Get Your Kicks on Route 66

 October 21, 2010

Welcome to a Welcome Center/rest area on I-44 near Lebanon, Missouri which parallels and/or is the old Route 66 road. Inside the Welcome Center it's all decked out with Route 66 memorabilia, including an old gas pump, lots of chrome, signs, and the floor is painted with a huge map that shows the route from Chicago to San Diego.

The rest room area is also all chrome and shiny tiles and lots of slick red and white walls and counters.

The grounds around the building were made to look like a section of the road, with the main sidewalk down the center that has a yellow center line, arching street lights, and each picnic table area is made to look like a typical building during Route 66's heyday.

Route 66 brought about motels and here's Larry's.

No town was without a gas station to encourage more people to travel--remember these?

What a fun way to commemorate this time and place! 

By the way, this is a HUGE rest area.  Bob counted 50 truck parking slots.  There were also quite a few short-term truck spaces as well as a huge car parking area.

This is a manned Welcome Center with maps and brochures, and staff that can answer questions and give advice.  They seemed surprised when we said we were going to go on to Oklahoma without first going to Branson.

I know there are some grammatical errors in a couple of the earlier posts.  I will fix them as soon as I can.  We have "Instant-WiFi At The Site" which tends to be "instant" in the connection, but S-L-O-W in the usage.  I hope this will post tonight since we will be a bit busy  in the morning.

All in all, we have had fun, seen lots of neat things, done some stuff we hadn't anticipated in the planning stages, and also figured out some things we would do differently another time.  Bob has driven every day and  while I don't think he regrets the driving as far as the results of the driving,  I do think he feels it would be nice to just sit and relax for a full day.  The biggest problem with that is that we are always in a new place, and it's just so tempting to go out and about and see the local sights.  So even if we only drive 100 miles forward that day, we might spend another 2-3 hours roaming around the place we've stopped---which isn't actually stopping, is it?

Other changes?  Well, we would have left with a bit more actual coin of the realm.  Oklahoma has tollways/turnpikes which we hadn't anticipated, nor did we notice them on the maps.  The OK Welcome Centers don't have ATMs, nor do they have any literature about how much a toll might cost.  We gathered all our loose  cash and finally found an ATM about 2 miles before we entered the first turnpike. Turns out we were $9.75, but a mile later when we exited to get gas, we got $4.25 refund, and when we went back on, we had to pay $4.75.  I think someone has a good racket going!!  So, an extra stash of cash would have been stress-reducing.

Same for quarters for laundry.  We knew we didn't have enough when we left home, but didn't anticipate having to seek out change.  I think we've been in one laundry facility that had a change machine.  So, after doing laundry we try to immediately get enough for the next load. 

Ummmm...can't really think of any major changes.  We downloaded a lot of podcasts, old radio shows, and audible books and have listened to three....I've listened to a few more at night so I don't have to turn on a light to read (I have not read any books in October!!!) but we have done a lot of talking and watching out the windows, driving with the windows open most of the time, which makes it hard to hear the radio.  I think we actually listened to the radio for a bit one day.  We are so out of it for news, other than quick little blips we get online if the connection is good enough.   Bob is also running counties on the ham radio when he can, so we pay attention to that.
We had originally said we'd be home by the end of October, then extended it to the first weekend in November.  We don't feel as if we've squandered our days, but suddenly it's coming to an end and we're not quite close enough to coast.  We are selectively choosing what and where and still holding out for a day or two at the Grand Canyon.  We can certainly see why some people choose to do this full-time!!  There's just too much to see and do.  We have really enjoyed just about every minute of this trip.

We will probably be offline for a day or two, but we have some more things to say about Oklahoma (Oklahoma is OK!!---we're actually in Tulsa right now) and will get another post up as soon as we can.