Getting our kicks on Route 66!
Day 3 – Friday – We left Joplin early in the morning to get to Tulsa when the Woody Guthrie museum opened. As it turned out, we were early enough to have time to crisscross downtown Tulsa (yes, it looks just like it does in Tulsa King – but we never saw Sylvester Stallone!). Tulsa’s downtown is very nice. We saw the Greenwood Rising, Black Wall Street Museum, a very nice minor league baseball stadium, their downtown sports arena, and some excellent architecture and murals. As we arrived at Woody’s, we were still 30 minutes early and an idea popped into our heads. Given the massive blizzard coming our way, instead of staying in OKC tonight as we had just rearranged last night, we decided the best way to take on a blizzard is straight into its teeth. We decided to skip the museums (sorry Woody and Bob) and get to OKC and the Museum of Art (MOA) and the Chihuly exhibit and then use our extra time to drive straight into the oncoming blizzard like kamikaze! Okay, not EXACTLY like kamikaze, we would not die trying, we would get off the expressway at the first sign of snow and hunker down at a motel and see what tomorrow (Saturday) brings us. 😊
OKC was impressive. The Chihuly exhibit was everything we hoped it would be. I have been trying to get Chris to the Seattle Chihuly museum for a few years, so I am thrilled that, while not Seattle, this exhibit was truly impressive. In addition, they had a special exhibition on Paul Reed (who we never heard of but it was great).
What is the BIG advantage of traveling with an imminent blizzard AND on a Friday? It seemed like we were the only people driving around downtown Tulsa and OKC. Traffic was non-existent. We arrived at the MOA at 11:30 and yet we found a parking spot DIRECTLY in front of the museum! We drove around downtown OKC, visited Bricktown, drove Route 66 and walked through Plaza Walls (many murals, like Wynwood Walls in Miami).
As we left OKC, we looked at the forecast for precipitation and saw that we should be able to get to Shamrock TX about 1 or 2 hours ahead of the storm (3-hour drive). While we were watching the weather, we still had time to exit at Weatherford (Space City on Route 66) and saw their giant astronaut along 66. We also saw buffalo, but sadly no moose and we finished our first audio book for this trip, “The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store”. Good book and just so happened to be on Chris’s book club assignment so a win-win. It was interesting see snow plows sitting on many different exits, staged for tonight.
As we arrived in Shamrock, it started to mist. Timing baby!!! We are in the room I had reserved for tomorrow night (Saturday) so we are officially 1 day AHEAD of schedule now. Tomorrow? Originally, our destination was Alamogordo, NM (6 hours) but since we are a day ahead, hopefully the roads will be okay enough for us to make it down the highway 2 or 3 hours (thus cutting the 6-hour drive into two, 3-hour drives). Worse case, we will stay in Shamrock and hopefully leave Sunday, back on our original schedule. We shall see!
Day 2 – Thursday – We left Springfield, IL at 9:00 on the button with sunny skies and a great forecast for the day. One of our first stops of the day turned out to be the Mother Jones Monument. We had no idea this monument even existed and were pleasantly surprised to learn a bit of history. The drive to St. Louis went well with lots of sunshine providing us with a sunny reflecting view of the Arch, the 1st National Park we saw on this trip. We didn’t stop because we had been to the Arch before.
The drive today was about 5.5 hours so with the extra time we visited Route 66 towns of Waynesville and Lebanon where we saw an original Stagecoach stop (you might say the first “route 66”), one of the original motels on the ‘mother road”, several murals, and an original cabin from Camp Joy.
Once we arrived in Joplin we went to the Route 66 mural park, saw 32-foot-tall giant hands praying for peace and a “famous” ice cream stop which also houses a Superman Museum (sadly It was closed, but still fun to see).
As we were driving, we discovered we were going to be driving by a Buc-ees so we were planning to stop for lunch. Unfortunately, as we were approaching the exit there was some sort of fire in the area (large grass fire?) which covered about 3 miles of the expressway with smoke, so it didn’t make any sense with Chris’s asthma to stop and walk around. Oh well, there will be more Buc-ees!
If you haven’t heard, there is, according to CNN, “A potentially historic winter storm” winding up across the south and it has the nerve to be in OUR WAY!! But fear not, we are nothing if not adaptable. Tomorrow (Friday) we WERE supposed to drive 1.5 hours to Tulsa and then see the Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie museums and the site of “Black Wallstreet” – the Tulsa race riots and spend the night in Tulsa. Getting up Saturday and driving 1.5 hours to OKC to visit the OKC Museum of Art Chihuly glass exhibit and then drive to the Texas border (2.5 hours). NOW, with the storm expected to move in early evening on Friday, we have cancelled our Friday night stay in Tulsa and will get up tomorrow morning early so we can still go to the Woody Guthrie (sorry Bob D!) museum and then head to OKC and in the afternoon to visit the Chihuly exhibit. This frees up Saturday to either spend most of the day getting to the Texas border or, if the weather is too nasty, we will spend another night in OKC. We really are getting our kicks on 66!
Day 1 – Wednesday – Originally, we planned on leaving on Thursday to drive to Springfield MO as Chris had a meeting Wednesday evening which she needed to attend in person. As we got closer to leaving, Chris verified the meeting would be on Zoom and I verified that a 30-day car rental is $2 more than a 28-day rental so, boom, we left today instead. Leaving early provide us with the opportunity to be less aggressive with our first day of driving - target: Springfield IL (ironically same name, different state). The advantage of leaving today was instead of doing a 9-hour drive and hoping the weather cooperated, we only have to do a 5+ hour drive today and tomorrow we should be able to do another 5+ and get to Joplin, MO. Leaving Grand Rapids the weather was only so so with a Winter Storm Warning. We were pretty confident once we left MI the roads would be fine. While the roads were snow covered and mostly 2 tracks on the expressway, we drove about 35 mph for nearly 3 hours and eventually drove right out of it. Normally that same stretch of highway would take less than 1.5 hours. Along the way, we saw 4 spin offs (3 cars, 1 18-wheel tanker truck), and as we entered I-94 West, we saw they had I-94 east closed. By the time we reached Illinois, the sun was out and roads were dry and an hour south of Chicago, the snow was gone. Today and tomorrow are all about safely getting out of Michigan and near Oklahoma. That said, we still know how to have a good time and Springfield, IL has the most Route 66 locations and museums everywhere. Thus, we drove through downtown, saw the Capital and visited the Maid Rite Sandwich Shop (First drive through restaurant in the USA), Cozy Dog Drive In (family owned since 1946), and Motorheads Bar & Grill (Located in an Old Stuckey’s with MANY additions to it and home to the most Route 66 signs in the world). I enjoyed my Corn dog at Cozy Dog and after Chris’s meeting we went to Motorheads for a surprisingly good dinner. Weather forecast for tomorrow is good but, after that, OK and TX might be a little fun. Pictures to come tomorrow.
