beetle caravans

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.

Rock Cafe, Route 66

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.

I had some trouble getting my bluetooth connection to the internet this evening (this motel 6 in St. Louis doesn’t have wireless) so I don’t know if I’ll be able to upload any of the 212 photos I took today.

We woke up this morning and met the rest of the caravan, took tons of photos in the motel parking lot. Most of the people going have some seriously tricked-out cars; lots of cool paint jobs and graphics. Then we gassed up and headed out down Route 66.

First we stopped at the Joliet Route 66 Museum and Howie got them to open, even though they were closed on Mondays. We did a big circular drive photo op, bought Route 66 merchandise in the gift shop, and took off on the road. We had a blast traveling; we communicate with the rest of the caravan using FRS radios, so there’s lots of conversation and joking around between the cars, and a big line of beetles really catches the eye of everyone we pass.

We visited the Launching Pad restaurant and took pictures of the Gemini Giant, then stopped at a antique gas station in Odell. After that we visited another giant Paul Bunyon statue, then drove on to Springfield, Illinois and stopped off at the Cozy Dog, the birthplace of the corn dog. Tasty and very charming, but pretty greasy.

Along the way we picked up 3 more travelers, and stepped on the gas to get to St. Louis, because we meandered quit a bit along the way. Heading into town, we visited the Chain of Rocks bridge, which used to be the bridge over the Mississippi into St. Louis. It’s now closed and you can walk across it. After a big photo op there, we went to Drewes Frozen Custard for ice cream, and headed to the hotel.

I’ll attempt to upload some photos to flickr and add them to this post – we’ll see how it goes.

Update – it took over an hour to upload 20 photos, so I think I’m going to call it a night. I’ll try to upload the rest of the pics when I have a real wireless connection somewhere.