Since I was picking up brother Tom at the Tulsa International Airport last night, I decided to get a room out by the airport, off of the Route. Turned out to be a fortuitous decision, as this morning, we decided to skip breakfast and get a couple of road coffee's, and the only Starbucks within several miles was at the airport.
With travel mugs filled with Christmas Blend, we headed back to Route 66 and drove East out of Tulsa. Once again, the State of Oklahoma didn't disappoint us, as the Mother Road was well marked with the official Historical Route 66 signage, which made staying on course fairly easy if you were paying attention. This assisted Tom in his first day of navigation duties in the Black Bullitt. He fulfilled these duties well (for a beginning Route Runner), as we only got misdirected a couple of times.
One of the first attractions of the day was one we stumbled across. The Pryor Creek Bridge, outside Chelsea, OK. This steel trussle bridge was built in 1926 and was part of the original Route alignment. We were crusing down the current alignment and I just catch a glimse of this off to the South. A nice surprise find early in the day!
While still in Oklahoma, we drove through a town called Commerce, OK. What's special about Commerce you ask? Well, for you older baseball fans out there, Mickey Mantle grew up there. The museum we thought was there, didn't exist. There were plans to build one (we actually saw the sign on the site), but according to a local, those plans have been shelved. One thing Commerce had was cheap gas. Check out the picture of the Ethyl gas pump, showing a price of $0.185 per gallon. Unfortunately, this was only a prop, but there was a time premium gas was that inexpensive.
When we left Tulsa, we had decided to stop in Baxter Springs, KS for lunch. Tom had seen an episode of Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives on Food Network. Guy Fieri and his spike blonde hair reviewed some restaurants along Route 66 for a special airing, including Cafe on the Route, which is where we ate. The menu was diverse and atypical for a small town Midwestern eating establishment. The food was excellent and prices were very reasonable. Good choice navigator!
Route 66 cuts across the Southeast corner of Kansas heading Northeast into Missouri. Kansas has the shortest stretch (only 14 miles) of Main Street America of the 8 states it passes though. However, Kansas also has the last surviving Marsh Arch Bridge of its type on the entire length of the Route. Also known as the "Rainbow Bridge", and built in 1923, it is still open to traffic but has been replaced by another wider bridge to the East.
It's becoming clear that today's theme was going to be about bridges. Without actually going back and counting, I'm willing to bet that we crossed more bridges today in Oklahoma and Missouri, than I crossed in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. When you think about this, it makes sense. Missouri has more rivers, streams than the entire Southwest. So, we found ourselves crossing many bridges, some of them historic and worth stopping to photograph. The next couple of days we'll encounter more impressive historic bridges as we cross larger bodies of water.
The most interesting portion of the Mother Road today was approaching Rolla, MO. There's a place about 20 miles West of Rolla called Devil's Elbow. The roadway is situation in a deep ravine, surrounded by step hills that belong to the Osarks. The Route passed over Devil's Elbow Bridge spanning the Big Piney River, and then it takes a sharp bend East. At this point the road crew cut a pass into the solid limestone hill. This pass is called Hooker Cut and at the time (during WWII) was the deepest roadway cut in the United States.
Tomorrow we continue to head Northeast, through Missouri and into Illinois. They end of the Road is not too far off....
No comments:
Post a Comment