October 1997

WOW! We get to be on Route 66 twice in one year. This is great! We are staying at the KOA in Catoosa OK. What brought us here? Finding a new family. There are 5 kids that are half-siblings to Earl. We just discovered them. It’s great to finally have family along the old road. The KOA is real close to Route 66. We will start our exploring in the morning.

We head east on the road. The first stop is a long anticipated one, the blue whale. What a great little park! Since they have repainted the whale and cleaned up the park it looks really nice. I can see how this would be such a welcome sight for travelers in the days past. You can almost hear the cries of delight from all the kids that played here. It’s wonderful that the city of Catoosa took pride in this place and saved it. The Arrowwood Trading Post across the Street 5 a nice looking building, it is now a car repair. We also stopped at the Verdigris River and checked out the great old steel truss bridges. There are 3 of them, 2 for cars and I for trains.

Blue Whale Roadside Park - Catoosa, Oklahoma

Next stop was Claremore. This is a neat old town. We checked out the Spanish Garden apartments, I can only imagine that they might have been very classy in their time. We’re not really into guns so we didn’t go to the J.M. Davis Gun Museum, but we may go there the next time we visit this area. We are too late for the Will Rogers Hotel, another building torn down for progress.

Then we headed for one of the wonders of Route 66, Galloway Park. Even though it is not directly on the road, it still has the flavor of a great tourist attraction. The totem poles are beautiful! They looked as if they had been repainted fairly recent. It was definitely worth the 4 mile drive. We wished that we would’ve had a picnic lunch. Back in Foyil there is a nice little stretch here, complete with old curbing.

Galloway Park - Foyil, Oklahoma

Next stop was Vinita, a quaint little town that was quite busy for its size, it was lunchtime and that’s probably why. This is the size of town I would enjoy living in. It amazed me how many fast food joints were here. We had a bite and then headed towards Afton. We couldn’t wait to get on the 8’ sections. These are some great old sections! Not much traffic out here. It did feel a little strange driving on such narrow pieces. At times we felt as if we should drive on the shoulder, afraid that the road would crumble beneath our wheels. It’s a nice country drive. We missed the Buffalo Ranch; hopefully it will still be there when we are in the vicinity again.

Then we were in Miami, a town really mixed with old and new. The Coleman Theater is a really great looking building. Unfortunately, the Sooner Drive-in is no longer there. We hated going by the Newell factory, it made us long for a new home, but they are way too expensive for us. On into the hometown of Mickey Mantle, Commerce. Seemed this town was barely alive. Then into Quapaw. It was way early to see the Spooklight, but we hope to one day. It sounds interesting, and who doesn’t want an encounter of the spooky kind?

We decided that since we were so close, we had to do Kansas. The last time we tried to drive the 13.2 miles we were in our motor home and it met with missed turns and not seeing much of anything. Driving through Baxter Springs was like going through a ghost town except for the truck traffic. WalMart was bustling as usual. Most of the shops were closed and the streets were empty. There is a great etching in rock on the side of a bank there, pretty cool. On our way to Riverton, we stopped to check out the old Rainbow Arched Bridge, it’s great that they were able to save this bridge. When we got there a young couple had stopped in the middle of the bridge and were hanging out. We took our photos, I think they got tired of having their picture taken and eventually left. So we went out onto it. It had been freshly painted and looked really nice.

Rainbow Curve Bridge - East of Baxter Springs, Kansas

Constructed in 1923 over Brush Creek. Only remaining marsh arch bridge on Route 66.

Riverton is a nice little town. We stopped at the old Eisler Bros. store. This was a mistake. They have a great gift shop and I spent more than I should have. The store reminded me of the little markets we had in the small towns I lived in, in Utah. Nice, friendly, mom and pop shops. We met the secretary of the Kansas Route 66 Association, Jack Williams. He’s a nice guy, full of information. It was starting to get dark and we needed to get to Galena before the sun went down, he’s a hard guy to get away from. The sun was just starting to set when we pulled into Galena, the museum was long closed. We continued to the Kansas/Missouri state line, turned around and headed for the turnpike. So ended our first day back on the Mother Road.