We’re in the car heading out from Roswell with 14 other beetles, on the way to Albuquerque, which is back on route 66. It’s a fairly short trip – just 4 hours – so we’ll have time to stop at the VW dealer there to get Phoebe’s mass airflow sensor. John thinks he can put it in for us. We’re having dinner with some beetle folks from the email list who live in Albuquerque, and we can have a pretty leisurely day, I think.
Yesterday Stephanie and I won First Place in the Road Rally – which is basically a scavenger hunt on wheels. We got a cool trophy, which Zig Zag monkey has adopted as his own.
We ate dinner at Kwan’s Golden Buffet with a big group of beetle folks, including Jerry and Kathy who told us the story of the Baseball beetle they have – it was a Cracker Jack prize in 2000; they gave away 15 of them. I took lots of photos – you’ll see the interior seats are baseball glove leather and the emergency brake is a wooden bat, and the shift knob is a baseball. They bought it from the second owners, and had to do a lot of restoration on it because they really didn’t take care of it well. Jerry also owns Herbie, which is a red beetle with a great flame job that he designed himself.
We spent two hours at McDonalds uploading pictures, and I still didn’t get them all up. I’ve uploaded about 785 photos of the trip so far, and I have about 200 more to put up. What’s up there is through the beginning of the Car Show on Saturday – I took 280 pictures on Saturday. I still have to upload the rest of the car show, the parade through Roswell, the Drive-In movie, and yesterday’s Road Rally pictures.
Don’t forget to check out the Flickr set; the link should be above. I’ll go back through and add the appropriate photos into all the blog posts when we get a good internet connection.
Yesterday was the Car Show at the Roswell Convention Center and Beetle parade through Roswell; lots of fun; the weather was very hot. I have tons of pictures; the modifications on cars are dizzying; I can’t keep track of them all. I found myself wanting a beetle, too. Today though, I realize I need to be practical and just take good care of my truck.
Uploading pictures doing so in the room isn’t possible (I got four photos up yesterday) so we might venture out to find a real internet connection today sometime.
We had dinner at a restaurant called Farleys – I think it’s a chain, but the interior was very cool; futurama steampunk. And the food was good; wish we had one it Indianapolis.
On Friday afternoon, I started having another bout of my reoccurring pleurisy. I’m loading up on ibuprofen and trying to ignore it. The other alternative is to try to get a prednisone prescription over the phone, which I may end up doing, cause I’m not feeling great.
In the evening, we did a drive-in movie in the Convention Center parking lot with an inflated screen, where they showed an episode of Car Crazy featuring this car show last year, and the Herbie the Love Bug, which was much better than I remembered. I haven’t been to a drive-in in quite a while; we need to go when we get home.
This morning there isn’t much to do, we we’re going to visit the laundry room, and this afternoon is a rally – which I guess is like a scavenger hunt in the car.
Tomorrow morning we head out to Albuquerque, to hop back on Route 66 with the rest of the caravan and start the western leg of our trip out to California.
Yesterday was great; nice and leisurely. We really enjoyed Blue Swallow in Tucumcari. It was a nice change from the Motel 6, homey, clean and pleasantly retro. It reminded me a bit of the motel room in The Lost Room which does a lot to recommend it.
Tucumcari has a long strip where the businesses have the cool googie retro signs, and the blue swallow is one of them. When we cruised in at night, we wondered why the sign wasn’t all lit up; turns out they had a hail storm a while back than damaged a lot of the neon and they’re having it fixed in Amarillo.
When we got up yesterday, we had breakfast in the Kix on 66 diner that The Blue Swallow recommended; big omelets and huge slabs of bacon. Then we poked around in the famous Tee Pee Curios shop and took pictures of many of the signs.
Tucumcari has an interesting dinosaur museum; it wasn’t the concrete dinosaur park we thought we were looking for, but it was fun for a couple hours, and I got small dinosaurs in the gift shop so we can set up a “Dinosaurs vs. Aliens” diorama in the back window of Phoebe for the car show.
Eventually, we took of to Roswell. New Mexico is really beautiful; I took lots of landscape pictures on the road that I’m afraid will all look about the same when I upload them. I was trying to convey how wide-open and vast the land is, but that never comes out in pictures. I should have done a stitched together panoramic.
Last night we checked in and met the rest of the caravan, plus a lot of new folks at a nearby Mexican restaurant for some tasty margaritas.
I think the plan for today is to find wireless access, give the car a bath, and go hunting down some aliens. I’d love to find an Area 51 sign somewheres if we can.
While puttering around in the hotel room this morning waiting for the day to begin, I started reading Kerouac’s On The Road. I’m wondering how in the hell I made it to the age of 39 without reading it. Why was this not on Mr. Bray’s hyper-testosterone-laden “Great American Literature” reading list in high school? I feel extremely cheated by my American Literature education. Damn you, Mr. Bray. It’s like I put on a pair of glasses for the first time and saw literature clearly. Don’t mind me; I’ll be over here with my nose in a book.
UPDATE: we ventured out to find a donut, then hit target for some car wash supplies and gave Phoebe a bath. She still needs some TLC before the car show, but we started getting hungry so we drove to downtown Roswell to find the Not of This World Coffee shop to get sandwich and free wireless. It’s verrrrrryyyyyy slllllloooooooowwww, but at least we’re connected. I’m going to attempt to upload yesterday’s pictures and plug them into this post.
I’m up and about in the motel room; Stephanie’s trying to catch a bit more sleep. We’ve been cutting it pretty short on the sleeping, by arriving very late and getting up with the rest of the caravan. Hopefully today we can hang out and be more leisurely; we only have about a 4 hour drive to Roswell.
I’m on a high-speed wireless connection, finally, and I’m hurriedly uploading photos. The Blue Swallow doesn’t actually offer it; some kind fellow named Shawn has left his/her network open. Thanks, Shawn!!
I’ll try to go back and insert some relevant photos into the last several posts about the trip if I can before we actually get up and around.
The Big Texan was entertaining; lots of beef. Of course their featured attraction is a “free” 72 oz. steak – if you eat the whole thing in an hour, plus sides, salad and bread. I did not try. Two guys did while we were there; if you’re attempting the challenge, they stick you at a table on a raised platform with a count-down timer. Neither of them could do it. I took pictures, of course.
We drove from Amarillo, Texas to Tucumcari, New Mexico in a wicked looking lightning storm (I tried to video it; well see how it comes out.); fortunately it didn’t open up and rain much. I think today we’re going to poke around Tucumcari a bit; they have lots of great old googie signs and route 66 shops. Then we’ll take off for Roswell.
Tomorrow most of the day in Roswell is free; all we have to do is wash the car and find some wireless access. And see aliens, of course. Saturday is when the car show and parade start, and Sunday there are activities, too, although most of the day is free. Monday we head out on the rest of Route 66.
We left Tulsa in some pretty tricky traffic, which is really fun in a caravan of 17 people.
Our first stop was the shoe tree, but we did a drive-by, although I think one of our leaders really wanted us to stop. Our next stop was the Rock Cafe in Stroud, a 1939 Route 66 institution. The young woman who runs it Dawn (Welsh?) was the inspiration for the porshe Sally from the movie Cars. It was a fun, tiny little place; we packed the room. I had a great Buffalo burger and fries – very tasty, but oh, the grease. Wow. After we all ate, Dawn gave us a history of the place and how she ended up being part of a Hollywood movie.
Dawn told us about a guy we should visit – a tinkerer guy named John Hargrove who built a very cool machine shed/garage tricked out with route 66 memorabilia, old cars and signs. It’s hard to describe; I’ll have to link to photos. One of the attractions was a VW Microbus restored and painted to look like the bus in the movie cars.
After that we did a drive-by photo op at the Round Barn in Arcadia.
Because we had to make it to Amarillo in a short amount of time, we hopped off 66 and onto I-40 through Oklahoma. Unfortunately we ended up at the end of the pack of (now) 18 cars, and we had a hell of a time keeping up. Due to the traffic wave effect, the guy in front was going 65, but we were doing 85, 90 and 95 to keep up. Really hard, especially when it pouring rain. Trying to keep up was too unsafe, so we dropped back and let the rest of the pack go on. We caught up to them soon, and stopped in Clinton, Oklahoma at the Route 66 Museum there.
The highlight of the day was that Bob Waldmire was there – he’s a Route 66 institution; the son of the Waldmires of the Cozy Dog we visited back in Illinois, and an amazing traveling artist documenting the attractions and people of Route 66; driving around in an old VW Microbus. It was in the parking lot, so I took photos of every single inch of it. I took one of the postcards I got of it work and asked him to sign it, and he did; very nice guy. And a HUGE liberal, which was awesome.
(I think based on some of the radio conversation that some of the people on our caravan A) don’t know Stephanie and I are a couple and B) are openly homophobic if they think there aren’t gay people around. Although I think everyone’s caught on by now.)
Those of us going to Tucumcari have broken off from the pack; we stayed behind a bit to drive more slowly, ditch on some of the photo ops, and be a bit more laid back. We weren’t the only ones stressing about keeping up with the caravan, it turns out. Now we’re headed out to Amarillo, Texas to try to visit the Big Texan for dinner, then we’re going to head to Tucumcari, New Mexico for the night. I’m googling concrete dinosaur parks as we speak.
Yesterday’s drive from St. Louis to Tulsa was pretty long. I knew when we were still at the hotel and they had 6 stops listed before we were supposed to be in Barton Springs, Kansas for lunch that our trip leaders were a bit overly-optimistic about what we could accomplish. We hopped on parts of I-44 just to keep up time, but even that didn’t help keep us on schedule.
We stopped first at Meramec Caverns, one of the oldest tourist traps along Route 66. This was supposedly the one of the hideouts for the Jesse James gang, a nice sized cave with guided tours. We opted to take pictures in front of the signs and visited the entrance to the cave before heading out to the next stop.
Part of the group broke off unexpectedly to visit a toy museum, so the rest of us did a drive-through of little-bitty Cuba where they have some Route 66 murals. We went hunting a giant faucet sign there (totally not my idea, even) and only found it somewhere further on the road.
Lots of great old gas stations, googie hotel and restaurant signs and antique cars along the road that I snapped picture of. To gather the whole group back together, we stopped at the Mule Trading post, where we stopped last year on the way to my cousin Sarah’s wedding. There’s also a nostalgia car place nearby with some awesome old gas station signs.
Tom Bodett just called and said we won ten million dollars. Then he said he was kidding, and it’s time to get up. Stephanie notes that it’s strange there’s no meowing going on right now.
After we gathered everyone up, we stopped at the Devil’s Elbow, an old curved bridge, for a photo op. Because we were about 2 hours behind, we ate at the Elbow Inn, a little bar/restaurant that was both thrilled and overwhelmed by 15 VW Beetles. Basically a pretty rough-neck biker bar; one of their things is having women’s bras hanging from the ceiling. We killed almost 2 hours there before everyone got fed and back on the road.
Our next stop was the Munger Moss, famous old Route 66 hotel still in operation with a great googie sign that we did a photo op in front of. Then we headed to Riverton and Baxter Springs, Kansas. Kansas has only about 12 miles of Route 66 on the south east corner of the state. When the interstates went through, they bypassed Kansas altogether, sadly, and re-routed traffic directly from Missouri to Oklahoma. Riverton had a little cafe giftshop where we caught everyone up again ( people kept breaking off to do their own thing, or get gas or shop or eat.)
After that, we visited the rainbow bridge, which is one of the only remaining marsh arch bridges on Route 66. It’s been restored in the last 10 years, and was a great photo with the beetles lined up on it.
Then we headed out to Catoosa to see the Big Blue Whale. We stayed on old Route 66 for this and got a bit lost winding around, but managed to see lots more cool googie signs and old restaurants I got photos of out the window.
We stopped for gas, which seemed to be the point where several people lost their cool for awhile. Some wanted to skip the Blue Whale and go on to Tulsa, but rather than just break away and do that, they tried to persuade the whole caravan to go along with them. People gassed up and paid for gas, but then left their cars parked at the pumps while they stood around for 10 minutes and debated the whale stop, so when we finally got people moved so we could gas up, people started bitching on the radio that we were taking too long. This is the point at which I lost MY cool. I’m still pissed off about it.
Anyways, we saw the blue whale, which was excellent, and I loved it. And I want to build one in my backyard. Seriously. You think I’m kidding. You can also contact a top-rated pool contractor in Michigan if you want to build a custom swimming pool to enhance the beauty of your landscape. Premier Property Maintenance experts can also help you to achieve your landscape dreams.
After that long day, we headed into Tulsa and ate at Cracker Barrel before finding the motel 6. Again, the light wasn’t on for us; the room was dark. Those liars. I took 147 pictures, but again, we’re not on high-speed wireless, so don’t think I’ll try to upload them.
Today is going to be interesting. We travel across Oklahoma and through the Texas pan handle. Most of the caravan are staying in Amarillo, but five or six of us are traveling on to Tucumcari, New Mexico to stay at the Blue Swallow Motel, which is one of the continuously operating 50’s era hotels on the road. The neons signs for it are amazing.
But it seems like the guys planning travel are planning are packing the day with events timed for those staying in Amarillo, and those of us traveling on have an extra 2 hours are going to be kinda screwed. I’m trying to figure out whether it would be better to break off the Tucumcari group to see an abbreviated version of everyone else’s sight-seeing list, or try to stay with the group and skip stuff at the end.
