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.