Day 5: From Oklahoma to Texas

There's nothing like the smell of cow crap after dinner. 

Yep, we're in Texas. 

Amarillo.

We spent more time on Route 66 today, touring more small-town stops in Oklahoma and Texas. A lot of places were closed for New Year's Eve (the National Route 66 Museum, Erik OK's curiosity shop, and the Devil's Rope (barbed wire) Museum, but we did manage to find quite a few original gas stations and motels - some restored, some dilapidated. A border town we went through was completely abandoned, Texola. Between Alanreed and Groom, TX we drove on an old stretch of the Route called the "Jericho Gap," a break in the paved road that was not bypassed until the late 1930's and was feared for its car-trapping mud. My dad feared it more for the dust and quickly turned around and headed for interstate. We saw a few other Route 66 oddities - a leaning water tower (erected as a bet, to see if it would remain standing) and the tallest cross in the western hemisphere. We pulled into our destination town - Amarillo, TX - about 2:00 this afternoon. Amarillo has done a good job of maintaining the historic Route 66 area, so we stopped in a few antique shops along the old strip. My dad was thrilled, so much so that he had to go back to sit down in the motorhome; I picked up an old hat, a fuzzy deer nic-nac, and a book. Though it was a short day, we knew we had a long night with New Year's Eve ahead, so we checked into the campground about 5:00 and saved the rest of the Amarillo sights for the next day.

For our New Year's Eve outing, we chose Big Texan Steak Ranch, home of the 72 oz. steak. (If you eat it and all the sides, it's free.) The restaurant sent a longhorn limo to the campground to pick us up (as in horns on the front of the car). The restaurant was on the original Route 66 but had to be moved in the 70's when the road was torn up. Everything about it said Route 66 and Texas. Big. Overdone. Crazy. Perfect. My dad made quick friends with the owner of the gift shop, who may very well come to visit in NC and who also told us not to order the shrimp... or the chicken fried steak... or the barbeque, but that the steak was great. And it was! It was only a 6 0z., but we still couldn't each finish ours. Then after a few photos and some time in the shooting gallery, we boarded the cow limo for "home." And yes, as we exited, the smell of cow crap wafted through the night air.

Now, we wait another 45 minutes until "our" New Year, while those of you back at home are already celebrating. It's bittersweet, and I miss being there to celebrate with you all. I wish you all the best, and I look forward to seeing you in the New Year!

Good night 2008...

A Morning Comparison

We went back to Elk Country Cafe this morning for breakfast, and I had a revelation. It was just like being back at home in Mt. Pleasant. Take away the landscape (Oklahoma has been mostly varying shades of brown, by the way, minus some recent farmland), and everything else says Mt. Pleasant. The accents. The boots and overalls. The hair. The gruff men getting ready to go off to work. The decor (elk/deer wallpaper border, paintings, etc.) Same thing, different place.

Day 4: In the Shop

It was a frustrating morning. Since our second day on the trip, we've had some electrical problems with the battery recharging (not the driving battery, but the one that runs all the rest). We've just plugged in at night and been fine, but it acted up a little in the middle of the night last night and with snow sometime soon ahead, we figured we better take it in. All that could handle ol' Rocinante was a Freightliner shop about 70 miles west of Oklahoma City... which meant we woke up and drove straight out of  the city, straight away from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, the Harn Homestead, the largest collection of Dale Chihuly glass in the world, and three Miss America statues - straight away from all the things I wanted to see. Cry me a river, I know. I'm gone for five weeks, and y'all are sitting at your desks working, yeah yeah. So whatever. So we drove 1 & 1/2 hours to Clinton, Oklahoma. For the first hour after arriving, we sat in the parking lot waiting. For the next 2 hours we sat inside the RV, inside the shop, while they started fixing things (there was a list greater than the battery issue, by the way). By about 12:00, I was starving and finally got up from my pacing, and my crocheting, and my complaining ("Why'd you have to buy this stupid thing, when we could have just taken a car?!"), and cooked breakfast. I filled that entire mechanic shop with the smell of bacon! By the time we had finished, a rental car had come for us from a town about 40 miles away. Finally, an escape! We jumped in and high-tailed it to the Route 66 museum just down the road. It was small but had some interesting facts and memorabilia and just enough junk for us to buy (some of y'all will be getting your postcards soon!). Then we found a pretty long stretch of the original 66 - real pavement and all - and we rode it with the windows cracked to a perfect 60-something-degree, bright blue day. We stopped to listen to the sound of the wind turbines, since my dad heard that farmers complain about their noise scaring their cows. They didn't sound too loud to me, or too scary. Stopped again for some random pictures. And then stopped at the Cherokee Trading Post junk store (found some magnets - thanks for the suggestion, Teddy, cause there's no way my dad's letting me put bumper stickers on Rocinante's Sunday best!). By then, it was time to head back for Freightliner's 5:00 closing, and we arrived just as they were pulling a happier, healthier Rocinante out of the shop. Not only did they fix the recharge problem, but she drives faster now! Whoo-hoo for that! (All day I was thinking about Horatio's drive across America, that first American cross-country road trip, and all the troubles that he had. Puttering at 10 miles an hour on road that was barely road, trying to get to the next town for a list of repairs as long as your arm. It's all part of it, I know. And it was all worth it.) We waited a little longer for them to clean her and shine her up a bit, then we were on our way. We travelled a few towns west, and as the sun was setting, we pulled into Elk City for the night. We found a local place for dinner, and I had the biggest, best piece of country fried steak I'd ever laid my eyes or mouth on (Yes, Paul, I've continued my steak streak!)! Then we drove through a local park decorated with lights for Christmas. And here we are again, same as last night, the scene repeated: hunkered down in the campground, my dad with his glass of watered-down bourbon and his nightly TV; me, under the light of the kitchen table, typing away, with "Keep on the Sunny Side" sublimely singing in my ears.

Til tomorrow...

Day 3 - Ok. Lahoma.

Today was the first real day of our trip. It felt different than the other days. We knew that finally something would happen, there would be things to see - something other than the bleak blacktop of the interstate. My dad certainly felt the excitement; I woke up at 5:15AM to bright lights, a blaring  TV, and the sound of him rattling dishes in the "kitchen," about 1/2 inch from the bed.

After a short (and very frigid) morning drive, we got on Route 66 in Vinita, Oklahoma. It has been a lifelong dream of my dad to travel this nostalgic thoroughfare. Unfortunately, there isn't much left of the old road. Most of it has been taken over by the usual chains and repetitive landmarks of any American town.  In fact, we went though several towns determined to find some quaint breakfast diner, but by about 9:30, my dad pulled into a McDonald's, and I settled, unhappily, with a yogurt I had packed for the trip. Even in the bigger towns, there was nothing.

The road got better, though. We found a classic Route 66 stop: Totem Pole Park in Foyil, Oklahoma. Ed Galloway built this collection of totem poles in his side yard (along with handcrafted fiddles and a "fiddle house") after his retirement in 1937 and kept constructing until his death in 1962. Records say that he got up every morning at 5AM and worked til sunset. He and my dad would have gotten along very well... The largest totem pole is a 90' structure that took him 11 years to complete, utilizing 28 tons of cement, 6 tons of steel, and 100 tons of sand and rock. Needless to say, it's the largest concrete totem pole in the world. 

We saw a few other Route 66 points of interest as we made our way to Tulsa and then to Oklahoma City: a bridge over a fragment of the old road, an original Philip's 66 gas station, and an old auto repair shop.

History of Route 66: In 1924, Oklahoma Highway Commissioner Cyrus Avery was recruited to develop a new system of interstate highways. His design connected hundred of existing roads from Chicago to Los Angeles, making sure that the route cut through his home state. US 60 was his first choice for naming this thoroughfare, and when another state wanted the same number for their roadway, a great debate ensued. Avery was offered US 62 as an alternative name, but he finally settled with the double digits, a suggestion that came from his chief engineer, John Page. Route 66 was officially designated in 1926.

Route 66 did become the frequented road it was meant to be, travelled by everyone from families moving westward during the Great Depression and the Dustbowl of the 1930s, to convoys of men and munition during World War II, to post-war soldiers and their families who were itching to travel. 

But by the mid 1950s, the interstates were expanding past what Route 66 could offer, and the military use of the route during the war had taken its toll on the roads. Over the next 15 years, most of the road was ripped up and moved aside, and all the towns that depended on its traffic suffered. Now, in some places, there isn't even a trace of the original Route 66, and in other places, a lot of what's there is new road, laid in slightly different places. But some of the small towns still maintain what they can of the character of the old road and the quirky stops along the way. 

We stopped in Claremore, Oklahoma, the home of Will Rogers, to see the museum dedicated to his life and work. I am what some would say is "too young to know who Will Rogers is." And those people would be right. He was an actor in silent films during the 1920s and 30s, a cowboy humorist of sorts. I don't know... But the museum was pretty interesting, even if I didn't know a thing about him.

We finally did make it to Tulsa. Unfortunately, the website was better than the town, and we pretty much just drove on through and got back on Route 66.

Dinner was a stop along 66 in Arcadia, Oklahoma at Pops, a new-retro diner/gas station featuring over 400 different kids of soda pop! I made my own 6-pack. You know how I like my mixed 6-packs. :)

Now, here we are in Oklahoma City, finishing off the night in a campground, doing what I'm sure we'll be doing most nights to follow... my dad, watching something on his precious TV (in only 3 days, I think the customer service representatives at Direct TV have become his new best friends); me, with earphones in to block out the noise, blogging.

So, good night friends, and thanks for reading!

(Oh, and maybe tomorrow I'll figure out to spread these pictures out. If anyone knows, please tell me!)

Day 2 - 12/28

A month on the road is a long time. I knew I needed a way of keeping up with all this time, all the things that would happen, then pass. While packing, I searched through my stack of travel journals, but none had enough empty pages to hold 4-5 weeks of thoughts. So instead of buying a new journal, I thought I would turn to blogging and share this all with my friends, along the way. So here we go, I invite you along...


Day 1 on the road, for me, was spent sleeping off a cold contracted just in time for departure on our month-long journey. So I'm skipping description of that day, besides to say that we spent the night in Nashville.

Day 2 started somewhere around 8AM (could have been 9 - I'm not really sure what time zone we were in. This also means we may have very well gone to bed at 7PM "new" time, the night before!) The plan was to make it to Tulsa, Oklahoma sometime this afternoon, but today has been another full day of driving, and as I write this at 6PM, we're just making it to Little Rock, Arkansas. I console my type A personality with a paragraph from my favorite road trip book:

"Once a journey is designed, equipped, and put in process, a new factor enters and takes over. A trip, a safari, an exploration, is an entity, different from all other journeys. It has personality, temperament, individuality, uniqueness. A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safegaurds, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. Tour masters, schedules, reservations, brass-bound and inevitable, dash themselves to wreckage on the personality of the trip. Only when this is recognized can the blown-in-the-glass bum relax and go along with it. Only then do the frustrations fall away." ~John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley in Search of America

It's true - the road has some secret, mischiveously divine power. You think you can just get on it and drive, but it twists and turns everything into something different, unexpected, unplanned. But I have faith in this process and know that wherever the road takes us and whenever we get there, good things will be found.

In honor of Steinbeck and his drive across America, I have named our travelling vehicle "Rocinante," which I drove for the first time today.

A few things about our little Rocinante...
She is an unpredictable beast of an RV. She hiccups, and cups and plates fly from her cabinets, as we're trying to make our way across I-40. As we're driving, she rearranges all her insides so that when you stop, toothpicks come at you like little wooden daggers. She's also sensitive. When you handle her, she won't accept much force, and if you give too much on the wheel, she'll threaten to teach you a lesson or two, a lesson big enough that it'll make you fear for your life. (Driving Rocinante for the first time was truly one of the scariest experiences of my life and made me want to cry for about the first 30 minutes. But I've tamed her now, and can easily get her up to 70 mph.) And with her strength comes protection. She is our home on the road. We sleep in her belly. And even with all we've loaded and packed inside her, she keeps getting us there.

Good night, Rocinante. Good night, friends.
Amanda