The Susie's travels on Route 66
Last week Jay and I took off on an impromptu road trip. He loves all things historical and pretty much anything to do with Route 66 and I just like to tag along with his history shenanigans. Jay and I are kind of boring in that we like to do historical and educational things..like museums and ghost tours...we take a lot of ghost tours *shrug*. I should probably apologize to our future children because I can seriously see a family road trip vacation right up there with the Griswolds.
I figured it would be a good trip to shoot completely non-digital. I didn't take one digital camera with me. All I had was my Fuji Instax. LOVE it!! We made it all the way to Oklahoma City from Rolla Missouri completely on the backroads. NO INTERSTATES! Needless to say it was quite interesting. We were actually impressed with Missouri's portion of the route, not all of the roads were 100% taken care of but there were these little blue signs directing the entire way. Once we got to Oklahoma it was every man for himself and you were lucky to stay on the actual route. This is when we discovered the Road Trip 66 App that was priceless for this leg of our journey! A few key things we learned were: We traveled the entire length of the old Route 66 thru Kansas, a whopping 13 miles. We traveled the oldest pavement still left from the original route. Jay is a better driver than a navigator, although he would much rather ride so that he can enjoy the view and he gets distracted and then all of the sudden we're heading into the ghetto part of Catoosa OK (as ghetto as Catoosa can get) with no clue of the last time we saw any kind of road sign. I have zero tolerance for Toby Keiths restaurant in Tulsa, I'm not even going to get in to it.....but no....just...no.
Anywho....here are some of the instax shots I got. It was just something fun that we had been wanting to do....
-Lebanon MO-
-Lebanon MO-
-Lebanon MO-
This hotel (motel....Holiday Inn....(sorry I had to)) actually still gets good reviews on hotels.com. If it would have been further on ahead in our trip we probably would have stayed here. :)
-Lebanon MO-
-Spencer MO-
Seriously out in the middle of nowhere Missouri.
-Spencer MO-
-Spencer MO-
-Spencer MO-
-Spencer MO-
-Carthage MO-
When you are headed towards Oklahoma and you see clouds like this to the west you get a teensy bit concerned.
-Webb City MO-
Evidently we belong here....Jay has a cleaners and a woman came up to me and said you look just like my friends sister....
-Galena KS-
For such a small town Galena surprisingly had a nice downtown area. It's nice to see a town taking pride in their history and still using their old downtown buildings.
-Commerce OK-
-Commerce OK-
-Commerce OK-
-Miami OK-
-Miami OK-
This is the oldest pavement still left of Route 66. The original road was only 8 feet wide and we were seriously on the backroads in Oklahoma.
-Miami OK-
-Miami OK-
-Foyil OK-
We visited the worlds largest totem pole... *shrug* why not.... :)
-Foyil OK-
-Foyil OK-
-Foyil OK-
-Foyil OK-
-Arcadia OK-
Pops is a cute little diner/gas station that has over 600 different flavors of soda!! I. Could. Stay. All. Day.
-Arcadia OK-
-Arcadia OK-
Wall to wall soda :)
-Oklahoma City OK-
At the end of our trip we decided to forgo the route and headed over to visit the Oklahoma City bombing memorial. I am a huge fan of trees...yes...I am a tree hugger and I am proud of it. The survivor tree at the memorial survived the bombing. One of my favorite trees.
-Oklahoma City OK-
-Oklahoma City OK-
-Oklahoma City OK-
-Oklahoma City OK-
-Oklahoma City OK-
-Oklahoma City OK-
-Oklahoma City OK-
After OK City we just jumped on the interstate and headed for the homestead...hitting a few antique shops on the way. I can honestly say that after just kicking back and traveling the 2 lane backroads for 2 days straight, getting back on the interstate was a bit over whelming. Especially in Oklahoma where you can drive 75 on the interstate. Moral of the story....Missouri is pretty cool for a Route 66 trip....but take my advice and cruise the interstate thru eastern Oklahoma.