Category: Railroad

Day 26 Route 66

Dave had a bad night last night. We are both subject to acid attacks. I take Prilosec which pretty much put an end to mine. Dave’s doctor prescribed Previcid which pretty much put an end to his. Then our insurance decided Previcid is too expensive so Dave should take Prilosec. It sometimes works for him but he is now having attacks every week or two. When he has one he gets up, takes a Rolaid, eats some crackers, and hopes it goes away so he can go back to bed. Last night he didn’t get to go back to bed. Which meant I didn’t get as much sleep as I would like either. So today we are both having to help each other think.

The five day weather forecast says we can go to Albuquerque before we have to reevaluate whether or not to head south. So we headed out driving along between the freeway and the railroad tracks. Sort of. The tracks themselves are long gone but the right of way is still visible.

Vega, Texas, is a small town but they have a lot of Route 66 stuff still there. These pictures are the Vega Motel, Roark Hardware (doing business since before Route 66 was established), Magnolia station, the courthouse, and Dot’s Mini Museum-mini is right.

    

I know I’ve titled this Day 26 but you probably realize by now I am only counting travel days. The days we stay parked to visit family or friends or do laundry and research are not included in that count. So we’ve actually been on this trip for five and a half weeks. Today we reached Adrian, Texas, the halfway point. 

We saw the Bent Door Trading Post but it is closed. The rumor is this structure was taken from a military observation tower which is why the door and windows on the left side are bent. Unfortunately, the angle of our photo doesn’t show that bend as well as I would have liked. It’s pretty dramatic in person.

And we had lunch at the Midpoint Cafe, a route 66 tradition.  

 

That white car belongs to Herb. Herb has been traveling parts of Route 66 for six years with his postcard sized travel guide, collecting signatures of business owners at the stops along the way. He’s still working at gathering signatures between Los Angeles and Springfield, Missouri. He hasn’t even started on the section between Springfield and Chicago. So, those of you who think we are traveling slowly, think about Herb. He was happy to have us confirm that places he plans to stop someday are still there, though.

Dave said Route 66 would end six miles west of Adrian. And he was right. But it wasn’t long after that that it came back. So all that work I did to get my mind ready for freeway travel was wasted.

The town of Glenrio straddles the Texas/New Mexico border. That caused a lot of confusion over the years. I don’t think it does any more because I don’t think anyone lives there now. Glenrio’s claim to fame is a motel. On one side the sign said, “Last Motel in Texas.” On the other side it said, “First Motel in Texas.” The owners wanted you to think their place was your only choice and I think it worked for a long time.

The two lane through San Jon, New Mexico, was so freshly oiled it was still black. It was old enough to not still be throwing up oily rocks, though. Still, Dave slowed down for each of the three vehicles we met on that road so that, if they were throwing rocks, we wouldn’t hit them so fast.

We are now in Tucumcari, New Mexico, at the Kiva Aok RV Park. The current owner only bought this place a couple of months ago and he promptly installed a wireless network. I’m glad he did because his network is a lot faster than our Sprint aircard. And I have no bars on my T-Mobile phone. So if you don’t hear from me for a couple of days, it’s because we may not get any signal between here and Albuquerque.

TTYL,

Linda

Day 9 Route 66

First stop today was Route 66 State Park.  The park used to be a town but when the floodwaters rose ten feet up the walls of the buildings the town was abandoned.  It now has lots of cool Route 66 stuff in its visitor center which itself was once the Bridgehead Inn.  The Inn was above flood level so it was not damaged.  The park is lovely but has no camping.  No one wants to get flooded out again.

  

Next we went to Ted Drewes Frozen Custard stand to have a snack that would tide us over for awhile. The stand is an old-fashioned one where you walk up to the window along the sidewalk and talk to the clerk through a screen window.  When your order is ready, they open the screen and pass you the food.  When I was growing up in Decatur, Illinois, there was a frozen custard stand like that (only not nearly as big as this one) that would occasionally have lemon custard.  Dad would take us there for a treat.  So I was hoping to get lemon custard today.  No such luck; I had to settle for one that came as close to German Chocolate Cake as a custard can come.  Then we went into the RV to eat it since the custard stand has no dining area and it was starting to rain.  When we drove by here a couple of days earlier the sun was out, the place was mobbed, and the park benches that line the sidewalk were full.  I’m glad we came back at a quieter time.

After our snack we went to visit our friends Bob & Prue.  We wanted to see what Bob had done with his Pseudo Soo model railroad when he moved it from Minneapolis to St Louis.  It was fun catching up with the news of shared friends even though not all the news has been good.  And it was fun seeing the railroad in it’s new home.  It was somewhat disconcerting, though, to see familiar industries now located in different model towns than where they used to be.  I would still enjoy working the paper mill job and Dave would like to work the yard.  Ignoring the fact that I can no longer stand still long enough to operate, we could probably do that if we could stay a week.  Friends from Minneapolis and elsewhere are coming to operate here next weekend.  But, the leaves are changing color here now so we must keep moving.

 

While moving from place to place in St Louis we found ourselves on I-270.  This is the only freeway we’ve ever seen that has variable speed limits.  Their speed limit signs are light boxes that they can set to read whatever speed they want you to drive today.  I wonder if that works?

Then we went to Spencer’s Grill for lunch.  Except, we turned the wrong way on Kirkwood.  Fortunately, lots of people apparently do that because they had specially designated U-turn lanes.  So went turned the right way to go to Spencer’s.  Except, we were too late. It turned out to be a place that only serves breakfast and lunch and they had closed for the day about an hour before we got there.  

So, we went to I-HOP.  Two of them actually since the first one was closed.  But Dave had waffles on his mind so we kept driving until we got to the second one.  At least, they were both on our route.

By now it was rather late in the day to head on down the road so we went back to Edmund Babler Memorial State Park for another good night’s rest.  I really like Missouri State Parks.

TTYL,

Linda