Forty miles southwest of Kingman, ten miles from the California border, a detour south brings you to one of the more bizarre sights of the American desert - the old gray stone of
London Bridge
, reaching out to an artificial island across the stagnant waters of the dammed Colorado River at
LAKE HAVASU CITY
. It has to be said that it looks a hell of a lot better here, with the Chemehuevi Mountains as a backdrop, than it ever did on the River Thames. The resort's developer, Robert P. McCulloch, bought the bridge (under the impression it was Tower Bridge - or so the story goes) for 2.4 million dollars in the late 1960s, and painstakingly shipped it across the Atlantic chunk by chunk before reassembling it over a channel dug to divert water from Lake Havasu, creating an island on the other side of the bridge known as Pittsburgh Point.
Motels
are abundant: the
Windsor Inn Motel
, 451 London Bridge Rd (tel 928/855-4135 or 1-800/245-4135; $35-50), has especially low rates, while the
Ramada at Lake Havasu
, 271 S Lake Havasu Ave (tel 928/855-5169 or 1-800/528-5169; $50-75), is a little fancier. Among several good-value
restaurants
is
Shugrue's
, in the Island Fashion Mall at the end of London Bridge (tel 928/453-1400), which serves fresh fish, salads and pasta.
