I got my kicks - again - on Route 66

Coming from Oklahoma City driving to West again, we stopped yesterday in Elk City on Route 66 to visit there the well known and great museum about the "Mother Road". It was worth to make this stop!

We spent more than two hours to see all those interesting things inside of the museum and outdoors too. I will show you tomorrow more photos in my next post about our journey on Route 66.

I was always - and I'm now more - a big fan of this old road and can imagine how much fun and real adventure it was back in time, to travel Route 66 from coast to coast - except maybe the quality of the road - that was yesterday and is still today - very bad! :)

Big collection of car tags from famous and infamous people who have traveled the road

It was big fashion to eat out in the 66-Diners on the road

Murals painted in vivid colors showing a red Pontiac and a green Ford, traveling the road

Nostalgia comes back to live: the good old days - the time, when waitresses were bringing the orders to your car windows :)

Show off your sports car: a white Thunderbird traveling on the "Mother Road"!

I love these bikes!
This "Indian" model is a special beautiful one and has its story! It was so fast, that the police could NOT stop the riders, until they decided to buy some machines for their forces too :)

...or this beautiful blue Harley! I can imagine how fantastic it was to be sitting on this bike riding along the good old Route 66!

The "Golden Queen"! "Easy Rider" would be probably very jealous of this perfect master piece, still today, I'm sure! :)

A close up of the golden bike

An authentic model of an old gasoline station and all the stuff around. Note, to have a "water bag"
(at the left upper corner at the wall - or click in the picture to see it bigger)
for rides trough the rough desert were a must to have
and they were sold for $1.50 per piece :)

The red barn, a mural showing farm life living

There was also a collection of old and pretty kid toys - some of them can even I remember.
Today they are expensive collector items.

Elk City is a Route 66 town
from the git-go. In 1931 the US Highway 66 Association held its annual convention here. More than 20,000 people attended too! That's a pretty sizable crowd for those days I'm thinking. Elk City is also the site of the Old Town Museum. In its many years of operation it has expanded to include a Route 66 museum.


The National Route 66 Museum celebrates Route 66, not only in Oklahoma, but all eight Route 66 states. The museum focuses on the people who lived, worked and traveled the Mother Road and offers the road wanderer a walk through all eight states. The realistic murals and exhibits feature vintage automobiles and antiques from the hey-day of
Route 66.

The National Route 66 Museum
is part of the Old Town Museum complex that includes the National Transportation Museum, Pioneer Museum and Beutler Brothers Rodeo Hall, the Farm and Ranch Museum, Livery Stable, Train Depot, Wagon Yard and other areas depicting Old Town Elk City. The National Route 66 Museum uses a road motif to allow visitors to travel through all eight states along Route 66 "The Mother Road". The trip begins in Chicago and ends in California. Murals and different vignettes depict the eras of the road and the interesting places that made Route 66 so famous. As you travel along, you can listen to recorded histories and personal accounts of the road from overhead audio kiosks.

Hi my friends,

we decided to go back West again and enjoying all the fun on Route 66. I'll post tomorrow more about that Museum in Elk City. My archive is full and it's waiting to be shared with you :) I hope I'll don't bore you with my enthusiasm about the "Mother Road"...LOL...

We are just now in Amarillo, Texas - again - and we went for dinner in a great (for food) and funky (in design) Restaurant with the reasonable name "The big Texan".

It was just delicious!!!

YES, that's the place where you can eat a 72 oz Steak for FREE - if you can eat it in one hour! Can you...? :) I made some photos of the place - of course - they will be online soon too!

After Amarillo we will be heading probably towards Santa Fe in New Mexico - up the hills and further North maybe to Utah or Colorado. I'll let you know - stay tuned with me! :)

Thanks for all the wonderful comments and have fun - enjoy life!
Susanne and David

Oklahoma - here we are!

We left Amarillo this morning and had 250 miles to drive to Oklahoma City, that was our goal for today - we didn't made it! We were to late already from start on, but what's up... we are arrived save in Cherokee El Rino in Oklahoma for our night place in a campground.

These photos are again some nice landscape impressions from the route today

This yellow bridge in the picture is the real good old Route 66 that is following I-40 for long way.

In Oklahoma changed the soil color to red again, and it's a very intensive red - different and much stronger than I have seen in Arizona

Pretty red hills on the horizon
(all the picture are click able to see it bigger)

It seems for me that Oklahoma is a farming state

And another pretty landscape
(all the photos were captured out of my window)

Hi my friends,

Thank you again for all your wonderful comments to my sunset photos (with horses) from yesterday. I'm happy you liked it! :)

Some days ago I made a remark here on my blog that we have "new decisions to make". I have not forgotten to keep my promise and to tell you what's all about.

O.k., we've decided to make new experiences and give our travels a deeper meaning, that's why we decided to do a summer job as "work campers" in Branson, Missouri. That's the reason why we are heading to East again. :)

What is work camping?
It sounds so far to be something fun - we will see :))

We will be on a very nice campground located on a pretty lake and close to Down Town Branson, where a lot of theaters/shows of famous singers and entertainers are. We will be working a total of 24 hrs a week for a free parking space and the rest of the week we are off and we will enjoy everything what Branson has to offer.

I hope, we will like it, we absolutely don't know what we are expecting because we never have done something like that before. But it's never to late to start something new in life for collecting new impressions, to meet other new and fun people and to learn also some new stuff. We will have also the possibility to visit all the famous shows for free or almost free.

The summer in the hills and on the lake in Branson is much more enjoyable than the hot deserts of Nevada or Arizona. This was one of the biggest reasons for us to choose Branson,MO as our new place to stay over summer time.

Cross your fingers for us that everything will come as we are wishing for. :)

I will have hopefully more time for my blogging again and for visiting also all your great blogs and to bring a lot of new photos from an other beautiful place in this pretty country!

Stay with me and see you later,
Susanne and David

Is this the way to Amarillo?

This is how it was looking the next morning in Albuquerque: SNOW!

On the road again to Texas and in between was Tucumcari...

...and also a ghost town...

If you know where Tucumcari is, you will know too that we were on the legendary "Historical Route 66" again - as you can see in this picture

...or this one: a Mexican Restaurant...

.... or this pretty "Blue Swallow Motel"...

But I think this business is "out of order" since long time already

Tucumcari is known for all the beautiful painted murals from the high time of Route 66

Riding cowboy mural on Route 66

I like this one very much!

Front and site walls of this Motel are murals

Back in Texas again!

And the landscape went FLAT - flat as flat can be...

but, with beautiful warm colors

and pretty clouds at the Bridwell West Ranch

Texas cows

The only way to the horizon

....if eaten in one hour!!!... can you do that...? :))

The Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo. Tomorrow I'll show you more photos from this funky place

Cadillac Ranch is a public art installation and sculpture in Amarillo, Texas, U.S. It was created in 1974 by Chip Lord, Hudson Marquez and Doug Michels, who were a part of the art group Ant Farm, and it consists of what were (when originally installed during 1974) either older running used or junk Cadillac automobiles, representing a number of evolutions of the car line (most notably the birth and death of the defining feature of early Cadillacs; the tail fin) from 1949 to 1963, half-buried nose-first in the ground, at an angle corresponding to that of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. The piece is a statement about the paradoxical simultaneous American fascinations with both a "sense of place" — and roadside attractions, such as The Ranch itself — and the mobility and freedom of the automobile.

Hi my friends,

I hope you've enjoyed my photos from our trip to Amarillo and we are still sitting here.
I have photographed today also a wonderful sunset on the prairie - that will be online also tomorrow.

Thanks for the comments!!
Susanne

I got my kicks on Route 66!!

We left Las Vegas after 6 days - yes we loved it THAT much... LOL... to Lake Mead and Hoover Dam and towards Sedona in Arizona, that was our next big goal.

As closer we came to the Dam, there were signs to see like the one in the photo above and believe it or not, a man in uniform came really inside of our camper and looked around five seconds - and left! That was the whole inspection! :)

Hoover Dam,
originally known as Boulder Dam, is a concrete arch-gravity dam in the Black Canyon of the Colorado River, on the border between the U.S. states of Arizona and Nevada. When completed in 1935, it was both the world's largest electric-power generating station and the world's largest concrete structure. It was surpassed in both these respects by the Grand Coulee Dam in 1945. It is currently the world's 35th-largest hydroelectric generating station.

This dam, located 30 miles (48 km) southeast of Las Vegas, Nevada, is named after Herbert Hoover, who played an instrumental role in its construction, first as the Secretary of Commerce and then later as the President of the United States. Construction began in 1931 and was completed in 1936, more than two years ahead of schedule. The dam and the power plant are operated by the Bureau of Reclamation of the U.S. Department of the Interior. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1981, Hoover Dam was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1985.

Lake Mead is the reservoir created behind the dam, named after Elwood Mead, who oversaw the construction of the dam. The lakes water level is way below the usual line.

The Hoover Dam Bypass Project

(which includes the New Colorado Bridge) is a complex project made up of four miles of roadway (two lanes in each direction), eight bridges, wildlife crossings, a 2,000 foot-long bridge over the Colorado River and various pedestrian and visitor improvements. Because of the magnitude of this project, it will be constructed in four distinct phases: the Arizona Approach, the Nevada Approach, the Colorado River Bridge, and final roadway surfacing. Construction of the Arizona approach has begun followed by the Nevada Approach in mid-2003 and Colorado River Bridge in late 2003. The entire Hoover Dam Bypass Project is expected to be complete in 2007 at a cost of $234 million.

Construction is well underway on the Hoover Dam Bypass Project: both the Arizona and the Nevada Approaches are finished and construction on the Colorado River Bridge is steadily progressing!

Colorado River water irrigates more than a million acres of land in the U.S., and nearly half a million acres

in Mexico. The water helps meet the municipal and industrial needs of over 14 million people. As it passes through Hoover's turbines, the water generates low-cost hydroelectric power for use in Nevada, Arizona and California. About 4 billion kilowatt-hours of energy, enough for 500,000 homes.

This is the Road 95 going from Boulder City to Los Angeles

Then we drove trough these steep and hilly roads in Arizona trough wonderful landscapes (The State of Arizona begins after the Hoover Dam again)

Pretty landscapes like this....

...or this here! It was breathtaking - once more!

Just beautiful!

This was made with my 300mm lens... it's one side arm of Lake Mead within the mountains

We arrived in Seligman, AZ - the birthplace of historic "Route 66". We took a closer look into this little almost forgotten town, and we did not regret our decision! I always wanted to see a piece of the legendary Route 66

In the early Route 66 years,
Seligman accommodated many travelers with motor courts galore. Seligman is the beginning of the remaining 158 mile stretch of Old Route 66 to Topock and is rich in scenic and historic value.
Today a visit to this small town is a step back in time and tourism is still an important part of the economy.

There are stores like this "Return to the 50's"

Also James Dean is back to life on Route 66

The best gift shop in Seligman - you can get everything "Route 66"!!!

The original Barber shop, still in his originality, only the barber is no more there

Hundreds of business cards are hanging everywhere or just stiched to the walls. But not only business cards, also notes, photos, even real money from visitors of foreign countries are hanging on the walls. A very special place, indeed! I love it!

Souvenirs, souvenirs - with Route 66 design, of course!

And then a feast for the eyes were also these old cars: an old Dodge...

... or this old Chevy...

... or this old rusty car that has seen the golden ages of Route 66, I'm sure!

And then this old gasoline pump station here - just beautiful! Nostalgia, nostalgia...all the dreams come back to life, right? :))

I got my kicks, on Route 66!

Hi my friends,

I hope you've enjoyed my post here today!

Of course, we will visit more pieces of this legendary "Route 66", it's to great!

We drove from Seligman to Flagstaff Arizona and the next morning we went to Sedona. I'll show you some photos from that beautiful place tomorrow or so... :))

Stay tuned with me!
Susanne and David