Route 66-Day Four

Day Four began as a day to drive, we needed to make good time on this day and decided to drive on into the night and break up our camping with a hotel stay. We left the crazy casino and headed towards Texas. In my Route 66 map series it pinpointed a place called Texola, Oklahoma that was right on the Texas and Oklahoma state line. It said that it was a certified ghost town. Now I was expecting to see buildings made up to look spooky and all of that jazz, but oh no, this truly was a certified creep you out and chill you to the bone ghost town. Upon further investigation I discovered that Texola,OK has a total population of 36, that's right kids 36 people! The town had been both located in Texas and Oklahoma before they finally just let Oklahoma have it. It's history goes back to the early 1900's and it has had several names including Texokla and Texoma. It wasn't always such a small town, the 1930 census  recorded the population peak at 581. Now what exactly made everyone tuck tail and run out of this place you may ask. Well I just don't have the answer to that, but it certainly was the one question that I had in my mind the entire time we were there. Sure there is absolutely nothing to do there. Most of the roads are dirt and the hot summer winds give little relief for relaxation.  Still though, I am from what I thought was a small town in Northeast Tennessee with even smaller and smaller towns surrounding it but the population numbers are far higher than that of Texola. There is a certain pride about your communities back home, land passed down from generation to generation and so on and so forth. It isn't just something you would up and abandon. As you drive through the streets of this town you will see that nearly every single house, gas station and bar have been completely abandoned. All but a few where you can see the residents poking their heads out the window without making eye contact to see what Route 66 travelers came through that day to see the eerie fallen town. I would have gotten out of the car and explored more but Andy wasn't too comfortable with that idea and I can't say that I blame him. It is perfectly fine and responsible to be weary of the unknown. We found the Texola Cemetery as well, it was hidden down a lonely forgotten road and on either side all you could see was flat dry land for miles and miles. Hundreds of bales of hay lined the way and we weren't sure what we were going to find once we got there. This prodding into a dead town day trip was spooky enough to send chills up my spine, I am not so sure I would be as brave there come night fall. I mean honestly something just wasn't right there. Below you will find several pictures of the dead houses and you will note that something has been happening to them postmortem.

 

Following our creep out fest in Texola we headed onward through Texas. I had always heard of the Cadillac Ranch so to be able to see it in person was quite a treat. I am never one for abstract art but this piece is timeless and has so much history and back ground you would be a complete idiot to not be able to appreciate it . The Cadillac Ranch is located in Amarillo, Texas right off of Route 66. It was created in 1974 by a group of artists who called themselves "Ant Farm". It was relocated from it's original spot in 1997 just 2 miles west in a cow pasture, although I did not see any cows. This unique piece of art  features 10 Cadillacs  nose down buried in the ground up to their windshields. It is said to represent the birth and death of the old Cadillacs and was made as homage to Route 66. As you walk through an unlocked gate that has layers and layers of spray paint, you can see the cars out in the middle of nothing just dirt. Once you get closer you see the surrounding ground is littered with markers and spray cans. It is actually encouraged for you to come and make your mark on this cool place. Had I known that I may have made mine, but at least I had Harvey with me, because he definitely made his.

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There is a point along the road there in Oklahoma and Texas where there is absolutely nothing. I am from North East Tennessee as I have said and I have grown up my entire life surrounded by mountains. To be out in the middle of the desert like that with absolutely nothing can be unnerving. The sky had never looked so intensely big before to me, in fact I was happy to be inside of the truck with the dogs, weighed down with some sort of gravity. There were times I felt like if I had stepped out of the safety of our vehicle I would have simple been sucked up into the nothingness of the biggest sky I have ever seen and it was quite overwhelming at points. Along side the road were the oddest shades of green mixed in with all of the harsh browns. It was as if someone had lightly airbrushed grass and purple patches of flowers out in the dry dead nothingness.  The Sandia Mountains greeted me with open arms, and boy oh boy were they a sight for sore eyes! The Sandia Mountains in Albuquerque, New Mexico are this deep brownish red color that are rimmed with dark green plants. Sandia translated in Spanish quite simply means watermelon. The mountains do look like a slightly less juicy piece of that delectable fruit, but it is unclear if that is how they got their name. It is also believed that when the Spaniards met The Pueblos there that they mistook their squash that they were growing for watermelon. As we cruised through the beauty of New Mexico, and it is beautiful, nightfall was waiting to welcome us to our hotel room. After three nights of camping and grilling  Andy and I went back to the simple pleasures in life and took long hot showers, ordered a pizza and then immediately passed out into a deep sleep. Thanks for reading and keep a look out for Day 5 and our drive through New Mexico and on to The Grand Canyon. Til we meet again, friends.

Route 66-Day Three

After our grand and cheesy tour at Meramec Caverns it was time to hit the road again, next stop the Blue Whale in Catoosa,Oklahoma. The Blue Whale is probably one of the creepiest things I have ever seen. It could very well (whale) be used in a horror film involving zombie children and swamp thing. Back in the 70's this place was booming as a local swimming hole and also a zoo that was inside of an arc which is still there, but no longer open. I must have missed it from staring inside of the mouth of this haunting blue whale. You could almost here the laughter of the children as they swam down the fin slides and did back flips off of the tail diving board. It actually is very amazing to see this and try to imagine what it must have been like back in it's hay day. The owner Blaine Davis was there and talked to me for a little bit, it seems as if he lived in an RV beside of the creepy roadside ghost attraction. He had said that his mother and father had owned it and had given it to him, when he dies he would pass it along to his children. The Blue Whale was built by his father for his mother for an anniversary present in the early 1970's. It became a favorite swimming hole by locals and travelers. It still actually is a favorite Route 66 stop, and definitely worth seeing. Inside of the whale the floor is made of wood, old pieces of shaky wood line the way through the mouth and to the tail. Andy and I were able to climb up an old ladder and into the head of the whale and take some pictures of our heads sticking out the nose holes. Check out some pictures below.

By the time that we left the Blue Whale it was time to find a camping spot for the evening, we looked all around but most campgrounds were for RV's only, no tent camping. It was about a 7 hour drive to the whale from Meramec Caverns with stops for us and the doggies and that was a long stretch of road and we were tired and hungry. The only spot we could find was a KOA campground, which I am not fond of simply because the campsites are small and in a parking lot and lack any scenery or privacy. However it was the only spot within our reach that would allow us to tent camp so off we headed to Claremore,OK. As we pulled into the lot we realized that this wasn't your ordinary campground, in fact it was located quite literally in the parking lot of a Cherokee Casino and right in front of the Will Rogers Downs horse racing track. This was exciting for me because I have never been to a casino and I, in my bones could feel that this was going to be my lucky night. It was fate right?  To land in the parking lot of a casino with shiny lights and the promise of big wins,seemed like a dream come true. I couldn't have been more wrong. This casino was like something from the Twilight Zone. First of all it only had slot machines, hundreds and hundreds of slot machines. Country music blared from a band that was doing only covers. Fully dressed cowboys in huge hats with long sleeve button up shirts tucked nicely into their tight wranglers that lead down to their Sunday's best cowboy boots formed lines to line dance. You could smoke inside of the casino and a full bar was available for you to purchase drinks. You could just tell that they were looking at you and knew that you didn't belong in their town. I met one local guy who had to be in his 50's to 60's, he was wasted and asked where we were from he said " I LOVE THAT!" to just about everything you said and if he didn't like something you would know from his very simple statement of "I hate that". I told him that I was from Bristol,Tennessee and he said he liked Tennessee people but preferred country people like the ones right there in Claremore. I had to laugh, and explained to him that I too was from the country, he didn't seem to think so. We talked for a bit and I asked him what Oklahoma was known for, he said "MF's" and I asked him what that meant and his response was "Mean Motherfuckers". We talked a bit more but he was more interested in conversation with Andy. We went back to our campsite to look at the stars again, in a huge black sky. Then out of nowhere huge trucks started driving all around us, I thought for sure it was going to be an ending to a  horror film. Turns out that was just my paranoia and apparently everyone in this farm town owned a truck and it was time to start raking the horse track for tomorrow's race. I wish I had some pictures to offer you of this strange and wonderful place but unfortunately my camera battery had died and we must have packed the charger on the truck with all of the rest of our stuff that was being shipped to us. No worries though, we got a new charger the next day, so more pictures to come! Thanks for reading, til we meet again, a little on further down the trail. 

Meramec Caverns

Meramec Caverns is a 400 million plus year old cave that is located in Stanton, Missouri in the LoJolla Natural Park. It has been a part of the Missouri history dating back all the way to the Native Americans, who used the cave system as shelter, it then went on to be used to extract slatpeter which was used to make gun powder during the Civil War by the Union Army but is most famous for the man who helped run the Union Army out of the caves and then used it at a later time himself as a hideout and that was American outlaw, legend, hero to some  Jesse James and his brother Frank James.

Meramec has formed an enormous 7 story limestone cave with extremely beautiful stalactite and stalagmite formations greeting each other with a wonderful array of earth tones and pinks and whites. It really is quite breathtaking inside of there, but would be more so if you didn't have to tour with a thousand children and listen to a cheesy stoner kid tour guide. Even though I just said that, the kids were hilarious, all of the questions that they asked and repeating everything the tour guide said, at one point the tour guide asked Andy and I if we were OK in the back and Andy yelled out "We're good!" that was directly followed by several little sweet voice echoing Andy with a "we're good" and then another "we're good" and yet another "we're good". They were cute and we were blessed to have curious kids on our tour that were truly fascinated by what they saw. The tour guide was probably 21 or younger and was a very robust young man with extremely curly hair that went to just before his chin. I could just see this kid sitting in front of his TV, playing video games, drinking a two liter and eating Cheetos after a large toke from his bong. So  naturally, I loved the guy, he was really quite funny and sarcastic and I appreciated his patience with everyone taking photos and also the fact that he let Andy and I lag behind in the back to get some great photos. Now, that being said, as fun and touristy as it was I still would have loved to be the french miner that discovered it in 1722. Oh what a sight that would have been! Below are some of my favorite pictures inside of the cave.

Thanks for reading, til we meet again!

Route 66-Day Two

 The amazing thing about Route 66 is that is conveniently located right beside of the highway, so if you want to plan out and pinpoint certain things that you want to see but not drive on a two lane road with a lower speed limit  that dead ends at random spots then it is totally feasible and that is what we did for the majority of our trip. Route 66 literally runs along side of the highway, you can see it from your comfortable 75 miles per hour lane and like I said Andy was busy working pretty much the entire time and we were on a time limit to get to California. If you wanted to get really involved in Route 66 then you could spend weeks discovering all of the buried treasure along that stretch of road. Day two was a bright and early morning, which is always the case in camping, especially if it is hot outside but we were blessed with nice weather for the most part along the way. Day two begins and we trek through the last of Illinois and said our goodbyes to the state that we resided in for less than a calender year. On came Missouri, home of the St. Lois Arch, the Gateway to the West. Home of the beautiful seven story Meramec Cavers which supposedly was a hide out for American outlaws Frank and Jesse James.It is also home of the beautiful Ozark Mountains, which hopefully one day in my travels I will get to explore. Not this time though, there just simply wasn't enough time.

As I leaned out the window taking pictures of the arch as it greeted me to the west the sense of adventure tightened in my veins. There is a uneasy amount of excitement as you realize you are going to see things you have never seen, eat things you have never tasted and meet people you may otherwise might have never known, this is how I felt on the beginning of day two. As far west as I have ever been was Chicago, although I am no stranger to the fun of traveling on the road. Somewhere along the way close to Meramec Caverns, which was our next destination Andy saw a couple of teepees to our right on Route 66 with a big sign that read "BUFFALO JERKY". This of course was reason to stop, as we walked up on the cute little tourist trap with no real authentic Indians we were greeted at the door by a man who said there would be a two dollar charge per person if we didn't purchase anything. This made me laugh at how well he was doing at ripping Route 66 travelers off to come into his hut to buy over priced Indian paraphernalia. We walked in and I found the most beautiful peace pipe made out of a deer hoof  and some wood. I may have bought it even though there was poor little innocent deer foot on it, but the guy was asking $50.00, which I just found to be ridiculous. Andy did however buy two packages of homemade so called Buffalo jerky, which could have been anything I suppose but it was pretty tasty and cost ten dollars a package. Wowza! Anyway it was a cute stop and the jerky made an excellent midnight snack beside of the fire. We arrived to Meramec Caverns with the heat on our back and Andy took to his laptop again to finish work as I set up the tent. It was a very, very nice campground, and probably my favorite of the entire trip. It was super secluded, we were surrounded by tree's and although you could hear other campers they couldn't be seen. We were facing the Meramec River, and after I refreshed at the shower houses that they offered I came back and cooked us a delicious cheeseburger on our new Safari Chef grill and we kicked back with an amazing fire on an amazing night with a sky full of the brightest stars that we had seen in a long time. We wanted to get an early start for the next day which included an early morning tour of the caverns and then on the road again. Below I will share with you a few of the pictures of our stay at Meramec Caverns.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more pictures inside of Meramec Caverns. Until we meet again.

Route 66-Day One

Before I get into the many stories of the weirdest places I have ever been let me preface this by saying, I am in no means a writer as you will see nor do I claim to be a photographer either, although I do love taking pictures and I am glad that I have captured some amazing memories to share with you here. This was not a vacation although it kind of was for me. My boyfriend Andy and I had the opportunity to travel to the west coast for a job that he absolutely kicks ass at , and although he was a busy bee the entire time, on his laptop and cell phone with multiple hour long conference calls, we were still able to squeeze a little adventure in on our road trip. I had first heard about Route 66 as most of you had, it was a memory, the first road to the west, the mother road. Full of random road side attractions, which back in their glory days were filled with milk shakes, hamburgers and BBQ. For the old timers I passed along the way this road brought back memories of their youth and even though most of the stops are run down and abandoned now there is a certain nostalgia that lingers in the air. And if you close your eyes tight enough and block out the noise of our technologically advanced world, you can smell root beer and motor oil and hear the sounds of the 20's on to the 50's. It really is quite a magical place if you give it the chance to be.

We started our journey in Chicago, which is where we were living. It was a rather late start in the day, Andy was on a conference call and we were tired from the day before which included packing and movers and saying goodbye yet again to good friends we had met along the way. We stopped in the capitol of Illinois, Springfield at a place called "The Cozy Dog Drive In", which claims to be the home of the corn dog. Although it isn't located in it's original building it is right next door. This may have been a mistake for us, as my expectations were high and Chicago's Hot Doug's and Wiener Circle had spoiled me on the delicious gourmet wild game dogs and the all too famous Char Dog. There was a table of several older women exclaiming that they had never had a Cozy Dog, as I passed by they smiled at me, excited no doubt to see a young person take interest in the road. If I forgot to mention it and if you don't already know, Andy and I have three dogs, yes that's right three wonderful dogs. Each one has it's own personality, but all three are wonderful dogs. Of course they accompanied us on our road trip and as we ate at The Cozy Dog, we sat at a window next to Andy's jeep and let them watch. Which I am sure they did not enjoy. Here are some pictures from our first Route 66 stop.

                       

We decided to camp for the night there in Springfield, which offers a whole host of quirky route 66 attractions, we however were beat from the week before and Andy had a lot of work to catch up on. We found a campground called Riverside campgrounds. It isn't entirely secluded from the outside world by any means, but it is nestled in the woods and the campsites are fairly large and private. Camping there only cost us ten dollars, whereas staying in a hotel room would have run anywhere from a hundred to three, just depending. Pet deposits are extremely high and with three dogs, well you can imagine. We had the tent set up before night fall and Andy steadily responded to work emails and phone calls. By the time the sky turned black and speckled silver with stars that we haven't been able to see in Chicago, we were able to relax in our seven dollar camping chairs and kick back with a nice fire, a few beers , the pooches and some great conversation. At one point the dogs were unusually concentrated on a dark area beside of the tent. Andy shined the flashlight on the area and it was a large beautiful cat that at that point and time I was convinced was some sort of  Serval African wildcat hybrid. I am still not entirely convinced that it wasn't. It was the biggest "house cat" I had seen and when it stretched you could see the legs were abnormally long. We put the dogs away in the tent and continued to stare this guy down. The poor cat probably thought we were idiots, but appreciated the light we were shining on it so that it could more thoroughly clean itself. It was the calmest creature I had seen in awhile and it was just putting on a show for us. I snapped several photos but I was shaking so bad with excitement that they didn't turn out very well. When the little guy was finished he nonchalantly hopped down and ran off. But when he ran away it wasn't like a normal house cat, it was more like a jack rabbit sprinting , his hind legs were the source of his speed. Now you may ask, can I say with confidence that this was some sort of hybrid wildcat, and the answer to that is no. I have googled countless pictures and while the shape of their legs and ears were the same, the couple of beers I had may have exaggerated my opinion. You be the judge, here are some more pictures from day one on Route 66, this wasn't the most exciting day as it was a late start and all, stay tuned for Route 66 day two!

Thanks again for reading, and I will hopefully have day two up by tonight or tomorrow! Til we meet again.