USA /
Canada, Newsletter 10 - November, 2012
Halloween is
big time here.
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| Halloween |
The shops and supermarkets have had pumpkins for sale and decorations
up for weeks.
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| Halloween Masks |
Whole aisles at the supermarket are decorations, costumes and scarecrows
to decorate the garden.You can even buy your pumpkin coffee.
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| Pumpkin Latte anyone? |
Everything seems to be the autumn colours.
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| Pumpkins and decorative squash |
There are
even potplants of orange flowers and small orange coloured squash to have
inside the house. Another aisle is candy - boxes (not packets) of lollies to
give the kids when they turn up at your front door.
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| Candy by the box |
It all seems very strange
that a god fearing nation gets so overwhelmed with a pagan celebration.
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| Halloween cards |
So the
election is over
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| Roadside signs - all is voted for here |
and Thanksgiving is the next celebration at the end of the
month. Christmas decorations have taken over
those aisles and it’s only six weeks to go of frenzied shopping.
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| Route 66 |
Route 66, the Main Street of America, or The
Mother Road, as it was called in Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath, was
built as a government-funded wagon road along the 35th parallel (from
Oklahoma), so that it would be passable all year round. It was established in
1926 and became a major path for those migrating west.
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| Route 66 across America |
Throughout the 1930s
when the great economic depression gripped the country, a drought hit the
Midwestern farming regions. The crops in Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri died,
and the earth was parched. The Mississippi basin became known as the "dust
bowl". Hundreds of thousands of farmers, in economic ruin, lost their
homes, loaded their meagre possessions onto their cars or pickup trucks and
headed west to California in search of employment. Many towns along Route 66
created camping areas or motorist camps where the travellers could sleep in
their cars.
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| Typical 66 Restaurant |
Other businesses such as service stations, restaurants, motels etc
were soon established.
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| Original 66 Motel |
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| Original Mobil Garage |
Much of the highway was essentially flat and this made it
a popular truck route. Advertisements encouraged travellers to use the 66 and
come to the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics.
Route 66
became the first highway to be completely paved in 1938. During WW2, Route 66 became
one of the main routes for moving military equipment. During its nearly 60-year existence,
Route 66 was under constant change. Many sections underwent major
realignment.
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| Biggest maccas on Route 66 |
It has now been replaced by the Interstate 4
lane Highway System which not only parallels most of the old Route 66, but
actually incorporated much of it. However there are quite a few sections
particularly in Oklahoma, the panhandle of Texas and Arizona where you can
travel many miles of the original road.
Many preservation groups in different states
have saved landmarks such as old motels and their neon signs, diners and quirky
roadside attractions. There are also many museums and attractions that portray
the importance and changes the road brought to their towns.
We had a great time exploring landmarks and
different attractions.
We left St Louis with the forecast of a week
of warmer weather. Driving across the Ozarks, the old limestone mountains
through Missouri, we stopped at one of the many caves – Fantastic Caverns.
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| Fantastic Caverns |
The
original underground river is now a road bed that you are driven on. The
formations were not spectacular but it was interesting.
Springfield Missouri is home to the largest
and Original Bass Pro Fishing and outdoor store. We couldn’t believe the size
of it or the interior - the “plastic trees”
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| Bass Pro Shop |
or the waterfalls, tanks of fish,
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| Alligator Gar Fish |
turtle and crocodile or the taxidermined moose, deer or bears,
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| Deer in Bass Pro Shop |
not to mention
the fabulous displays of fishing gear of every type.
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| "Fly Shop" at Bass Pro |
The Route 66 Interpretive Centre at Chandler
is housed in the old National Guard Armory.
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| Interpretive Centre - Chandler |
Here videos could be viewed on
retro beds as if you were relaxing in your motel room.
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| Watching TV from a motel bed |
You could also sit in seats from a ’65 Mustang
and watch a nostalgic video of yesteryear.
The restored 100 year old Red Round
Barn was one of the most photographed original icons of the road.
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| The Round Barn |
The curved
roof , which was woven like a basket with green native bur oak, was believed to
have been able to withstand Oklahoma tornadoes.
Lunch was at Pops (near Oklahoma City),
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| Healthy Lunch |
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| CREAM Cakes !! |
a new
stainless steel hamburger diner with a huge canopy that cantilevers out over
ultramodern fuel pumps with a sculptural
take on a soda bottle and straw.
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| "Pop's" Hamburger Joint |
There were many varieties of soda pop. Garry
had “Leninade” and Jen had a malt.
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| Soda anyone? which colour? |
After all these stops we had to get a “move
on” so travelled most of the afternoon on the Interstate until we came off it
again that night to camp at Clinton.
Well we travelled even less miles the next
day.
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| In God We Trust |
It was really windy and not very comfortable driving. A cool change had been
come through and we were climbing to 2000 ft. So that day it was jeans and
jackets again.
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| Interesting transmission lines |
Oklahoma was the first state where we saw
many similarities with home (west of Wagga Wagga). A plateau, 2 – 3000 feet high
cotton, sorghum, corn irrigated from wells and cattle - fairly flat. The four lane interstate was an easy drive on
cruise control.
You are still able to
travel on Route 66 most of the way but it is not much improved from the 1930’s road
in alignment and many of the concrete slab sections give a bumpy ride.
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| Route 66 - not a lot of traffic |
We spent more than two hours at The Elk City
Museum Complex. We sat in the front seat of a 1959 Cadillac and pretended we
were at the drive –in
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| Remember the Drive-in? |
and looked at all the old buildings depicting shops and
businesses of early Route 66 days.
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| Elk City Museum |
The blacksmith museum had more anvils than
we’ve ever seen
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| Great collection of anvils |
while the Farm and Ranch Museum had a large collection of old
tools, tractors, threshers and windmills.
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| Tractors and tractors |
What made the visit special was
chatting for more than half an hour to a local retired rancher who was
preserving an old seed sorter with linseed oil as part of his volunteer duties.
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| Farm and Ranch Museum |
The cold blast came through that day dropping
the temperature to below zero overnight to early teens in the day, but the
brilliant blue sky was like winter in the Kimberleys. Scrubby bushes, sparsely
covered hills and brown, red and cream soil reminded us of northern South
Australia near the Flinders Ranges (BUT NO GUM TREES). Sounds like we are
getting a little homesick.
After lunch in the carpark we were heading
for the Roger Miller Museum at Erick just inside the Oklahoma border.
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| Roger Miller Museum - cnr Sheb Wooley St and Roger Miller Blvd, Erick, Oklahoma |
We did
not know that there was a Roger Miller festival that weekend nor that it was 20
years ago that day when he’d died of throat cancer, but after meeting Mary his
wife, his 2 youngest children and the rest of the crew who were busy preparing
for the festival we were welcomed with open arms. Mary was keen to let us know
they’d been to Australia many times and Roger had been good buddies with John
Laws. We got her to sign the CD’s we bought and left best new friends.
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| Best friends, Jen and Mary Miller |
Tried to put some more miles past us in the
morning and continues to climb slowly to 3600 ft arriving in Amarillo to look
at the RV Museum.
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| 1923 Lampsteed Kampkar |
The owner had been in the RV/Trailer business for fifty years
and had some time ago begun to collect old caravans etc and restore them.
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| 1946 Tear Drop "Kit" |
Many had
travelled Route 66. We loved the “show yourself through” museum.
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| 1962 Airstream |
Of course while we were there we just had to have a look at the new luxurious RVs.
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| A new 35ft 5th wheeler with slide out kitchen and slide out dinette - all for $59,000 |
At Adrian we were half way so had to stop at the
diner but no ice creams – it had shut for the day.
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| Adrian |
We made Santa Rosa, New
Mexico to camp and went down to visit the sink holes. Santa Rosa, now at 4,500
ft– city of lakes and sink holes is on a high arid plateau.
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| Santa Rosa, Blue Hole |
We watched firemen
learning diving skills in 61F crystal clear blue water. This sink hole was 80 ft deep and was continually
fed from an underground river. So lots of people scuba dive, year round,
inland!
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| Sink hole diving school |
From here we left Route 66 and did an
excursion north into the mountains to Las Vegas NM (the original one), once a
“rail town” , now a town with many old buildings on the national register.
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| Plaza Hotel, Las Vegas, New Mexico |
The capital of New Mexico is Santa Fe, a high
altitude city at 7,000ft. It is situated at the foothills of Sangre de Cristo
Mountains (the southern end of the Rockies). The first thing we noticed was the
low buildings most with a Puebloan architecture.
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| Shops and appartments |
We learnt later the city
embraced the style in 1912.
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| Parking station |
We parked near the old city square and were able to
wander the area on a brilliant sunny day (they have 300 a year).
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| Puebloan style hotel |
The scenic
byway, the Turquoise Trail took us into Albuquerque, a city of Native American
and Hispanic culture.
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| Lookout on Turquoise Trail, 7000ft |
We visited the National Hispanic
Cultural centre with Hispanic art and a the special exhibition of Chilean
Arpilleras – “placemat size” patchworks that tell a story. The display we saw
were all made during the Pinochet years from 1973 when a state of martial law
was declared and many dissenters were rounded up, tortured, imprisoned or just
“disappeared”, and never heard from again.
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| Chilean Arpillera |
The women made them, often in secret
workshops, where they were able to share their sadness and anger.
A watchtower was built as part of the centre
and a New Mexican artist, Federico Vigil, took nine years to paint a circular
fresco depicting 3,000 years of Hispanic history – sore necks from looking up!!
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| Chilies | | |
Sandia mountain overlooks Albequeque.
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| Sandia Mountains overlooking Albuqueque |
It is
over 10,000 ft and offers hiking and biking trails as well as skiing and snowboarding
in winter.
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| Chairlifts in Sandia Mountains |
We took the Sandia Peak tramway, built in 1964-66, to the top for a
spectacular view of the city and many miles beyond.
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| Sandia Peak Tramway - 10,500 ft |
The air was a “bit thin “at
the top and 20 degrees F cooler.
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| Sandia Mountains |
The next side trip was south off 66 to El
Malpais National Monument – an area of volcanic terrain, lava flows,
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| Lava Flow |
cinder
cones and lava tubes.
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| Cinder Cone |
We walked up the 800ft Bandera Crater cone and stared
wide-eyed into the ancient volcano.
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| Bandera Crater |
Nearby was a collapsed lava tube
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| Collapsed lava tube |
with an ice cave
that never gets above freezing point. On the floor the ice is about 20 ft thick.
Snowmelt and rainwater seep into the cave and the ice thickens. Of course it
was known to the Indians and the early settlers would harvest the ice.
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| Ice cave |
We were truly in desert country now so when
permanent water supply was available at the base of El Morro (always known to the Indians)
and needed by the colonists heading west, the great sandstone promontory became
a place to leave their graffiti while they rested from their journey.
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| El Morro Promontory |
Native petroglyphs,
Spanish explorers’ messages and Europeans migrating west left many inscriptions
in the soft sandstone.
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| Petroglyphs at El Morro |
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| Early surveyors |
Stayed the night at Gallup, another of the
small towns along 66 that is important to the railway. Over 100 trains go
through these many towns on Route 66 daily. They usually have four diesel
locomotives and we often lost count after a hundred carriages carrying double-decker
containers.
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| Railroad along-side Route 66 |
So into Arizona and the first stop was a half
day trip driving through the Painted Dessert and Petrified Forest National
Park. Still at an elevation of 6-7000 ft the road appears to be fairly straight
and flat. When we drive a couple of miles north the plateau suddenly fell away
and a huge windswept area has opened up in front of us.
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| The Painted Dessert |
The dessert is composed
of layers of easily erodible siltstone, mudstone and shale. These fine grained
rock layers are abundant in iron and Manganese which provides the pigments for
the various colours.
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| The Tepees |
It was WOW!! The southern part of the desert has the
remains of a coniferous forest that has fossilized over millions of years.
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| Petrified pieces of trees |
Ash
from volcanoes provided the silica needed to petrify the wood.
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| A petrified tree |
Much of the
ancient logs have been broken into smaller pieces and taken away by souvenir hunters,
but the big pieces were too heavy to shift, so fortunately there is still a lot
to be seen.
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| Jasper Forest |
Holbrook was our overnight stop but we didn’t see any submarines.
On our way to the last place that was on the
list, the Meteor Crater, was Winslow. We just had to make a stop and check it
out.
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| Standin' on the corner in Winslow, Arizona |
“Well I’m standing on the corner in Winslow
Arizona and such a fine sight to see,
It’s a girl my Lord, in a flat bed Ford,
slowing down to take a look at me, take it easy......Jackson Brown & Glen Frey..sung by The Eagles.
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| Cnr W Second St and Kinsley St |
The Meteor Crater was privately owned and a
well organised tourist interest spot, with museum, crater walk and talk, and
short video on meteorites.
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| The Meteor Crater |
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| View from the rim |
And so back to Flagstaff and retracing steps
from last June. We visited the Grand Canyon hoping it had lost that summer haze
but no! they were control burning in the area.
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| The Grand Canyon |
Another visit to Las Vegas for
shopping and The Jersey Boys, and now we are heading for Los Angeles to store
the RV over winter and have a day at Disneyland. We fly out of LA next Wednesday and arrive in Sydney early
Friday 16th, then bus to Canberra. The plan is to return next year,
go inland and up through the Rockies east side, into Canada and onto Alaska. We
will just have to see what happens until then.
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