Climbed out of Red Rock Canyon State Park a little later than planned, at 10AM, but well within our meetup schedule with the others so pressure was off. We also knew that we were getting ever closer to merging our routes as we headed west and the others climbed north and north-west. (by the way Carmel, I think in answer to your questions, ‘What happens when all the MRTs meet?’, sh-t happens I think!

We continued tracking the Mother Road with stops at Lucille’s Gas Station (Lucille was considered the mother of the Mother Road and ran this station for over 50 years). The design (see below) is called ‘live over’ style where the accommodations are on the second floor and bedrooms reach over top of the area where cars are fueled underneath, a drive through if you like. Not sure I would want the kid’s bedroom over top of fueling cars but whatever. Nice to see it so well preserved.

We then headed along various sections of Route 66 and popped into a few small towns such as Weatherford, Clinton and Fosse where main street was very wide, perhaps 4-6 lanes, and about 1/2 mile long then nothing. Every small town listed their churches on large welcoming boards and there appeared to be more churches than people. Crosses were prominent. Below is a big Jesus cross, seriously, it’s big!

Then on to Elk City (was named Busch for a while in fond hopes a brewery would re-locate there – never happened so back to Elk City as a name) to see the Route 66 National Museum. Also included was the Transportation Museum and the Olde Town Museum complex. This included an old Opera House and chapel that are used for many functions even today, and indeed on this day, a wedding. All very nice. Cute flower girls running around in the heat and the boy equivalent (sorry ladies) pretending they didn’t want to be there. The museum even included a rodeo section as the town was obviously famous for this pursuit. Carved saddles and luggage for travelling along was all made of very nice heavy leather (from the losing horses perhaps) and a little over the top in terms of adornments, carvings, silver, gold, etc ( We will leave it to your imaginations). We then headed for a lunch of burgers and milk shakes at Braumes, obviously a popular place with grandparents and grand kids on a Saturday morning after little league as kids a plenty in dirty uniforms and proud grand parents with cowboy hats and big buckles… although that was mostly the men (KD lang no where to be found… thinking of Phil here).

Having seen absolutely everything in Oklahoma (kidding) we blasted down the highway for the Texas border. The challenge was making the Welcome Center (can’t say enough good about these places, they are great) which are usually placed just inside a state close to the entry points. But Texas, decided that the panhandle welcome center should be placed where it serviced the southbound, eastbound and westbound (us) customers from one point. Smart but it did force us drive almost 100 miles in from the border and to pick up the pace as we wanted to book a neat canyon site in a National Park and it was Friday after all. What really helped is that Texas thinks 70mph is for Nancy Boys and so upped the ante to 75mph (obviously a state that produces even more oil that Oklahoma).

As Phil mentioned elsewhere, Texas is dry. Oklahoma just came off a two year drought just the previous week and is quite dry but driving in to Texas is something else. Nothing green unless it is watered and there is plenty of that going on. And flat, how flat is it ??? it is so flat you can see the New Mexico highway signs in the distance. And hot, we hit 30C and by time we got to the welcome center it seemed hotter. The place is half-buried in the ground and the dry moat surrounding it says not to let your kids play in there due to rattlers, yikes! Since we didn’t get there til after 4pm we were out of luck in staying at the Palo Duro Canyon State Park, given it was also Friday night and this was the park of choice for most campers. From all that we had read, we really wanted to hike the park the next day, so it was recommended, as an alternative, that we stay at “Big Tex RV and Resort” that was just next door.

Campsite envy

When we arrived, the owner came over and introduced himself. Carla had spoken with him from the welcome center about getting a treed space at his campground. When he realized who she was he proudly pointed out the two trees (one was dead) available in his campground. The rest could be summed as the good and bad scenario – Good: you could spit and hit the state park next door in the canyon. Bad: they weren’t really open yet, but couldn’t pass up the overflow from the park and charged us $25/night for dirt, leaky water fawcet, crappy bathrooms, and no other amenities. They recommended that if we wanted a shower, we should pay $5/ea to go into the park and use theirs!! It was a bit depressing, but it did have a nice view as it was located on the rim of the canyon and we walked over to take pictures at sunset.

The Palo Dura Canyon

To celebrate our first night in Texas, a state known for its hot food, we made curry and settled in for the night. A quick Facetime to Casey in Nepal, enabled us to catch-up on her news, and begin planning our rendezvous with her in BC in June.