Friday, June 1, 2018

GETTING OUR KICKS ON ROUTE 66

  



       Lucy and Ethyl are off on another road trip, and this time, we’re traveling the Mother Road. Route 66 is on a lot of peoples’ bucket lists, but the entire route, from Chicago, Illinois,  to Santa Monica, California, is about 2200 miles long. We’re doing it one half at a time. 
I flew into Chicago on Memorial Day, and we headed west the next morning in Ethyl’s Toyota Corolla. We thought about renting a mini-van to haul our loot back, but decided I couldn’t get much on the plane with me anyway. That may have been a mistake. I’ve already passed up a seven-foot kiva ladder that would beautifully display my old quilts, not to mention several metal art sculptures that would look great in my succulent garden.
  We’ve been talking about driving Route 66 for a couple of years, but George Strait’s Tulsa concert gave us the impetus to start the voyage. The halfway point is a few miles west of Amarillo, Texas, and we plan to make the jaunt from Tulsa to Amarillo after George’s concerts. As usual, we have tickets to both the Friday night and Saturday night events.
In the interest of time, we have been skipping back and forth between Route 66 and the interstates to get to Tulsa. We decided to leave the Illinois portion of the route for the return trip, Besides, I did that section in 2010, on a National Federation of Press Women post-conference tour. So we plugged St. Louis, Missouri, into the GPS and hopped on I-55. Then we hopped off at Pontiac, Illinois, because Ethyl wanted a picture made with her car parked in front of the world’s largest Route 66 shield mural, and I said,”Why not now?” 
Elaine (aka Lucy) with John Weiss
  Pontiac has 23 outdoor murals, vintage scenes that depict its commercial, cultural, and political history. Eighteen of the murals were painted by a national group of artists called The Walldogs. More than 150 artists from this collection of sign painters and muralists painted all 18 murals in four days during the summer of 2009. 

A Walldog was painting a new mural on
the day we were in Pontiac.
     After driving around town a few minutes trying to find the mural that has the world’s largest Route 66 shield and “Pontiac” on it. we gave up our search and stopped at the Route 66 Hall of Fame & Museum for information. We pulled into the museum’s parking lot, and low and behold, that mural was on the side of the building. After several photo opts, and a chat with three youths from Mexico, we went inside. That’s where we ran into John Weiss, author and tour guide for the NFPW Route 66 Illinois post-conference tour in 2010. He was in town doing a  radio interview. What a coincidence.
 
  Leaving Pontiac, we got back onto I-55, took a southern bypass around St. Louis, and headed west. This time, we programmed Carthage, Missouri, into the GPS, deciding that was the point where we wanted to pick up Route 66 again. We stopped for the night in Fenton,  staying at a Motel 6. It was cheap, which explains why they still don’t have hair dryers, coffee pots in the rooms or lids on their toilets.
  Stay tuned for more misadventures of Lucy and Ethyl getting their kicks on Route 66. It gets better each day.

1 comment:

  1. It sounds as if you two are off to a great start so and i am happy that you found your mural.

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