Many problems with the blog.  When I last posted, we were just getting into New Mexico with our last stop at Adrian, TX and the ugly pie.  It seems I had problems saving the posts and posting them and never could get many photos into the blog. So I am going to have Patience try it instead of me.

Here is a photo of the great artistry of what is “The Cadillac Ranch”  The brushes are spray cans and these people need to get a life.

So this is a brief attempt to see if Patience can make this work.

We got out of Amarillo this morning before ten.  First stop - Cadillac Ranch.  Cadillac Ranch has become a spray painters heaven.  There were about twenty people, mostly kids, wielding multiple cans of spray paint climbing all over these hulks spraying over all of the paint that was put on the day before.  The paint alone probably ways more than the automobiles.  Anything that was once attached to the cars has been removed and it is actually difficult to tell that they were all Cadillacs.  A bit of a disappointment, which is strange for people who find a tacky fiberglass blue whale constructed in a polluted pond interesting.  The area around  the cars is littered with empty spray cans and trash.  There was a couple there with a truckload of camera equipment;  Dale Roth and Michele Ramberg are professional photographers from Alberta, Canada.  They had flown from Alberta to Austin, rented a Cadillac and drove to Amarillo to take pictures of Cadillac Ranch and the people who have nothing better to do than empty spray paint cans on the already covered in paint.  And people think we are a little strange for buying a 45 year old Cadillac and driving it over two thousand miles accross the country.   They had been waiting there to find some interesting people to talk with and photograph, unfortunately these interesting people were too busy displaying there artistic genius with a couple of dozen spray cans of paint to talk with these strange people with all the cameras.  When they learned that we were the owners of the fine looking Cadillac convertible they thought they decided that they would like to get some pictures of an old Cadillac and some interesting people in front of the Cadillac Ranch. Unfortunately they only had Steven and I so the gave up the interesting part of the church and settled for us and the car in front of the all the other Cadillacs.  We spent about 20 minutes getting our pictures taken.

Leaving the Cadillac Ranch we headed west on I40.  Route 66 parallels the interstate through almost all of Texas.  A few miles down the road we stopped for lunch at the Midpoint Cafe in West Texas.  The Midpoint Cafe is famous for its “ugly pies” (only on route 66).  The menu had about ten items - burgers, BLTs, toasted cheese sandwiches, soup and a couple other things.  They are famous for their “ugly pies” because some old woman about 60 years ago made great tasting, but messy looking pies.  I had an apple cobbler, it didn’t looks so bad, but then you couldn’t see it under the giant scoop of vanilla ice cream I had them put on it.

I am going to send this now and pick up again on a later blog.  This computer seems to keep losing my work.  This is the third time I have tried to get this thing posted and I don’t want to lose it again.

Keep walking Mr. Wexler - you seem to be doing better than our car.

I am awaiting my flight to Amarillo where we will begin the second half of the trip on the 5th.  El Gigante has been waiting in the shop and is raring to go.  I hope it goes all the way this time - not like the girls I knew in my youth who never let me get to first base.  She has a bunch of new stuff so we are slowly replacing everything.

Steven and Susan will be arriving  a few hours before Keren and I get there, so I expect they will find the bar at Amarillo International Airport and get a start on the Grey Goose sweepstakes.  Amarillo really is an international airport - I think they have one flight a week to Nogales to pick up some agricultural material.  We will be spending a few days with Keren’s brother Quentin “rocket boy” Wilson and his wife Janice.  Steven and Susan will be staying at some fancy schmancy hotel so Susan can have some big towels and steal a few bottles of shampoo.

Not sure how we are going to plan the route.  I do know we need to stop at the Cadillac Ranch outside of Amarillo - El Gigante wants to see some of her ancestors.  I will inform her that if she doesn’t behave I am going  to plant her nose first into the ground and she can stay with her ancestors. We will then rent a BMW for the rest of the trip.  Whoever wins the car can pick her up at the Cadillac Ranch - third rusting hulk from the left.

July 4 -  Independence day in Amarillo. The weather was actually pretty nice in the morning.  Steven and I spent most of day washing and cleaning on the car.  She took it well and was looking real nice.  This evening we went with Qeintin and Janice for dinner at Qentin’s daughter, Jocie and her husband Kent.  Jocie and Kent have a spread out west of town.  (We Texas folk don’t call them ranches or farms.)  We had a great time and the weather was really nice.  They have a couple dogs one says I’m hungry and the other prays for his meal.  I hate it coming to Amarillo and having to talk about nice weather.  Most often it seems, when I am here, to be either too hot or too cold and always windy.  Wind here is like rain in Portland, after a while you don’t even notice it.  Tomorow, we are on our way. Steven will drop Susan off at the airport and Keren will spend the next couple of days visiting her brother.  Stay tuned - New Mexico here we come.

I have a resident here at Franklin Park Retirement at City View by the name of Al Wexler that is tracking his walking for a month for Route 66.  He walks 10 miles a day 5 days a week and 2 miles on the weekends.  You guys are doing great!  Keep it up and be safe.

When I left ya’ll last I was timed out by the Amarillo Airport’s (international airport, at that) wireless site so I didn’t get to finish the last blog.  Here we go after picking up leaving Oklahoma City.

I made the  last 225 miles without Steven.  He decided to drive back to Dallas with Susan.  He didn’t miss a lot as most of the original route through east Texas is little more than a frontage road for I40.  My first stop was at the old car show in El Reno, OK.  This was the show we were going to  be  in had we not lost the 24 hours in Joplin.  I parked El Gigante outside of the show and walked around.  When I got back from looking at the car their were several people hanging around looking at the Caddy.  “What year is it?” “Boy, it sure is big.” “How do you get such a giant around corners?” and “Hey, big fella, you want to take me for a ride in that beauty?” (Well, that last comment I made up, but it should have been asked.)

Leaving El Reno I proceeded west toward Texas and the windy, dusty plain of the Texas panhandle and Amarillo, also known as the largest truckstop in the world.  The trip was uneventful, but there are two great Route 66 museums, one in Clinton, OK and the other in Elk City, OK.  I arrived at the Clinton museum just before noon, but the museum didn’t open until 1PM so I skipped it.  In Elk City the museum was open so I spent about an hour going through it.  The highlight was a replica of the Joad family truck (from the Grapes of Wrath movie for those of ignorant hicks unfamiiar with the great movies of the twentieth century.)  The truck looked just like the one in the movie and it even had a wax figure of  Henry Fonda in the driver’s seat. Really cool.

Crossing into Texas I finally put the top-up and turned on the air conditioning when it reached 102 degrees in the car.  The AC worked great, but when, 15 minutes later,  I stopped to take a picture of a restored Conoco gas station in Shamrock, TX (I think) I noticed that the AC compressor was making some unhealthy sounds.  AC got turned off and the windows went down.  The rest of the way in it was hot and sticky.  Pulling into Amarillo and about 2 miles from Quentin’s (Keren’s brother) house the car overheated. I parked it and called Quentin who was having some beers with some friends of his at the Applebee’s down the street from his house.   All I really wanted was a shower, but Quentin thought it best that he come get me and we could have a few beers while the car cooled.  So I end up, sweaty and miserable, spending two hours at Applebee’s downing beers with Quentin and his friends.  After the beers we got the car and, finally, to the house. 

The next morning I checked out the car and it turns out that it threw the fan belt that operates the water pump. The belt broke because the smog pump on the car (driven by the same damned belt) froze up and the built came apart.  So El Gigante is sitting at Mitchell’s garage getting a new smog pump, a new water pump and a new AC compressor simply because I don’t want to take any chances.  The guy that runs Mitchell’s, I think his last name is Mitchell, is about 200 years old, but knowledgeable.  Hell, he was probably collecting social security when the Caddy came off the assembly line.

So there you have it.  The first half of the trip without a hitch.  Come July 5 we head for LA, sunglasses on and the air conditioning blowing strong. 

June 8, 2008 - Amarillo at last - Halfway to Santa Monica.

I know this is a late entry, but have patience I have has trouble getting an internet connection until I got to Amarillo and Keren’s brother’s house. Since I got here on Sunday the eighth I have been busy going to bars with Quentin in the evening and finding a mechanic to make sure the car is in shape for the second half of the trip. But I am here know with a few hours to go before leaving for Portland and thought I would bring everyone up to date on the trip.

My last posting was on June 6 while El Gigante was in the shop getting new wheel bearings.  All got finished late on Friday evening so we stayed in Joplin for the night.  On the morning of the 7^th we headed out.  We really wanted to make Oklahoma City by that evening so the gas station, bridge photos and other oddities were reduced a bit.  A first for us was that we made it through Kansas in one day, the first state in which we have done that.  It was tough, all 13 miles of it.

As we entered Oklahoma we came upon an interesting four or five mile section of the original route 66 that was a single lane road.  It seems they only had enough to complete the road for half the distance, but they were smarter than that so they completed the road all the way, but only half as wide.  So as you drive down the road and come upon someone traveling toward you both have to move over to the side of the road so you can pass each other.  Luckily there are wide shoulders so it is not difficult.  This, as many other, stretches of the original road snaked through some really pretty areas - small farms, green from the considerable rain the Midwest has had this year, woodlands and abandoned homes and buildings that seemed simply to have been abandoned when the old road was decommissioned.

Once into Oklahoma we skipped around Tulsa and on to Oklahoma City, which we also went around, and picked up old 66 again just west of OC in Bethany.  Susan Vick was driving up from Dallas to say hi so we had to abandon one of our key principles of only staying in older route 66 motels.  So we got a room at the Hampton Inn in Yukon.  I mean it was amazing they had shampoo and conditioner right there in the room.  They had a soap bar there that was large enough to actually work up a lather.  But the biggest surprise was the towels; when you held them up to the light you couldn’t even see through them.  Now I know how Joyce Kilmer must have felt when he wrote “Trees“  I think that I shall never see a towel as lovely as Hampton Inn provided me.

Once we were finished marveling at the wonders of the Hampton Inn we got ready for dinner with Mary Brinkley, the Executive Director of Oklahoma Homes and Services for the Aged.  I have known Mary for many years from attending the same AAHSA conferences.  When I told Mary about our plans at the Spring Conference she insisted that I stopped in Oklahoma City so she could take us for some classic Route 66 type road food.  So Susan, Steven and I piled into Mary’s car and headed for Okarche, Oklahoma about 15 miles north of Route 66. Okarche is home to Eischen’s Bar, the oldest bar in Oklahoma.  It is also known for its fried chicken.  The interesting thing is Okarche is a small town, about 1,100 God fearing souls and Eischen’s seems to serve every one of the town inhabitants on a given night. The place is packed and people come from all over.  There is no menu - you get a fried chicken, some white bread and onions and pickles.  The bread, onion and pickles are you appetizers and you make a bread, onion and pickle sandwich.  No plates either - the chicken comes in a basket  and you take it out and put it on a piece of waxed paper to eat it.  Drinks consist of beer or soft drinks and none of that fancy assed craft beer either.  We had a good time and the chicken is excellent.  Mary told us that Eischen only serves fresh chickens and they serve over 900 a day making them Tyson’s largest single restaurant account.

I am in the Amarillo airport and had added to this post, but the airport timed me out and I lost some of it. I was really good.  I will try to reconstruct when I get to a better internet site.

Car trouble strikes.  El Gigante hit some difficulty.  It seems the front wheel bearing got fried.  It is sitting at Nixon’s auto repair as they seek out parts,  should get going this afternoon so we can head to Kansas and Oklahoma.  Last night we did three more beers and only have a touch of Grey Goose left.   It turns out the the fellow Steven had get the car in shape failed to pack the wheel bearings with grease.  Steven’s mechanic tells us he will make good on the repairs.  On to some more interesting stuff.

Coming in from the east we stopped at an old gas station and met Gary who gave us the whole history of the area.  It was an interesting stop, Gary liked to talk and show us his guest book with lots of people from Europe that had been through just the day before.  Gary was neat, but gives new meaning to the term “toothless goober.”

From Gary’s place it was on to Red Oak II which is down the road from Red Oak.  It seems Red Oak was dying so some fellow picked up most of the buildings and moved them to a corn field several miles west.  He keeps adding buildings and is planning to open a tourist trap.  We talked to some fellow who did a lot of the work around there - another interesting character.  The place is quite amazing old buildings and cars scattered around in varying stages of repair.  They have a sherrif’s office with a jail and are building a new restaraunt.  The restaraunt has a nifty bar that they’re building and it is quite impressive.  The whole thing is a sight to see.  I haven’t downloaded the pictures yet, but you can google “Red Oaks + Carthage” and it will come up.   One of the guys that lives there is an artist and ex-hippie (is there such a thing as an ex-hippie?)  He told me that he was the owner of the farm, he started doing art work and got rich so he started the village, he then got a divorce and now he is poor and still has the village.  The fellow that showed us around says little of that was true except the artist part. He is a skilled artist, but he mostly sits around smoking grass and braiding his hair.  Do you know how hard it is to braid your own hair after finishing off two or three doobies?  An amazing feat.  We also watched an old woman, well over 80 we were told.  She was digging in her garden and pulling a cart full of rocks around.  Steven suggested that she could probably kick his ass and the guy showing us around said, “I guarantee you she could kick all of our asses.

Here’s hoping El Gigante (1BIGRD) is done soon.   

On the main page of this website is the number of miles driven and the number of beers drank.  I can’t figure out how to update those so here is the total as of Wednesday evening June 4 - 8 beers (but we have been drinking vodka and we have finish off about three quarters of a liter from a 1.75 liter bottle of Grey Goose vodka.  We have driven 645 miles.  Today saw a visit to Merimac caves, they were interesting. The rest of the day was spent following beside the interstate for the most part.  The terrain is hilly and covered in Oak. Pretty.  One of the most interesting parts of the drive to day was on an old four lane portion of 66 that was built in 1941 to improve transportation to Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri.  This is the area of Devil’s Elbow where we got off of the four lane route 66 to drive over one of the older bridges.  There was a little tavern/restaurant area right next to the bridge and overlooking the river.  This was an inviting little place and it was all we could do to keep from stopping and spending a few hours, we decided not to knowing we would likely not be in driving shape when we left. 

Checked into the Munger Moss motel in Lebanon, MO.  The Munger Moss is, or so we have been told, a route 66 icon.  It is a traditional motor court with small rooms an rose colored bathroom fixtures with grey tile.  The towels are small and, get this, no shampoo.  I had to use Steven girlie shampoo, obviously purchased for him by Susan. 

Also checked in at the Munger Moss were four couples with a three restored Model A Fords and one 1939 Chevrolet pick-ups.  They were having a great time drinking and talking about their trip.  They were going all the way to California.  Needless to say Steven, I and the increasingly diminishing Grey Goose joined them, after which we went to Bell’s Diner for their world famous meatloaf.  It must be a small world.

Leaving Springfield today we stopped at a couple of sites.  After leaving an old gas station in Mt. Olive, about 50 miles south of Springfield El Gigante gave out.  Turns out one of the drive shafts lost bolts connecting it to the transmission.  We feared a stay until the next morning meaning we would have spent four days and not yet out of Illinois. Our luck was good it was simply a matter of all of the bolts coming out.  Not sure why but after 3 hours we were back on the road.  towing -$75; repairs $110 - could have been much worse.  We headed straight for Missouri got through St. Louis and picked up 66 again on the sw side of St. Louis.  Made it to St. Clair, MO where we stopped for the night.  Found a hamburger place, lightened up the vodka bottle and went to bed.  I developed a cough last night and think I am coming down with a cold.  

Above are the famous chili cheese fries of the Polka Dot Drive-in in Braidwood, IL.  They were horrible and I will never eat chili cheese fries again.  So far the food has been about what you would expect- greasy and in copious amounts.  But the Chili cheese fries were in a class by themselves.