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October 4th Holbrook to Williams, AZ. 448 miles to go.
We did pass through Flagstaff about noon. We understand why Marc54140 loves this beautiful and thriving city. Nestled in the pine laden foothills of the Rocky Mountains, the city is alive while its neighbors are failing to thrive.
We started the day with the Meteor Crater and The Grand Canyon as the objects of our tourism for the day. Shortly after leaving the crater, our spirits were dampened by a rather rare (for this area) rain storm. We arrived in Williams shortly after noon and the rain was showing no hint of letting up soon. So we went and made reservations for a trip into the canyon aboard the Grand Canyon Railway. This will be a highlight of the trip. We will spend the night tonight and Sunday Night and hit the road to California Monday morning. Sunday will be spent visiting one of the Seven Wonders of the World.
Many of the Rt66 still remain, but most have vanished or are rapidly vanishing. Two Guns and Twin Arrows each remains as no more than a half-dozen abandoned and seriously decaying relics of the days when Rt66 was America’s Main Street.
It is fitting that we make part of our journey by train since The Santa Fe Railroad was the forbearer of the Mother Road.
October 3 – Moriarty, NM to Holbrook, AZ.
The roadside along this stretch shows varying degrees of neglect. Some of the iconoclastic establishments has made an excellent attempt to keep their properties up, while many others have fallen to ruins. we see many old buildings boarded-up, many properties for sale. small towns along the old roadway are no longer serviced by the interstate. These towns have starved for the lack of the travelers dollars.
There is no hiding our motivation for making this trek came from the movie Cars. We are finding that the portrayal of the plight of business along the Mother Road is quite accurate.
We took a break from our geocaching long enough to visit The Petrified Forest and the Painted Desert. .. Simply awesome sights. This is something to add to the list of places to take the kids. It’s right up there with Disney World.
I haven’t had an opportunity to upload the days photos yet, can’t take time just now; we have a full day of geocaching and a visit to the Grand Canyon ahead of us today.
Stay tuned, there is lots more to come.
October 2 – Amarillo, TX to Moriarty, NM
Geocaches are rather scarce over this stretch of the road, so is civilization. Much of the Mother Road is immediately beside the Interstate, in some areas, the Interstate was laid right on top of the old highway. There is a dramatic change in scenery here. We are starting into a very arid region. Temperatures today were in the high 80’s but very comfortable due to the low humidity. Vegetation along appears stunted and deformed by the desert winds. The tallest plants are the Yucca trees. There once were many small settlements along Rt66, but the Interstate seems to have sucked the life out of those leaving a chain of ghost towns and ruins. The desert wind and vandals have nearly destroyed the structures along the old road.
Roadside eateries offer a selection of Mexican food with a limited variety of other cuisines. Townspeople and the road people are very friendly. The former will talk forever if you give them a chance. It. Has been a week since we started this adventure and we haven’t met any other geocachers.
Friday, we will be moving on into Arizona. Stay tuned folks, there is more to come.
October 1st. Oklahoma City to Amarillo.
We found ourselves sharing the road with the Jaguars again. It gave us the opportunity to visit with couples from Scotland, Wales and England. We found ourselves being a little truer to the older alignments of Route 66 than they were, but they we still following the route. The photos will show roadbed the Chevy took and the Jaguars did not.
We are finding that the vast majority of geocaches along this route are microcaches at roadside. Ammo boxes are rare and we have seen no tupperware.
We have been keeping to our schedule, averaging about 200 miles per day we will pass the mid point during our 6th day (tomorrow). This is actually too fast a pace for all that there is to see along the route. one could easily spend a day or two exploring each of the larger cities along the route. I wonder if anyone has tried Geocaching this route on a bicycle?
Highlights of this segment were the Bug Ranch (5 volkswagens buried nose-first at roadside); Groom, TX with it’s leaning watertower and the largest cross in the western hemisphere; and the I-40 rest stop overlooking the Johnson Ranch. Photos will be found on the Photo Album.
September 30… Miami, OK to Oklahoma City
We awoke to find a half dozen mocking birds eating bread crumbs somebody had left for them in the Motel parking lot. We haven’t seen them since our last trip south. We also spotted mistletoe in an old oak at roadside.
This stretch of road was a curious mix of rewarding and boring. Many miles of the original 2-lane roadbed have been replaced by more modern 4-lane highway. The old road can be seen in many places, but it is now undrivable, fallen in disrepair and discontinuous. The new roadway (Oklahoma 66) takes one past these pieces of the past at 65 mph. Relics of the old glory have nearly vanished. There are some old and occasional new attractions that provide a rewarding experience for the traveler. The Arcadia, OK area offers a Historic Round Barn, Pops sports a 66 foot soda bottle, and we also spotted a derelict gas station circa 1920. The gas station has a windowbox with living flowers, well tended that belies it’s steamy history. This relic was once the scene of an unsolved murder and at an earlier time the place of a counterfeiting operation that was the reason for it’s closure.
While visiting the Round Barn in Arcadia, we met a couple from London, that was part of a Jaguar owners group traveling Route 66 as well.
September 29: Springfield, MO to Miami, OK.
This stretch of roadway offer a lot of Micro caches. The only non-micro we found was an urban cache in a well manicured park. it was an ammo box sitting chest high in the crotch of a tree, less than 100 feet from the parking lot . No cammo, no concealment.
Roadway along this stretch varied from 2-lane to 4-lane, most of it is speed limits were mostly at 55 mph. Joplin has grow up, while the population is 40K, the city now hosts a surprising number of multi-story buildings. Weather has been wonderful so far.
We saw a number of the well published ruins along the way, but very few tourist attractions on this part of the road. Route 66 does not seem to be as well marked along this stretch. The traveler needs to know what the present designation are (Missouri 96, 71, Kansas and Oklahoma 10, 69).
I have not been getting a lot of bandwidth when I can get wi-fi, so uploading photos has been a slow process, but they will come. We are looking forward to Tulsa and Oklahoma City today (Tuesday) possibly getting into Texas by nightfall.
@furfool wrote:
Hey Beast. If you wouldn’t mind bringing back about 50 gallons of petrol for me, I’ll give you $3.16/gal for it.
It sounds like a good time so far.
Let’s see… at a profit of $0.10/ gallon x 50 gallons…. sounds like I’ll have to bring back a lot more than 50 gallons.
Since we crossed the Mississippi, we have gas prices range from 3.06 to 3.35 per gallon. What DOES Wisconsin do with the gas taxes we have been paying?
September 28 Cuba, MO to Springfield, MO
Wow, Gasoline at $3.06 per gallon. We took a couple of side trips here that added miles, but not along the route. One took us through the Mark Twain National forest on logging roads. Logging roads here are just like those in Northern Wisconsin, but the trees are hardwood, mainly oak, not pine as in our north woods. The second side trip was to explore Handley, MO. There isn’t much to see, no city limits, no commercial buildings, no real settlement. Just a few scattered farms in varying states of disrepair.
It was interesting to stand in the middle of Hooker Cut and see no traffic. I wouldn’t have tried this 45 years ago when I first saw this area. Some area attractions are still drawing in tourists, others have failed long ago. The Munger-Moss Motel is wonderfully maintained. The ma & pa restaurants seem to be failing.
The Ozark Mountains are an attraction on their own. They are very reminiscent of the Appalachians. The geocaches along the route here are numerous, but with several gaps between clusters of them. The Hubble Replica in Marshfield, MO and the Stonehenge replica in Rolla, MO are inspiring.
We hit the road at about 6:00 AM. It was 49 degrees and a dense fog covered the road for a little better than an hour. We made our way to St. Louis at about Noon and headed on down I44 (Rt 66 in an earlier life) to Sullivan and Cuba for a day of Geocaching. Cuba is a community that offers dozens of photo ops as it boasts a rich history much like Atlanta, IL. We Located one cache in Sullivan (The Fake) and moved on to Cuba. The Murals [see photos] there kept us occupied through the end of the day. Dinner was at Missouri Hicks Bar-B-Q. [see photo] The hickory smoked ribs were done Texas style and made a great dinner. Trudy had Ory’s spud a stuffed potato that must have weighed in a t more than a pound. It was stuffed with shredded pork, cheese, bacon bits, etc.
On the road again… (Willie Nelson)
We arrived here in Yorkville abot 9:00PM. We are about 35 miles from Dwight and Route 66. We will be retracing about 200 miles of Route 66 into St. Louis. We hope to get that far by Noon. Tomorrow’s update will be featuring the Missouri Ozarks. Photos will be forthcoming. ~T&tbHere are some notes on how we have prepared for the big adventure. We started be investing a couple of three day weekends in completing the closest portion of the journey. We started in Chicago early on Saturday morning and followed a bookmarked trail down to Springfield on one week end and picked up there on the next. This brought us into St Louis on a Sunday morning. We finished up on the near side of Rolla, which is where we will be picking the trail up this Saturday. Our finds to this point are listed in the Bookmark here. Photos are here.
We have created seperate bookmark lists for each state since there are too many geocaches for a single list. We will create the pocket queries as we go. We have loaded each of our GPS units with the latest Maps & POI from Garmin as well.
Should there be a need to contact us [heads-up on a great cache nearby, etc.] use PM, email rhandley[at]execpc[dot]com, or phone (414) 737-6150.
Time is getting short, it is time to start packing.
@Trudy & the beast wrote:
… This will be an 18 day adventure; 12 days going, 6 days returning by a more northern route through Vegas and Denver. It promises to be great fun.
Oops… Make that 16 days, 12 going and 4 returning 😳
How about Red White and blue?
Do contractions count as one word?
@gotta run wrote:
Who gives a crap?
Oh, did I say that out loud?
I don’t think I am going to lose any sleep over it.
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