2014-11-18 Embracing Route 66 in Oklahoma

The sun is shining and we are ready once again to explore Route 66. This morning we are in Oklahoma City. We'll drive east on the Tollway to Chandler and work our way back down Route 66 to the RV.

Chandler has a REALLY nice building on Route 66. It houses a Route 66 museum, a conference room/library, a gift shop and a huge auditorium.

We had to pass up this great looking Route 66 museum yesterday on our way to Oklahoma City because it was closed. Today we're back.

This building is a former armory with hand carved stones and walls that are 22" thick.

The Event Hall used to be an indoor drilling (marching) area.

The Route 66 museum area is pretty unique in that they have overhead video screens with segments on Route 66. Their seating varies from airline seats to Ford Mustang seats to motel beds. Yeah, kind of unusual.

Each of the screens has a couple of presentations.

There is a series of eight maps you can buy of the states that the Route passes through. Someone put them all together and colorized them. It made for a really nice looking display.

The floor is a Google Map view of the area.

Their gift shop was chock-full of Route 66 items.

A couple of blocks away is the gallery of Jerry McClanahan, the writer of the EZ66 Guild Book we've been using along the Route. His book says to call him up when you're in town and he'll open up his gallery. We did and he did.

In addition to writing books about the Road, he is also an excellent artist who does work for himself as well as takes requests to have artwork done.

We had a great time talking to him about our trip and he even signed our book.

Down the road, the next "town" is Willard. They have an old gas station that the owner now stores his motorcycle collection in. We don't seek out motorcycle collections but this sure seemed like a lot of them to us.

He even has 1 of only 1900 Excelsior-Henderson motorcycles ever built. Still in it's crate!

Here's a great 116 year old landmark in Arcadia appropriately called the Round Barn. The roof had collapsed in the 1980's and rather than destroy it one guy started a campaign to restore it in the early 1990's. It still looks great.

Inside was a gift shop. Lining the walls was the history of the town, the barn and reconstruction efforts by the "Over the Hill Gang".

There was a "Why Round Barns?" article on the wall as well. They were economical to build. The capacity of a circle is larger than that of a rectangle with the same amount of siding. It was faster and cheaper to build.

And with that knowledge "we proceeded on..."to a giant soda bottle on the side of the road.

There were millions of bottles of soda on the wall of POPS.

There were some outlandish flavors like Toxic Slime, Zombie Brain Juice, and Sweet Corn.

As well as buying a couple of bottles of soda, we sat down and had a delicious onion burger for an early dinner.

2014-11-17 Oklahoma City Bound Along Route 66

Despite being sick and snowed in for a few days in Tulsa we have managed to do everything we had planned. We are heading southwest along Route 66 on our way to Oklahoma City.

Along the way we passed Paris. I'm pretty sure it was Paris.

The sun was out, it was brisk, and there was still snow on the ground.

Supulpa had some great wall art.

And THIS beauty...

Karen gets great pictures of these old gas station restores even when I'm bombing down the Road.

Stroud, OK is home to the Rock Cafe, est in 1939, built with rock unearthed during the paving of Route 66.

The proprietor of this cafe, Dawn Welch, was the inspiration for Sally (the Porsche) in the CARS movies.

Davenport was home to some original Portland cement Route 66 roadway. It's only a couple of blocks long but the allure gets Route 66 travelers to come into the city.

I know, pretty exciting huh?

The town also has some great history murals on the walls of their buildings.

As we entered Chandler, OK we spied the Route 66 Interactive Museum. It was closed (we knew that) and we had planned to come back tomorrow.

From there we hit the Toll Road for the rest of the way to our next RV park, Roadrunner RV Park, in Oklahoma City.

2014-11-16 Woohoo Snow Day!

As kids we LOVED those words. Snow Day. It meant we got to stay home from school and play with our friends and sleds in the snow.

We were tied to our trailer a few days ago while we were sick and now we'll sit in here in Tulsa's Cherry Hill RV Park  again today while the snow and temperatures fall.

The snow fell most of the day but not enough here to stick on the roads.

When I'm not sick I don't mind sitting and doing computer stuff. Usually we are researching places to stay in the next cities, places to visit along the Route, and quirky things to see via RoadAmerica.com

2014-11-15 Cabin Fever Day Trip

We've been too sick to move or want to do anything for 42 hours and we are tired of sitting around. All of a sudden our 330 square foot 5th wheel is closing in on us.

So, after lunch we headed out for a day trip on Route 66 around Tulsa.

Route 66 in Tulsa is home to the largest outdoor drive-in movie theatre in Oklahoma. This place can hold 1,000 cars!

There are lots of old motels along this stretch of the road. Some even have murals on the side of them.

Great restoration of an old gas station

This old Meadow Gold sign stood down the street for 70 years. They took it down and restored it and then gave it a new home.

It is STILL cold outside but we are smiling our way along the Route.

Boston Street Church is so cool looking.

Heading away from downtown we found this sign.

What a wonderful looking statue that reminds us of the transition that there was between horse drawn wagons and automobiles.

Nice sign Goodwill Retail Store

Just outside of town they are trying to create a new Route 66 park called Route 66 Village. The train is a Frisco 4500 Steam Engine.

Coincidentally we were watching TV last night and they had a story on this sign. Well, we had seen one at the EAST end of town and this one was just installed on the WEST end of town.

And yes it is STILL cold outside. We keep reminding ourselves that "this too shall pass."