2 October 2016 Missouri

I really want to travel Route 66 from Santa Monica through Oklahoma. The Oklahoma to Chicago portion isn't a great priority for me. Maybe its the thought of being in the southwest that interests me. Maybe in my mind I expect the remaining bits in the southwest to be more quirky. Today's travels started with the Route 66 State Park in Missouri. At one end of the park there is a visitor center. The park used to be accessed across the old Route 66 bridge over the Meramec River. The bridge decking was removed about ten years ago so now all that remains to tie this to the old route is the steel girders. We did stop in to see the visitor center (souvenir shop) before making our way to another entrance to the park and a few geocache searches. What we saw of the park seems to be fading away with old 66.

Old path of Route 66 over the Meramec

There was an old Sinclair station in the Cleveland Flats when I was young, but it is rare to see them in my travels.

With it being fall, I wasn't sure what we would see, but I hoped to visit a remaining prairie area on this trip. Tucker Prairie offered us a fall walk on the prairie and even a geocache at the far end. The tall prairie gentian was past its prime but still in bloom and plentiful. It was joined by a few other asters and late summer wildflowers showing their last color. It would be great to see at another time, but I enjoyed the visit. The cache may have been one of the most painful 200 foot journeys we have made, but we eventually reached the ammo can.

Our last big stop of the day was in Fulton, Missouri. This historic location was the spot where Winston Churchill and President Harry Truman traveled. The visit included a memorable speech by Churchill called the Sinews of Peace or the Iron Curtain speech. For us, it was the third time we have been brought to a piece of the Berlin Wall by geocaching. One would hope this wall and its failure would help us understand a new wall is not the answer.

8 March 2016 Teepee Drive-In

The closed Teepee Drive-In is located along Route 66 near Salpulpa, Oklahoma. With longer daylight, I decided to drive over to see the remains of this iconic drive-in. Opened in 1950, the Teepee had parking for 400 cars or trucks. It survived until 1999 when the screen went dark with the close of the season. There have been a few attempts to reopen this piece of history, but the last was in 2012 and never got close.

Imagine the old cars and trucks this place has seen; the families that played here waiting for darkness and the screen to light up. Some pieces of our culture deserve to be saved... It's for sale...

I moved a little down Route 66 to hunt a few caches in a park that also appeared to be abandoned. With gritty pictures of the park this post could have been title Used condoms and empty beer bottles. At least the older trees were nice to see, and the park was empty.

This is the first cache where I have been muggled by a chicken. It's a lousy image, but with no houses nearby, I wasn't expecting a chicken to show up near ground zero. The chicken didn't find the cache either. I eventually gave up looking in a sea of broken bottles and discarded trash.

11 November 2015 Get Your Kicks on Route 66

Some day I hope we drive the old path of Route 66. I would be happy just to make it from Santa Monica through east for a few states. Route 66 winds through the small towns of Oklahoma including Sapulpa near one of our facilities. I hadn't planned on being in Oklahoma this week. I was too late to visit the small rail museum in town, but spent an early sunset evening at a couple of the remaining quirky traces of this iconic road. The resale shop hosting this sign was an interesting piece of the past.