Road Trip: Day 28

Today I had the privilege of spending my morning driving on The Mother Road… Route 66! I had originally planned on just hitting a few places, but last night I decided to drive as much of the route as I could.

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Route 66 is a really nostalgic road to drive, with lots of little houses and old farms… my mom would love this area. Compared to the interstate, Rt66 is much more “natural” and flows with the land… but unfortunately all the modern roads make it quite difficult to navigate. Next time I’ll have to pre-load all of Route 66 into my GPS!

The first stop for today was Gary’s Gay Parita Sinclair Station. I arrived just before 9am and was a little worried that no one would be around, but Gary was there waiting with coffee and doughnuts! I introduced myself and spent the next hour being guided around the garage/station… I even popped the top off some Route 66 Root Beer and sat on the porch sharing stories from the road. Of course I had to take a bunch of photos too!

Before departing Gary provided some directions to circumvent the detour up the road. This was really helpful, as I never would have found my way back to Route 66 without his help. He also pointed out how to get to a stretch of the route that’s still the original concrete!

After navigating through the various sections of Route 66 in Missouri I finally made my way to Kansas! Rt66 only travels 13 miles in Kansas, but there are quite a few great places to visit. The best, by far, was 4 Women on the Route.

Not only did I see “Tow Tater”, the inspiration for ‘Mater from the movie Cars, I had a great conversation with “Melba the Mouth”.

After leaving Galena I headed to the Rainbow bridge; the last remaining Marsh arch bridge… built of concrete in 1923.

I’ve now driven Route 66 in every state that it travels through! When I get home I’m going to have to track down one of the Route 66 postmark maps. I was tempted to get one today, but didn’t want to risk damaging it.

The remainder of my drive was Kansas; and there’s only one thing I need to say about that… there’s a reason it’s the last state in the mid-west to be filled-in on my map! The only good part was the slalom course through the cones in a construction zone.

Tomorrow is another long day of driving across flat ground, but I will be making my way towards the mountains of Colorado for a few days of twisty fun!