Route 66 - Y'all come on along!

WGA Member Joined: 2007-01-06 Posts: 66

Miss your daily update today. Please don't stop now, we enjoy following your journey through the journal entries and photos.

Posted: Thu Oct 09, 2008 10:00 pm

October 7, 2008

Barstow to Santa Monica and beyond..

We found this was the most difficult segment to cache. Mainly because of our own shortsightedness. We loaded up a bunch of traditional caches for this heavily traveled and very visible stretch of Route 66. Unlike the route to this point, Foothills Drive and the other roadways that make-up the LA county portion of the trip, is very well maintained and heavily traveled. Virtual caches would have been a better choice here. Temperatures in LA reached 102, thankfully the A/C in the beastmobile kept ticking.. once we got to the official end of RT66 we drove Olympia east to west and west to east; Lincoln north to south and south to north looking for the official marker. We did not find it; but we were there.

We tried our best to get out of this metropolitan nightmare as quickly as we could, but found ourselves headed into downtown LA. We got a small sampling of LA city traffic and made a hasty retreat to the north where we found ourselves cruising the streets of Beverly Hills, Hollywood, Willshire Blvd, Rodeo Drive.. all the tourist spots. Yes we saw the guy selling the maps to homes of the stars. We didn't buy one.

We started our journey home via Las Vegas, We spent the night in Jean, NV at the Casino Smile

and then proceeded on to visit the Hoover Dam. This is another thing we should have done before our children grew out of our home. From the dam we wednt on to LV and grabbed a few caches in a municipal park (rather than on the road caches). There were six caches in the park we selected and we visited five of them. The log sheets in each of the caches we visited here revealed Zuma and WIRobin had visited the week before. Well at least we beat the Ecorangers to these, but we had to go 1500 miles from home to do it. We have been without WiFi connections for the past couple of days, leaving me behind on logging and on this journal. But, I will catch up in the next day or two.

Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2008 7:55 pm

SammyClaws wrote:

Hi Beast,

Since your writing to us from the future, who won the World Series? I see an opportunity here.

Yes we caught that little Faux Pas as well ... December 6 should have been October 6

And October 7 should have been October 7-8. The next post is October 9-10

Posted: Fri Oct 10, 2008 9:01 pm

October 9-10
Fillmore Utah - Rawlins, WY - Kearney, NE

After our adventure in the LV park following the footsteps of Zuma & WI_Robin, we headed on toward home this took us through the Virgin River Gorge, the twin tunnels of I-80 and the Great Basin. This is some of the most beautiful roadway our great country has to offer. That day ended in Fillmore Utah, a historic community that once was the capitol of the Utah Territory. Caches here included a virtual cache that highlights the community history.

The following day found us on our way into Wyoming. Rawlins seemed like an appropriate place to stop. There was a plethora of motels to choose from, so it seemed like a no-brainer to stay at the Best Western for value. Unfortunately Best Western didn't see it our way they were asking $149/night and Holiday Inn Express was right up there with them at $153. This community of 8500 people has almost as many rooms to rent. There is a Quality Inn, MicroTel, Super 8, Budgetel, yada, yada. We opted for the Super 8 at $65/night. Still a lot more than the $24.95 we paid at the Casino in Jean. And I am sure that there isn't a 20% occupancy rate in any of these inns at this time of year. Thanks, Best Western, I will skip the Golden Crown Points for tonight.

We awoke an overcast sky and the threat of rain and snow. The temperature was hovering between 33 and 37 degrees for much of the trip down I80 this morning. Truckers were maintaining a 65-80mph pace while I in my best Mr. Magoo pose tried to see the roadway through the thickening fog. When it finally got the best of me, I got off the highway to seek a route with less traffic. I found Wyoming 700 through the Medicine Bow National Forest. 8 miles of gravel road that that hadn't been graded in the past decade. the fog lifted enough for us to see some of the most awesome terrain, flora and fauna. OK, fauna was actually limited to a small herd of deer that we chased off the roadway. It wasn't much of a chase since we couldn't drive this roadway at much more than 10mph without rattling the bejeebers out of ourselves and the beastmobile. We finally found our way into Colorado and on to Nebraska.

We are now 700 miles from home and I am afraid to say, I will be home in time to return to work Monday morning. I have now caught-up with all the logging. all that remains is to upload the remaining photographs and put together a brief recap.

Posted: Sat Oct 11, 2008 6:43 pm

Try http://roomsaver.com for some pretty good walk in deals if you know what town your going to stay in. We use it all the time and they can knock off $20 a night at most places. They also have a paper copy in mag in many restaurants.

TE

Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2008 4:58 pm

Recap
States Visited: IL, MO, KA, OK, TX, NM, AZ, CA, NV, UT, WY, CO, NE, IA
Total Distance: 5050 miles (8127 KM)
Gasoline used: 190 Gallons (724 L)
Fuel economy: 26.5 mpg (11.22 KM/L)
Geocaches found: 151
Virtual Caches found: 11
Multicaches found: 1
Unknown Caches found: 3
Geocaches Not Found: 18
Travel Bugs/coins collected: 11
Travel Bugs/coins dropped: 16
Travel Bugs/coins discovered: 6

Posted: Sun Oct 12, 2008 7:15 pm

Trudy & the beast wrote:

Recap
States Visited: IL, MO, KA, OK, TX, NM, AZ, CA, NV, UT, WY, CO, NE, IA
Total Distance: 5050 miles (8127 KM)
Gasoline used: 190 Gallons (724 L)
Fuel economy: 26.5 mpg (11.22 KM/L)
Geocaches found: 151
Virtual Caches found: 11
Multicaches found: 1
Unknown Caches found: 3
Geocaches Not Found: 18
Travel Bugs/coins collected: 11
Travel Bugs/coins dropped: 16
Travel Bugs/coins discovered: 6

Thanks for taking us along on your trip....I enjoyed it quite a bit. Cool that you guys got some of the same caches in Las Vegas as Robin and I got.

zuma

Posted: Mon Oct 13, 2008 7:21 am

I'll add to the thanks. I should have thought of writing something like this, as we try to do the theme trips from time to time. We had thought about the mother road a couple of times but back-burnered it. It might have moved up on the list after your stories!

WGA Member Joined: 2004-05-19 Posts: 730

Wow! What an incredible and fun road trip! THANK YOU so much for sharing it with all of us!

So..when's the next one?????

Posted: Mon Oct 13, 2008 8:30 pm

Loved following the Route 66 road trip, and the return trip was entertaining also, with the stories about the same caches in Vegas as Zuma/Robin and the race to keep ahead of the weather in Wyoming.

Work must have seemed kind of tame today, but the home fires must have looked good to you.

Thanks for sharing with all of us.

Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2008 8:11 am

Great trip down memory lane. Thanks.

Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2008 10:34 am

Thanks from us too.... we have done parts and pieces over the past couple years. Have a friend and her husband that live in Australia that come every 3 years to drive the whole thing. There is a big worldwide Route 66 club out there. Amazing! Thanks for the great job of sharing your journey.
TE

Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2008 11:16 am

What was the total trip time and estimated cost? I would really like to take a trip like this sometime.

Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2008 5:53 pm

stokstad wrote:

What was the total trip time and estimated cost? I would really like to take a trip like this sometime.

It was 15 days for us. Gasoline 190 gallons x $3.299 (average); Lodging 14 nights x $75 (more or less); meals 15 days x $50 (more or less) total about $2500 plus the cost of trinkets and entertainment. Traveling in October helped to keep costs down. We would have liked more time, but...

If you are considering the trip, keep in mind that some of the tourist sights are nearing the end of their life spans. They just won't be around a lot longer. We saw this on the Illinois & Missouri segments on which we had the privilege of driving in 1963-1969, 1975, 1991 and now 2008. There have been big changes.

Posted: Tue Oct 14, 2008 7:43 pm

Great series of posts!!! Thanks for the chance to virtually follow in your footsteps along Route 66. It was a pleasure to read your adventures.