January 1994

Well, here we are, back on our beloved Mother Road. We are making our way from Boone, NC back to Bend, OR. We are making our base camp at Hensley’s RV Park in El Reno, OK. Yes, this is the Hensley’s that have a restaurant and hotel. It was on Route 66 at one time but they moved the location when the Interstate came through. We arrived mid-afternoon and decided to check out El Reno. We looked at the Phillips Court Motel, “Your Inn on Route 66”, still in operation. We then went to the Big 8 Motel, “Amarillo’s Finest”, used in the filming of the movie “Rain Man” with Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise. Then we went to the Route 66 Antique Mall. What a huge place! They have a really good selection of stuff.

The next day found us making our way towards Oklahoma City and north. We went through Yukon, home of Garth Brooks, although neither he nor his parents live there any more. His folks live in Edmond in a house that Garth built for them. We stopped at the park near the bridge that goes over Lake Overholser, great photo spot. It truly is a scenic section of Route 66. Next we stopped at the Route 66 Trading Post in Bethany, here we visited with Danny Scott and his mom. Danny has a huge and great selection of Route 66 souvenirs, best I’ve seen anywhere. We enjoyed our stop. We ate lunch at Ann’s Chicken Fry House, great atmosphere, good food and wonderful prices. We decided to skip Oklahoma City for now, we plan to return on Sunday when there will be less traffic. (Unfortunately, it snowed and we didn’t make it, plus it was Super Bowl Sunday). We got on 1-44 until the Kelly exit.

Traveling to Edmond is a nice drive, no traffic. Edmond is no longer a small town; it is a thriving little community, and still growing. Next stop is Arcadia and the round barn. What a nice little stop, it is amazing how good the restoration went, a true piece of Americana. We had a great visit with Butch and he gave us a tour of the upstairs, which they rent out for weddings and dances. It is kind of strange how the acoustics work up there.

Round Barn - Arcadia, Oklahoma

We drove a couple of the abandoned stretches of highway. We checked out the old gas station that is now an historical building near Luther. We also went through Wellston and checked it out, nice little town. Stopped and looked at the restored barn that advertises the Meramec Caverns in Stanton, MO, nice job. We arrived in Chandler around 4:30pm; unfortunately the Association office and the museum were both closed. We checked out PJ’s BBQ and the Lincoln Motel. It’s good to see businesses thriving along the old road. We passed through Davenport, in the blink of an eye. We thought about how great it was to see no traffic at rush hour, or what should have been. Stroud is a great little town; the people are definitely not in a rush here. The Rock Café is beautiful and the smell it was emitting was terribly inviting, we weren’t hungry, but if I would have stood there very much longer I would’ve been. There are quite a few old abandoned sections of the Mother Road between Stroud and Depew, most of them providing some great photo opportunities. We finished our trip in Bristow, where we got on the turnpike and headed for home.

The next day took us west from El Reno towards Clinton, our destination. This is a wonderful stretch of road, no traffic and very scenic. We made our way to the 38 Pony Bridge, what a neat bridge! We couldn’t figure out why they needed such a long bridge (3/4 mile), there wasn’t that much water to be seen.

38 Pony (Spans) Bridge - East of Hydro, Oklahoma

We headed on at a slow, leisurely pace until we got to Hydro and Lucille Hamon’s place. What luck! She was there; we had missed her the last time we were here. What a great lady! We had a most enjoyable visit. She is definitely what this old road is all about. She has been in the same spot for nearly 53 years and loves it. She is a wealth of information. And she makes a great salsa! We will have to make her store a regular stop whenever we are in the neighborhood. She really enjoys talking with tourists and makes you feel as if you’ve known her for years. We hated to leave but didn’t want to wear out our welcome. On we went to Weatherford. Here we ate lunch at the Out to Lunch, pretty good. Next stop was Clinton. We have explored this town before, but the Route 66 museum was not open at that time and we wanted to see what they had. They are just getting started and don’t have much 66 stuff, give them time; they are still in the developmental stage. Back to base.

We headed west again on 1-40. This proved to be hazardous. The road was not cleared of ice; in fact, the interstate had been closed from the Texas border to Amarillo due to them receiving 14” of snow. We traveled as far as Shamrock and made camp at the West 40 Camp Area, right along the Mother Road. We were lucky to find them open. They have been serving travelers for 27 years. We stopped early enough that we decided to put the Blazer in 4-wheel drive and see how far we could go. We headed west to McLean. We finally saw the “Rattlesnake” exit sign, don’t know how we’ve missed it as many times as we’ve been by it.

Restored gas station - McLean, Texas

McLean was deserted. Much to our disappointment the Devils Rope/Route 66 Museum was closed, this being Monday. My wallet is probably a little fuller with it being closed. We have been to McLean many times and always find something new to see, being in the Blazer gave us more freedom for exploring.