End of our Road Trip - Start of life in Texas

So we left the last hotel early on the 29th November so we could arrive in Katy and sign the lease etc.

 It was very foggy for one part of the trip!  However the skies cleared thank goodness

 This was pretty much our first 'sign' of Katy.  Exciting!

This is the community in which we are living.  Love the name!  Just a small apartment because hopefully we won't be here too long.

It was SO lovely to see the kids and equally lovely that the Route 66 t-shirts that we had  bought them fitted them!

 They brought us some leaves, which they often do.  We had bought a piece of petrified wood and so I put the leaves with that.  It made a nice little display.





Our apartment is on the first floor.  Very 'bijou!'.  We have rented basic furnishings as our stuff is in storage in San Diego.  These photos give an an idea of what it's like

So.........here we are in Texas.  We were excedingly tired the day we arrived because there was such a lot to do but we did manage to go and see the family which was nice.  Hadn't seen their house either.

Didn't sleep well, but new bed, new covers, new place and over tired probably accounted for that.  Hopefully better tonight.
Of course we hadn't brought the stuff we needed so raided Walmart and H.E.B today to buy things like, a frying pan, a saucepan, cleaning stuff, a bin - good grief!  Still we are now settled in I think and start house hunting in a couple of days.

Here's to our new adventure!

Route 66

Well, we have finished Route 66!  Can't quite believe it really.  We did the Chicago to Oklahoma a few years ago and now have done Santa Monica to Oklahoma.  It feels strange to have finished.  I will miss it I think.  It has been a simply wonderful experience.  Here are a some photos from today.

 This sign for the Cotton Boll Motel is one of the last surviving signs of its kind.

Then of course we came across this museum.  Stafford was an astronaut - the second one I've come across on this trip!

Here is a piece of moon rock that he collected.  He was the pilot on one of the Apollo missions.  How amazing.

These things have all actually been to the moon!

Just crossing over to another bit of Route 66 and saw this sign.  Couldn't resist a photo.  It made us laugh

This was the second amazing bridge we came across today.  It is beside Lake Overholser and really very pretty.  So glad it's been preserved.

Then we went straight to see Jerry McClanahan who wrote the EZ 66 guides which we had found so useful.  He is an artist as well as a Route 66 enthusiast and we bought one of his water colours as a souvenir of our amazing trip,.

He also signed our certificate of completion of Route 66.  There was a big map of the Route in his gallery.  It seemed impossible that we had driven all that way.  Albeit in two goes, but still....

Jerry also, very kindly, wrote in the guide exactly where the picture we had bought featured.










So, now in Oklahoma City on the day before Thanksgiving.  Finished the Route and starting the next phase of our amazing retirement.
Because we had completed the drive, we thought we would buy a bottle of bubbly to celebrate.  Went to a liquor place.  It was HUGE and there were attendants in the car park directing people where to park.  Astonishing.  Still we now have a bottle chilling in the fridge in our hotel room.

Tomorrow we start the two day trip to Katy in Texas where we hope to buy our forever home.  Will be keeping the blog going though.

And another state.......Oklahoma!

Well, what an amazing Road Trip this is turning out to be.  I have seen so many things for the first time.  What a privilege it has been.
Yesterday we crossed the midpoint of Route 66 and also went to the Cadillac Ranch

It was a shame that the cafe was closed really.  Took a photo of the town name too for my cousin Adrian

This was amazing.  We could so easily have passed it by.  SO glad we saw it or rather knew it was coming up.  And that we had bought some paint!

Think I'd make a good graffiti artist!

Steve doing his 'thing'

Just an amazing thing to find.








Today we left Amarillo.  Not impressed with the city at all.  That whole area seems to be the US dump for 'dead' vehicles of every type.  Such a shame really and ruins the landscape.  Talking of the landscape, it's really very flat now we are in Texas and the soil is an amazing red colour.  Today's firsts for me, included seeing a roadrunner doing just that.  Having huge balls of tumbleweed travelling across the road and

getting my very first view of cotton growing - amazing!  Had to pick up a boll that had already fallen off the plant.  We saw lots more on the roadside as a lot had been already harvested and clearly tipped off the wagons here and there.

This huge cross (visible for miles) is apparently the biggest in the Western Hemisphere.  It really is impressive I have to say.  There are sculptures too of the stations of the cross around the base of the cross.





Then we went to visit one of the most unusual museums ever - the history of barbed wire.  Called the Devil's Rope museum, it was sadly closed, but outside were these HUGE balls of barbed wire.  Cannot imagine how they were done!

Then we came across this wonderful art Deco building.  In a tiny 'dead' town.  Apparently it was a hotel called U Drop Inn when Route 66 was thriving, but what a stunning piece of architecture it is.

 

Route 66 is just amazing!  It's not been easy to follow and you really need to research the route well beforehand but it is so worth it.  Some of the original road has vanished under interstate roads but there is a huge amount that you can travel and it's on these that you find these gems.  The book we used for most of our research was EZ66 Guide for travelers, by Jerry McClanahan - excellent resource. 
So here we are in yet another State - Oklahoma and in Elk City.  Tomorrow we hope to meet the author of the book who lives in Chandler and have our certificate of completion signed by him which should be fun.

To Tucumcari

Well, the last two days have been amazing.  The scenery has been amazing!  We stayed in a lovely hotel Inn on the Alameda  Brilliant food too!  This morning we spent time in Santa Fe which is a simply beautiful city.  Very artistic - lovely buildings too.

Some of these are from the  art gallery which was really good.  We also visited the chapel and saw the Miraculous Staircase which was really very impressive.
Set off for Tucumcari and it started to snow!  Big snowstorm to drive through and it's a long time since I did that!
We rang the Blue Swallow Motel - which is an iconic venue on Route 66 to see if they had a room.  Sadly they didn't ........... then 15 minutes later, they rang us back.  The people who had booked the room, had got there too early and so wanted to drive on and did we still want the room?  You betcha!

Snowy view of the old Route 66 we drove

Our room at the Blue Swallow Motel We stayed in the Lilian Redman suite - named for her as the original owner.

An amazing day and finishing at an amazing place

Flagstaff to Gallup + brilliant news

The headings for these posts seem totally unreal to me.  Whoever would have thought I would be lucky enough to visit such places?  Last night we treated ourselves to a stay in a Little America Hotel in Flagstaff.  It was simply lovely.  Couldn't fault it at all.  The grounds of the hotel had trails you could do so we followed one last night.

 The trail was a couple of miles long and at the end of the day, this rabbit was having his supper.  Didn't seem nervous either.

Found a little cabin in the wood.  The hotel is clearly gearing up for Christmas in fact there was a workshop this week where you could work with Santa's elves and make toys.  How cool is that?

 This huge tree had collapsed because of a huge wildfire that struck the area some years ago.  The hotel and surrounding buildings were evacuated.

Watched the beautiful sunset on our evening walk.

 THE METEOR CRATER

We drove today to see this amazing sight which is between Winona and Winslow and it really was awesome in the true sense of the word.  This is part of the meteor itself.

The crater is HUGE and about 700 feet deep and 4,000 feet across.  It's in a vast area of flatland so is very impressive.

You can get a tour round part of the top of the wall and you can really understand that the first man to find it (well recorded anyway) thought it might be volcanic.







There have been so many fascinating things to see along Route 66.  Wigwams, Indian stores, and strangely enough - models of dinosaurs are very common!!  It's been wonderful to drive so much of the original Mother Road I have to say.  However, our next port of call was the Painted Desert.  Again, I run out of superlatives to describe this.  Here are some pictures of this incredible place.

We were just about arriving in Gallup for our hotel when we got perhaps the best news of today.  Our house in Temecula is finally sold!  OK, so that means we are now homeless, but also that we are free to buy a new house when we reach Texas.  It's a real weight off my mind I can tell you.  Goodnight all.

Kingman to Flagstaff

Set off a bit later than usual because of the time difference!  Still sleepy!  We are lightweights.  Didn't leave Kingman straight away because we wanted to go to the museum

The museum was in the Powerhouse.  There is a gift shop (of course) and quite an interesting museum too.  For real enthusiasts there is a Route 66 reading room

Great models but I didn't like the 'fake' people so have mostly avoided taking pictures of them!  Anyway, this is a Prarie Schooner - so called because they looked like ships in the desert

Classic cars of course were everywhere and there was a section based on John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, which I haven't read but is now on my list.  Very tragic photos

  And without our trusty guide we might have missed the Ginganticus Headicus!!   

Hackberry General Store another great find 

       This is me and my corvette!

And so we drove on to Flagstaff.  We had lunch at a roadside cafe called Roadkill Cafe!  Very good food though and the menu was very funny to read.  There were some other British people there who warned us of snow in Flagstaff.....we shall see!  The landscape changed noticeably en route.  The desert landscape disappeared and we found pine covered mountains, warnings about elks and bears.  All very wilderness - mind you we didn't see either!

Fascinating place