The best laid plans…

Thursday, September 9, 2021

We left El Reno on September 4, 2021, deciding to go all the way to Santa Fe because Randy had somehow (we don’t know what he did) hurt his GOOD knee and had trouble walking. I hope you noticed that I haven’t posted for a while—did you miss me? We decided to do that because I scored a two-bedroom timeshare in Santa Fe where we could relax for a few days.

Relax we did! First two days, we stayed in. Luckily for Randy, the USTA Open was on and he could put his feet up and just watch tennis. I got groceries and got my cooking fix for two days.

But back to Route 66. We left Tulsa for El Reno and then left El Reno planning on driving on I40/I25 straight through to Santa Fe. There were a few sights we felt we just HAD to see.

We drove through “scenic” Depew (anybody remembering Pepe LePew?) and on to Chandler. Chandler? What the heck is in Chandler? Jerry McClanahan! Who? He wrote our bible, EZ66 Guide for Travelers and in the book he invites his readers to stop in to his gallery. We did. He wasn’t there so I called him. He was at Walmart but hadn’t gone in to shop so said he’d be there in three minutes. He was! What a nice guy! We toured his gallery, he signed our book, we bought one of his prints (I wanted to buy a print with a Corvette, but none of them were red, and any Corvette owner knows that “all Corvettes are red, the next are mistakes.”). Very nice visit. Hope you’re reading this, Jerry!

The pictures (in no particular order) will show what we did. I’ll write about Santa Fe soon!

 

The famous---or infamous---Cadillac Ranch. Too far for Randy to walk.

A closer view of some of the buried Cadillacs.

People seemingly don't want to throw away what's left in their spray cans. Yes, you are encouraged to spray paint the cars. But not encouraged to paint the road.

There is actually a store that sells hundreds---yes, HUNDREDS, of different kinds of sodas. Some flavors include peanut butter & jelly, maple bacon, sweet corn and their Sodasgusting flavors such as Bug Barf, Pimple Pop, and Pirate Piss. They also have Coke.

We got these two rather mild flavors. Blue Raspberry for me and some kind of Cream soda. We were the only ones wearing a mask, including the cashier. That's Oklahoma for you!

 

Route 66 is really enamored of giant things.

Somebody actually built this water tower on an angle as a gimmick to get customers to come in to his store.

Apparently the only actually round, round barn in the country.

 

We were able to visit the author of our turn-by-turn bible for Route 66, Jerry McClanahan. EZ66 Guide for Travelers

Note this bridge was built before Route 66 was built (or designated since Route 66 largely went on already built roads, although they probably were dirt roads before the designation as Route 66) pre-Route 66.

The historic Rock Creek Bridge. We have seen, driven on, walked on more bridges on this trip than we have in the past dozen years!

A typical street scene for almost any town on the old Route 66. Most stores are closed. This happens to be in Depew OK.