. So it'll be kind of a place to casually sit, maybe have some s'mores, a little camping, but put a wedding chapel event center on the same location. So it'll now create yet that third hot spot in Newberry Springs. But beyond that, my desire is to create the reason to come here for a weekend or even a little bit longer. Sure, longer versus that driving through See the Baghdad Cafe or get a great pizza and just leave, which is typically what a lot of people are doing. And our Airbnbs are wonderful out here, but a lot of them are just the night stopover on their way to somewhere else where they wanted to just not get into the main hub of being in a condensed city. So as that, people don't realize what there is to see here. We have 3,000 bighorn sheep up in our Rodman Mountains, Snowberry Mountains. Those are a little bit hard to see, but just to know they're there is kind of exciting. We have petroglyph clusters, not just a little here and there, up in the same mountains. We have buried houses, we have a world-class coi farm. We have farming here with pistachio fields still. We have a 10-acre organic ranch, we have beautiful lake properties that we could use as inviting people to see, horse rescues, we have a number of his real historical places like the Newberry Cave, like Echo Ranch being a Tony Express, a stagecoach stop, the real beginning of Newberry Springs as a town in a sense, because when you were traveling by horseback, wagon train, stagecoach, you could only travel a certain distance, and you had to rest the horses, rest the people. And so literally, and like I always imagine those old movies I see, the Westerns, where they would go drive up uh right up to a homestead and say, Can you put me up in the for a night? Well, there's the barn, and we'll give you a meal, and we'll help you. So it's really a part of that story that we can share with visitors and recreate the dream, not to mention fabulous stargazing.

So there's just lots to do. Yes, yes. The star, I mean the stars at night are amazing. And that was one of the coming back here. I was actually looking forward to it, and it it did not disappoint. I am curious. Yesterday during the birthday bash, John Burrell and I did played hooky for a little bit. We went exploring and we went to some of the other towns like Daggett. I know, I know I passed through Yurmo yesterday when I was doing one of my interviews. We went over the Barstow, which has a coffee shop. At least if I were to ever stay here in Newberry Springs, at least I know there's a coffee shop, unless we can get one here. But there was also the murals. How is Newberry Springs in its effort to really instantiate itself on the map as a as a place people are not going to pass through, but they're going to stay here and have some adventure? How are you also imagining partnering with some of the other communities like like Daggett, like Barstow, and I'm sure Yermo, though it's not on Route 66, but some of the other communities that are in this high desert area?

Well, the first on the list is Daggett, because it's approximately nine miles, and you can drive on Route 66 or I-40 going towards Barstow to this historical little gem. And what's happening there is that one of the leaders in historical preservation, Daryl Schandel, and their Chamber of Commerce of Daggett is teaming up to create literally 11 museums. They have Alf's blacksmith shop, which is literally, they just close the door, every single tool is there, the whole is pristine uh mark in history. And they used to make the wagon wheels for the Vorax mine, which was the mule team. And so they're really heavily connected to reenacting history, and they call it their goal is to have a day in Daggett. Right. So let's have a day in Newberry Springs, let's have a day in Daggett, and let's have a day in Barstow because Barstow also has a rich history of Rouge 66, plus what they're doing with Main Street murals, and the town growth is going to be centered with a combination of history, tourism, and a lot more ambiance. Right now it's kind of a tired, some of the main street is a little bit dated, but they have big plans.

It was the 20-mule team, right? Yes. Right. And for for someone like me that grew up in the Midwest, my mom had the box of borax, the 20 mule team. We had that on the shelf and right yesterday and seeing it in the museum and knowing that this town was that's where the mule team ended up. Yeah. Sitting right right there, and and how they got there and the effort to come down from the mountains. Right.

It's hard to imagine it was a bustling mining town, and probably where a lot of outlaws kind of like to hang out like Wyatt or he actually lives somewhere in the desert east of us, but he was a local, an often visitor to the bucket of blood bar.

Yeah, but I I think he would probably take exception to being called an outlaw, but that's okay. But no, there's just so much history in this area, and it's fascinating. And again, one of the aspects of this project we uh with all these interviews is just meeting all the people that have recent history, but also whose families have uh deep, deep history. We just visited a homestead uh a little uh a while ago that's undergoing some renovation. You've got John Burrell whose episode we did, his family were some of the earliest settlers here in uh in Newbury Springs.

And even this house was uh that we're sitting in right now, 1929, right on Rouge 66, started out as a homestead, which would have been approximately 160 acres. Well, it's nine acres now, but amongst that process, it was a famous rock shop called the Armstrong House.

Right. And it just has this Hugh Hauser's interview was at this house. Okay, gotcha.

Sandy Britain owned it. It was really fun to be.

Now I have a question. If I was to live in this house, would I have my address be such and such? We'd have to say what the number is, but such and such National Trails Road.

Oh, yes, 45794 National Trails Road.

Okay, that would be very cool. That's like living on Michigan Avenue when I lived in Chicago. Yeah, I was the last mile of the Chicago Marathon. So this would be cool, as I would I would be living on National Trails Road here in Newberry Springs. Carl, I want to learn a little bit more about you because I had alluded to earlier, you are a serial entrepreneur. So tell us a little bit about each one of these other businesses that you are involved with, both personally and professionally, in this work to promote Newberry Springs.

Well, I'm evolving away from my original career of 25 years as a furniture designer with my husband because I believe in this growth of Newberry Springs and tourism, and I want to help shape it. So we started Route66 Toursca.com, and the goal is to offer bus visitors, different tours, and also individuals. And we're future is partnering with a gentleman named Rodney to have this amazing eight-passenger tour mobile that will be going from the Baghdad to the barn. It will actually be four-wheel drive with a canopy, and it's gonna just be another way that we can please people who are traveling and to create the fun, quick fun. We plan on having some animals here. We're kind of tossing around the fact if it's gonna be first my goal was camels because camels was a part of the history. And who wouldn't want to drive by and just have to turn around and make a U-turn if you saw some camels?

There you go.

The second one is that as we met through the Wonder Hussie video called Wonder Hussy Gets Married, we were lucky enough to use the barn Ridge 66 back room during the daytime as a wedding venue. This was my idea, and everybody went along with it. We had 16 different players and the star, of course, Wonder Hussy, and we created this fun little skit where you could get married on Ridge 66, sort of like Las Vegas style, if you want to call it, or you can have your vows renewed, you can have a proposal, get down on one knee in a beautiful way, and you could also, just for fun, have your pets get married to each other, which is kind of a uh just a little spin on playfulness. But the serious side of the wedding business, which is lakesideparties.com, is that friends of mine have these gorgeous lake properties, and they're ready to open the doors to have beautiful weddings or proposals right alongside the lake. And you've been to one of those properties, which is like the ultimate. It's uh cross between Disneyland and Osberry Farm in a ranch setting, and it that's just one of multiple options. So these are this is what's exciting to me. We have a team of people kind of rallying behind this little goal, and it starts with this house right on Route 66.

Excellent. We're gonna provide all the backlinks to the various websites from these businesses up on our show notes. Are there any other places you'd want our listeners to go to to learn more about you and your work and the chamber's work?

Um, well, our Chamber of Commerce office will have a lot of our try to coordinate the different options. We have a beautiful website called discover newberysprings.com. That's a really great uh resource for our our people investigating Newberry Springs, and then we have the Newberry Springschamber.com. So all of us kind of work together, the barn Route 66, just down the road, and the Baghdad Cafe. We're all trying to do our tune it up and make it even more fantastic. The centennial's been the big enthusiasm behind this all.

I love it. And we're gonna get we're gonna provide all of those backlinks in our show notes. Carla, thank you again. It's been a pleasure to be out here on this journey, getting to know the folks, great folks in here in Newberry Springs, and really this idea that came about because I was aware. I said I was watching a YouTube video, there it was, and it's it's a testament, just if an idea pops in your head, take action on it. And this turned out to be a fantastic project, and it's been a pleasure to get to know you and the great residents here in Newbury Springs, and really can't thank you enough.

Thank you so much, Howard, for being a now a family member to us, even whether you live here or not. You are now part of Newberry Springs, and we have enjoyed every time that we've seen you and look forward to more. Thank you.

Fantastic. Listen, we're gonna do a quick close, and of course, you and I will have a final chat. All right, folks, I've just been chatting with Carla Claus. She is the vice president of the Newberry Springs Chamber of Commerce. She is a serial entrepreneur. I'm not gonna list out all the various that great things she's doing, but if I if I had to say one thing, she's like the energizer bunny when it comes to promoting Newberry Springs as a destination, not just a drive-through on the on the mother road Route 66, but also to make this a destination where you can experience really the great scenery, the weather, the people, and maybe spend a a day or two here, a night or two here, taking advantage of everything that is here and hopefully the things that will be coming here as a result of everybody in Newberry Springs who cares about this community and wanting it to grow. Now we're gonna provide all the backlinks in our show notes, and of course, want you to really go out and visit discover newberry springs dot com as well as the Chamber of Commerce's website, and again, we'll provide backlinks to the businesses that Corolla is involved with. As for us, you can find us on our website, outdooradventure series.com. We're also on LinkedIn and Facebook, and uh the YouTube of this video, which will include all bunch of photos that I've taken since I have been involved with this project, those will be up on YouTube, and of course, you can listen to this episode and all of the other episodes. There will be 22 in total. They're gonna be up on our podcasts, the directories, and you just do a search for outdoor adventure series, and that's where they will be. And just hey, why don't you listen to the episodes while you are driving to Newberry Springs? Okay, folks, wherever you are, whatever you're doing, go out there, have a fantastic day, and we look forward to having you join us on a future episode of the Outdoor Adventure Series Podcast. Take care of that.