Day 8 St. Louis Missouri

We started out day in Edmund outside of Oklahoma City with a hearty breakfast at Waffle House. We haven't been to a Waffle House since our 2013 trip when we had our first Waffle House experience in Virginia. It was fantastic and a great way to start the day.

I had a chance to meet up with Mark Zimmerman who lives in the Oklahoma City area. In 2007 Mark and I traveled to New York together to visit John Coffer for the annual wet plate jamboree. It was nice to meet up with Mark again after all these years.

Mark led us on a trip down Oklahoma State Route 66 which follows the old Route 66 roadway. The newer road is wider and closely follows or overlaps the the original road, with pieces of the original road still driveable. We traveled a short stretch of original road outside of Arcadia. We also found pieces to drive on along the way as we meandered the state road from Oklahoma City to Tulsa while avoiding the 4 lane interstate.

Abandoned Route 66 roadway next to present day Oklahoma Route 66.

I am big on living history, and it was interesting to drive on the actual original roadway. It is narrow and wanders tighter curves than our modern roads. The concrete where visible is lined with white concrete on either side of the road. I have nostalgia for these pieces of roadway but can clearly see how this narrow wandering road needed to be upgraded for large vehicles and interstate travel. 

In Tulsa we were snapped back into reality. Bumper to bumper traffic with trucks and congestion as we crawled through town. The trip was diverted to state roads due to an accident on I-44. We hit Missouri and had multiple delays with five different accidents on the highway. Two were really bad, with one parking us on the highway for an hour. The worst traffic of the trip was today- go figure. 

We traveled through the heart of Missouri and made one last stop at the Uranus Fudge Factory in Uranus Missouri.  Fudge packed in Uranus! Talk about a great business!! After a day of stressful driving it was a welcome diversion. They just opened their business a few weeks ago on the historic Route 66 roadway and will fit in nicely with the past and present attractions along the road.

Tonight is our last night of vacation. We are staying in St. Louis and will be visiting the Arch and St. Louis Zoo tomorrow. Mileage should be over 4,000 miles for the trip. It is sad to be almost done but it will be nice to sleep in our own beds tomorrow!

Day 7 Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

We woke up in Albuquerque, NM to a beautiful sunshine day. We packed up the car and headed to Petroglyph National Monument. The visitor center is the anchor for three different locations of petroglyphs in the surrounding residential area. They provide a map to find the parking areas tucked away between houses and gas stations and fence lines.

We visited two of the three Petroglyph canyons: Piedras Marcadas and Boca Negra. The petroglyphs are chiseled into the sides of volcanic rock that is left over from a lava flow 200,000 years ago. The images are thought to be as old as 2-3000 years ago by early native people. Others are younger (4-700 years ago)  and made by newer native people, Hispanic explorers in the 1600's and explorers in the 1800's.

There are some 20,000 images created on the lava flow rocks in these three areas. Some are easy to see while others are harder to find. 

After visiting the Petroglyphs we headed out of Albuquerque. The city sits in a bowl and is visible from

The highway east and west and from the surrounding hillside. It was typical city traffic and I was glad to get back on the highway away from big cities.

New Mexico looks like a blend of Arizona and Utah. Some cliffs and red soil, cactus and scrub trees. As we traveled east the grasses started to take over the rocks and cactus. We crossed the top of Texas and the landscape changed again. It suddenly became very flat and trees started to enter the landscape. Next came crops like wheat and corn and livestock grazing.

Texas turned into Oklahoma and we felt most at home so far. Oklahoma looks like a Midwest state. It could be Illinois or Iowa if you didn't know it.

We stopped at the Oklahoma City Memorial downtown before heading to the hotel for the evening. It is an amazing memorial, dedicated to the victims, survivors and rescuers of the Alfred P. Murrah bombing on April 19, 1995. It is dramatic especially at night. 

A busy driving day, but a fantastic journey. We are at about 3,200 miles for the trip and have seen so much. Sadly the Route 66 gas stations and attractions that dried up when the two lane through town shifted to a four lane road dot the landscape. We wondered what Rt 66 must have been like to travel in  it's heyday. The I-40 eastbound rest stop in Clarendon, TX was not only the cleanest rest stop I have been to, but an amazingly well done tribute to Route 66.