My Third Three State Day (being July the 22nd)

The day began with waking, and seeing a rather stunning sunrise. The stunningness of the sunrise was rather brief, however, and I had not the wherewithal to grab the camera and record it digitally. It was good though. Then I showered, breakfasted, tooth-brushed, and headed out of the Kampground. From there, I went to Elk City, where I stopped at a Route 66 Museum. It turned out to be more than just a Route 66 Museum, and included an Old Town Museum, a Ranch Museum, and a Transportation Museum. It may have been a little mislabeled, being advertised mostly as a Route 66 Museum, but I enjoyed it. The first building I went in was the transportation museum. In it, they had the front end of a car set up in front of a large screen television that, when you pressed the gas pedal, would simulate you driving Route 66—complete with a child asking something to the effect of ‘are we there yet?’ I was unimpressed. Next up was the back end of a car set in front of another large screen television, with which you could simulate being at a drive-in movie. Available viewing options were various trailers for ‘Creature From the Black Lagoon,’ and ‘The Blob.’ There was one other one, I think, but I do not remember what it was. I thought it was neat, but in no real way representative of actually being at a drive-in movie. Just outside the drive-in exhibit was an old firetruck from 1917. Above that was an old biplane. And next to those things were some old motorcycles. And then, through a doorway between some of the motorcycles... was a room devoted to... Pop-Eye. Yeah, that one confused me, too. But here’s a picture of a Pop-Eye pinball machine: Right after the transportation museum, I headed over to the somewhat-lacking-in-content Route 66 Museum. While I enjoyed what they had there, I would have thought that, given the size of the sign advertising the establishment (which you’ll see momentarily), there would have been more. What they did have was a very brief ‘mini-Route,’ where the tourist walks along a windy pathway through a building seeing some of the mocked-up sites of Route 66. Also featured in the Route 66 Museum, and along the path were various items donated by families or people or persons, and items on loan from similarly sized groups—there was an old truck that was loaded down with fake things like chickens that said it was donated by the Joad family, and even I recognized that as an allusion, unless it’s for real, in which case... that’s an amazing coincidence! Even more featured (if only for it’s prominence and super-annoyingness) was the tour stop narration. To explain: they had these sensory bubbles over various stops on the mini-route. What was so awful and annoying about these though, is that there was no noticeable way to turn them off, and if you stand under one until it got done spouting off its semi-interesting information and then you move again, it would start all over again. I think there were probably about 8 of these stations. Then I left that building, and wandered around the old town. I don’t suspect that this little area really was the original town, but that various buildings from around various old towns were somehow transported to this location. I saw the school, the church, the caboose, the livery stable, the drugstore (where I visited with the particularly chatty woman who was looking after the building’s interior—she was introducing me to all of the literature the drugstore had to offer, including one regarding the, I believe it was the Ranch Museum, and when I looked at it I asked her if they were all in German, and she just kind of said, “my goodness, they all are!” because she had apparently never inspected the literature she was so chattily pushing). Then, I don’t know how or why, she mentioned eggs. Fancy ones. Like those famous Russian ones, but with less expensive jewelry glued to them. She said that they were in the actual Old Town Museum, which I then headed toward. I arrived! And it was interesting. A lot of it was just pretty ordinary seeming stuff, but some of that very ordinary stuff was in fact rather out of the ordinary (at least as far as I’m concerned...). Then I found the eggs. They were indeed quite fancy. See for yourself: I don’t know how, but those seemed to be kind of in the more ‘domestic’ section of museum. Maybe it was the fact that the only things they’d be good for were in-home tasks, like as decorations, or as paper-weights, or some other form of just sitting around. The reason I mention the ‘domestic’ section, is because of the other things in that area. Like the hair curling machine. It looked more like a person had to put themselves into the machine, not like today’s modern hand-held hair-curling tools. Then, I went up some stairs and found an area devoted to World War II. There were newspaper clippings from the era advertising D-Day, VE-Day, and VJ-Day. Also, there was a clipping with the text of the speech that Roosevelt made after the attack Pearl Harbor. If you are able, I highly recommend in some way enlarging the picture and reading the headline. Now, I can’t be sure if anyone in the employ of the newspaper caught this, or if the museum operators/curators caught it, but I’m fairly certain that I did. What catches my eye, is that I recall the text (and even in the actual article) as saying that December 7, 1941 was ‘a date that will live in infamy.’ The headline of the clipping, however, reads something entirely different, “A Date Which Will Live in Infancy.” Either they know something that I don’t, or that’s a pretty glaring error. Or the museum is preserving it because it was in error, but it seems to me that if that were the case they would make some mention of it. Oh well, maybe if I ever go there again, I’ll ask about it. And now, here it is, the large Route 66 Museum sign that I took a picture of as I was leaving: Then it was off to and through Texas. I really didn’t see much in Texas, and the guide book I had said made it clear that most of Route 66 through Texas would lead to difficult roads and dead ends. I took the parts that were advisable, and stuck to the interstate for the rest. That made the panhandle go by remarkably fast. Of note, however, was the town of Groom, where I bought gas and a Dairy Queen Blizzard. I imagine that there was more to the town somewhere, but all I saw was the gas station and the Dairy Queen. At some point, as I was transitioning from the Old Road to the interstate, I saw this sign: I always enjoy signs like this. Note that the post office is East/South. At every Route 66 state that I’ve been through, I’ve tried to get a picture of one of the historic route signs with the state name on it. All the states I’d been to that had any of old US 66 running through them had a sign like that, even along the 12 mile stretch through Kansas I saw some. Not in Texas, though. The best that Texas had to offer were a few signs that said ‘Old Route 66,” which just isn’t the same. The other two major sights that Texas had to offer, in my opinion, were the startlingly large cross: And the Cadillac Ranch, which I didn’t notice until I saw the throng of people huddled by a fence alongside the freeway service road as I was passing by. I saw the cars, but was unable to picture them. Then it was on into New Mexico. Here I deviated from the book a little. At least I think I did. It was a few days ago now, and the book is in the truck. I went across this pretty awesome stretch of dirt road that went pretty far away from the interstate system. The dirt road started out shortly after a near ghost town, and bent and angled its way across some very interesting countryside. Plus, I just like driving on dirt roads. I don’t really know why, but I think part of it is simply because I don’t often get the chance. Nor do I often see signs that simply say, ‘RT 66,’ as this one does, perched aloft the intersection of ‘RT 66,’ and ‘QR G,’ and where you can clearly see that the road is definitively dirt: And, in keeping with the aforementioned 66 signs with state names, here is New Mexico’s:

One thing that I found quite odd as I drove New Mexico’s Historic Route 66, was the fact that my guide book kept telling me to get back on the freeway. At one point, however, I saw a sign that said there would be road construction on that very freeway for the next 58 miles. There were several instances where I was able to drive leisurely by the construction traffic on the freeway on the Old Road, and smile broadly at the various things that those stuck in traffic were missing.

After that was all over, I drove around a bit more, and ended up in Santa Rosa. I ambled a bit, and inquired with some Motor Inns as to how much a night would be, because there were storm cloud’s a-brewin’ on the horizon, and I didn’t want to get caught up in none of that. Oddly enough, I stayed at a campground right in town, with showers, wireless internet, a restaurant, but no power-hookups at the tent sites.

I went to my assigned spot, settled in, and tried to go to sleep. It was a bit of a no-go, at first, because I could hear this repetitive sound outside. It sounded just like the rhythmic dripping of water, or some other fluid. At some point my paranoia got the best of me, because I was somehow convinced that it was a dripping from one of the fluid containing areas of my truck, and I extricated myself and checked things out. It turned out to be some kind of bird or otherwise-nighttime-tree-dwelling-animal that was making the noise a couple of trees over. After that I felt foolish, because the noise was much too loud to be a dripping from underneath my truck.

Oh well, it all worked out alright and everything was ok. Then I went to sleep.