Sisty-Ugler Wild West Adventure:
We started off well with “We Will Survive”, a song that would soon become something like a theme song as we sang and danced our way down the highways. Goal 1: make it to Tim and Ginger DiMenna’s place just past St. Louis, Missouri. We took some pictures coming through MO and then had a wonderful evening with Tim, Ginger and Laura. Neither of us had seen our old friends in YEARS and it was great to chat and catch up. Between Laura and I, our best-friendship from when we were 7 years old sprang back to life as if no time had passed and even after Regan and Laura’s parents had all gone to bed we stayed up chatting into the night.
The next morning Tim and Laura had already left when Regan and I rose from our slumbers. Ginger helped us to bagels and coffee and then gave us a fond farewell and just like that we were back on the road. Historic Route 66 has been rerouted over the years and its current equivalent is Route 44 through Missouri and into Oklahoma and then Route 40 the rest of the way. But if you want to stay on Historic Route 66, there’s a short 10 minute jog through the south east corner of Kansas. Well, of course we had to take the jog! So I pulled out the soundtrack to the Wizard of Oz and off we went to add another state to our list. We missed the sign that said “Welcome to Kansas” but we stopped and got out of the car to take pictures entering Oklahoma. I even jumped back and forth in the middle of Stateline Road saying, “Now I’m in Kansas, Now I’m Oklahoma, Now I’m in Kansas!”
We got back in the car and quickly switched CDs to another home mix so we could start things off properly with “Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweeping ‘cross the plain!!”… or as I sang it, “Oklahoma, where the sun comes sleeping down the plain”… oops…
One of our first roadside attractions that we saw along the way was clearly the best: The Blue Whale of Catoosa Oklahoma. I will try to upload the video- it really says it all. :D
Outside of our stops for lunch and roadside attractions our goal was to go go go until we couldn’t anymore- in other words, to make it from just outside St. Louis, Missouri to anywhere past Oklahoma City. We did that and then some! We stopped, after something like 13 hours in the car, about an hour outside of Amarillo, Texas in the tiny little town of Sketchville, USA… or as the folks in that area refer to it: McLean, Texas. We couldn’t find the hotel that our Route 66 map told us was there- The Cactus Inn or whatever… turns out we just didn’t go far enough. So instead we stayed at some little motel that had no cable and made me nervous. We both slept in our sleeping bags just to be safe and neither one of us showered- better safe than sorry. We’d shower at our next stop. Across the street from our motel was a llama. No really! Like a real llama, chillin’ next to a trampoline in the fenced in yard of someone’s house- like a pet llama! We thought that was pretty crazy.
We got up and going pretty early and stopped to take pictures of the first ever Phillips 66 Gas Station- non-functional but preserved in its original form. Pretty neat.
Another roadside attraction worth mentioning was Big Texas- the restaurant where if you eat a 72 oz steak on a stage, in front of everyone, you don’t have to pay for it. If you get through it and throw up, you lose though, and then you have to pay. They claim to have fed our father… but they lie, our dad has never been to Big Texas.
Texas was full of roadside attractions and there is one more that will make its presence into our memoires: As Regan and I were driving down Highway 40/Route 66 leaving Amarillo we looked to our left and saw 10 cars sticking out of the ground in the middle of a farm field. We quickly pulled off the highway to go investigate. We parked and went through the little gate and wondered aloud what on earth we were looking at. 10 cars, nose down, halfway into the ground in the middle of nowhere… we had no idea and there was no sign to tell us. We took a couple
pictures of the graffiti-covered, rusted-down old vehicles and then got in the car and called Mom. “Can you look up cars buried nose-down in the ground in texas” Regan asked. “What happened?!” she wanted to know- did we get in an accident? Was our car somehow buried into the ground and we needed some sort of assistance? No, No, No… we just wanted to know what we just saw. The Cadillac Ranch, as it turns out, is what that was.
This is what it looked like BEFORE
the tires fell apart and a world of tourists saw fit to color all over them.
Now… they look like this:
As we headed further West Route 66 took a jog Regan and I were a little wary of. Crossing from Texas into New Mexico Route 66 goes further south than it’s now-a-day counterpart Highway 40. So we tried to keep to our plans and follow Historic 66 through the Ghost Town that was once Glenrio and through the empty wilderness… but umm… it turned into a dirt road. As in one moment it was paved with the little Route 66 symbol on the pavement and the next its a dirt road that we can’t see where it goes. We followed it for about 5 to 10 minutes but we got a little nervous that this wasn’t right or that we were going to get lost. So… we turned around, said goodbye to Glenrio and got back on 40 to head into New Mexico the more mainstream way.
Once in New Mexico it was getting to be around lunch time and we stopped at Kix on 66 Café. Good food and AMAZING flavored coffee :) Then we stopped off just next door at Tee Pee Curious (mentioned in our Route 66 guide) to pick up a couple souvenirs.
As we drove onward we kept passing an inordinate amount of billboards for some truck stop of sorts called the Flying C Ranch. They advertised that they had Fireworks and Souvenirs and Flame Throwers and all kinds of things… I once miss-read the sign and was like “flying polar bear fleece blankets?” Which, later, lead to the comment that became an inside joke, repeated often over the next few days, “They sell moccasins there… and flying polar bear fleece blankets as well.” We decided, however, not to stop at the Flying C Ranch.
Instead we kept plugging and soon enough we made it to Albuquerque, New Mexico where we, thankfully, checked into our nice and clean Days Inn and headed into Old Town Albuquerque for the night. We wandered through the souvenir shops full of Native American jewelry and through the touristy old town. We stopped to watch some community organization put on a show of Thai music and dance- interesting and unexpected. Then we stopped off at some local place to have a delicious taco salad for dinner.
After dinner we drove down to a little park and walked around down by the Rio Grande River for a while. The plan from there was to go out on the town so we drove around downtown trying to decide where to go and we picked The Library, mostly for the name and Regan effectively changed her facebook and twitter statuses to “Headed to the library ma… to study…” As it turns out the atmosphere in the library was little on the lame side (not to mention that the waitresses were dressed in ways that scream degradation of women and their bodies) so we had our one drink and then headed back to the hotel to relax in the comfort of our room and plan out our next day.
Yet to come:
Sky City
The Land of Fire and Ice
The Petrified Forest
The Meteor Crater
Sedona
Flagstaff
Grand Canyon
Zion Canyon
Brice Canyon
Denver, CO
Wiggins!
Iowa City
“Beam me home, Scotty!”
And all that’s in between! More to come!
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