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.

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