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Location: We_tside PNW (Columbia Gorge) / CO / SA TX / Thailand
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Consider adding some Themes to your trip.
Road food, drive-ins, hot springs, state parks,.... When doing desert routes on a motorcycle, I stop at nearly every public pool. It brings nteresting stories and people into your trip. Great fun for a young man.
Road food, drive-ins, hot springs, state parks,.... When doing desert routes on a motorcycle, I stop at nearly every public pool. It brings nteresting stories and people into your trip. Great fun for a young man.
Be sure to journal daily.
Oh absolutely.. I've already told him (and this is the part that he's not necessarily thrilled about) that we'll be staying in some old, old motels during the trip.
And we'll be eating at some possibly questionable roadside places as well. Not going to be any McDonalds or Burger King eating on this trip.
Public pools.. Well, not so much.. But certainly many, many of those kitsch shops and the like.
Oh absolutely.. I've already told him (and this is the part that he's not necessarily thrilled about) that we'll be staying in some old, old motels during the trip.
And we'll be eating at some possibly questionable roadside places as well. Not going to be any McDonalds or Burger King eating on this trip.
Public pools.. Well, not so much.. But certainly many, many of those kitsch shops and the like.
Maybe Sleep in a Wigwam in Holbrook AZ?
I really wanted to do that but it didn’t work out.
Taking my nephew on a road trip for his high school graduation.
Flying out to LA on the 12th of June. I think I'm going to spend the 12th and 13th in LA and we'll leave out from Santa Monica pier on the 14th.
Final destination won't be Chicago, but we're going to do Rt 66 to Missouri and then detour up to the Kansas City area to see my dad. Hope to be there on the evening of the 24th. Then we'll fly out from KC on the 27th
Some destinations that i'll certainly be doing.. Meteor Crater.. Oatman and Seligman and alot of the small towns. Winslow, AZ. Plan to visit the soda place in Tulsa and the blue whale and that steakhouse in Amarillo that has the 72 ounce steak challenge.
Also plan to detour off 66 down to Roswell and check it out.
And, of course, we're going to be stopping many, many places along the way.. Just looking for things to see that you might bypass. And.. I've been to the Scamwalk out on the Grand Canyon, so, no interest to go back to that.
We did it Oct-Nov before COVID. Round trip with National Park stops and tons of side trips. 6 weeks.
Ah.. There you go. That's the kind of thing I was looking for. If I've seen this in my searches.. i didn't remember it.
I do have plans for a good day or so around OKC. My parents lived there right after they were married, so I am gong to go by where they lived right outside the base there. That was the first place my dad was stationed while in the Air Force. I still have to figure out WHICH AFB..
I've been to the John Wayne birthplace before up in Winterset, IA.. Not much to that one, but.. It's fun to see those kinds of things. Some are better than others.. I went to the Bob Feller museum while up there too.. He's from Van Meter, IA (both these places are rather close to Des Moines) and.. HE WAS THERE! Got an autographed ball and got to shake his hand and just talk to him for just a few minutes.. That was amazing.
I agree with this. Route 66 really doesn't exist as a continuous highway anymore. Instead of planning your road trip around a now-nonexistent highway, why not plan it around the things you and (especially) your nephew really want to see?
^^^^This.
There are spots where the interstate and Route 66 are one in the same.
Still, we enjoyed the segments of Route 66 that we were able to drive on during our cross country trips.
When you go to the Big Texan in Amarillo, are either of you going to try to eat the meal with the 72 oz. steak?
Taking my nephew on a road trip for his high school graduation.
Flying out to LA on the 12th of June. I think I'm going to spend the 12th and 13th in LA and we'll leave out from Santa Monica pier on the 14th.
Final destination won't be Chicago, but we're going to do Rt 66 to Missouri and then detour up to the Kansas City area to see my dad. Hope to be there on the evening of the 24th. Then we'll fly out from KC on the 27th
Some destinations that i'll certainly be doing.. Meteor Crater.. Oatman and Seligman and alot of the small towns. Winslow, AZ. Plan to visit the soda place in Tulsa and the blue whale and that steakhouse in Amarillo that has the 72 ounce steak challenge.
Also plan to detour off 66 down to Roswell and check it out.
And, of course, we're going to be stopping many, many places along the way.. Just looking for things to see that you might bypass. And.. I've been to the Scamwalk out on the Grand Canyon, so, no interest to go back to that.
Check out the Bar S baloney plant in Elk City, OK a few hours east of Amarillo. They sometimes have a "Help Wanted" sign.
You might enjoy the old motels along the way. La Posada in Winslow is the last Harvey Hotel built. El Rancho is a classic hotel in Gallup. Both were movie star hotels when they were filming the westerns. El Vado has been nicely restored in Albuquerque. In Tucumcari there is the Blue Swallow Motel set in the 1950s and the Safari restored to the 1960s. Flagstaff has Lowell observatory and they have tours. If you do go to the Grand Canyon there are a couple grand hotels and cabins on the rim. Acoma Pueblo is interesting east of Grants NM. They do tours — it is one of the longest occupied places in the US (1000 years). Lots of stuff to do in Albuquerque (tram, museums). Cadillac Ranch is just west of Amarillo. Check the schedule to see if there will be a minor league baseball game on Albuquerque or OKC...great stadium in both cities. OKC has the bombing memorial. There are often European road trippers on Rt. 66 — it seems to be a thing for them. They get lost.
You might enjoy the old motels along the way. La Posada in Winslow is the last Harvey Hotel built. El Rancho is a classic hotel in Gallup. Both were movie star hotels when they were filming the westerns. El Vado has been nicely restored in Albuquerque. In Tucumcari there is the Blue Swallow Motel set in the 1950s and the Safari restored to the 1960s. Flagstaff has Lowell observatory and they have tours. If you do go to the Grand Canyon there are a couple grand hotels and cabins on the rim. Acoma Pueblo is interesting east of Grants NM. They do tours — it is one of the longest occupied places in the US (1000 years). Lots of stuff to do in Albuquerque (tram, museums). Cadillac Ranch is just west of Amarillo. Check the schedule to see if there will be a minor league baseball game on Albuquerque or OKC...great stadium in both cities. OKC has the bombing memorial. There are often European road trippers on Rt. 66 — it seems to be a thing for them. They get lost.
Good list here SunGrins!
New Mexico has over a dozen national parks and monuments and they are in each corner of the state from Capulin Volcano Mountain to Aztec Ruins to Carlsbad Caverns. Regarding the caverns, IMO Carlsbad Caverns is one of the crown jewels of the National Parks system. It is a must see, particularly at dusk when you have the bat flight.
Like the El Rancho in Gallup, the St. James hotel in Cimarrron is a must see. The following people have stayed there--"Black Jack" Ketchum, Frederick Remington, Doc Holliday, Zane Grey, Billy the Kid, It's a ways off 66, probably a separate trip to New Mexico itself would work for you!
I worked on a 161 mile pipeline that cut through NE New Mexico and I stayed in Tucumcari for about 6 weeks, this was in 1982. That part of the state has an interesting topography about it, when you leave Albuquerque and get past Santa Rosa (another town worth stopping at) you'll see lots of small mesas here and there that go nearly to the Texas state line that is called the "Llano Estacado."
Tucumcari would be a great place to spend the night. Do a search on the Big Sombrero Restaurant on Tucumcari Blvd. Pretty cool old building! Sadly several of the older mom and pop motels have closed up over the decades, some have been torn down. But the town hangs in there--when the interstate was completed there were a lot of smaller towns that were hurt economically.
ADD-----Tucumari sports a cool little Route 66 days. Called "Rockabilly On The Route", it generally happens around the last week of June. They haven't announced when it will be this year for obvious reasons. The last one I went to was a few years ago, amongst the entertainers was country star Wanda Jackson.
Last edited by DOUBLE H; 04-03-2021 at 07:38 AM..
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