Randy and Mariann hit the road

In the fashion of true confession, not to mention a clear conscience, I forgot to mention another travel boondoggle on our adventure! We booked a hotel in the wrong state! It was for the weekend that we were spending with our baseball family. I asked Randy to see how long it would take to get to the restaurant to meet Joel and his family and it was an hour. No way….we booked a hotel in the same business district…..not exactly. Apparently we thought we booked a hotel in O’Fallon Illinois, but had booked one in O’Fallon, Missouri! Thery’re only an hour apart! Doesn’t seem a bit crazy to have two towns with the same unusal name? We tried to cancel but no luck, we paid for two hotels that night! Hopefully we learned that lesson! I will add that one to our trip snafu list…..which seems to keep growing!

Now, onto the journey on RT 66! 2026 marks the 100th anniversary of RT 66! We were really excited to experience the lodging, the diners, the downtowns and the roadways. While there’s lots to tell, I’ll limit it to a few key stories to share.

The route is composed of secondary roads that sometimes no longer exist and therefore turn into highways or secondary roads that turn into dirt roads…you kind of see it all. We had done some research prior to our journey and knew we would start the route after leaving the Arch in St Louis.

I should not shortchange St. Louis because it is a great city to visit. Super clean, super friendly, lots of public art, beautiful parks, the Arch and the days we were there, super windy! Actually, the siren went off warning of the possibility of tornados! When we started planning this journey, Randy mentioned, on multiple occasions seeing the Arch or starting at the Arch. I never said anything but thought okay, theres an arch…..whats the big deal. Well, it is a BIG deal…a jawdropping deal. It is actually a National Park and it is beautiful. We were not able to get tickets to go to the top because one of the interior trams was broken and the other was sold out for a few days. We did get to see the movie of the construction of the ARCh. What a feat! It was truly an act of American ingenuity, strength and commitment! I had the same feeling when I watched the movie of the first maned rocket being built. I got choked up! It will take too long to explain what and how they did it, but find a video to watch. It was really impressive!

Traveling along RT 66, you realize quite quickly that not everyone is living the American dream. It was hard to believe that there were people inhabiting some of the housing we saw. Then there were the oppulent homes on huge lots hidden among landscaped terrain. It was easy to understand just how diverse we are as a nation and that doesn’t even take into consideration all of the religious and nationality differences we all share. Another thing that made an impact was recognizing how many bridges, highways and roads were named after fallen military or emergency service people. I hope it brings their families some comfort.

We crossed crossed Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico, bringing my total state count to 11. Some towns were more successful than others in their hopes to remain viable. There were lots that were pretty sad. Considering that this was their 100th anniversary, we both thought that there might have been more efforts to spiff things up along the way. Traveling with Randy is like traveling with a talking encyclopedia! He would point out things like “that was a glass factory.” how did you know that? the roof is domed and etc, etc. I’m always learning something from him. Wait until we start driving through some rock formations!

We remained true to our commitment to stay in local lodging although the last spot on RT 66 was a one night only kind of place! It was in Tucumcari, NM. We had read that it was a well preserved town on RT66. It actually was one of the better ones that we drove through, but it was still pretty sad. Our hotel was advertised as being a fully restored original RT66 motel. They certainly had a great collection of memorabilia from the 50’s-60’s. They had one of the vibrating belt machines….which of course I had to try out! When we opened the door to our room, they upgraded us to the King TIKI room with the 25cent vibrating bed! Randy said the noise to power ratio wasn’t good! Moonpies and RC Colas were complimentary too. they had an old radio playing music from the era and commercials adverising the soothing effects Camel cigarettes had on your throat! We had a pretty good mexican dinner in one of the two restaurants in town. We walked past a bakery coffee shop and decided that we would stop there on our way out of town. What a surprise! Great coffee and two cases of baked goods that looked like they belonged in a big city. I had a wonderful croissant! The interior was covered in bricks which customers had signed with names and locations….all from the 1970s or before. Both Randy and I were puzzled about who would be coming and eating all these goodies. They’ve been doing it a long time, so you have to believe they know who’s coming in for coffee.

I do need to share a story which I believe to be typical midwest charm. We had reason to believe that our new cars air conditioner wasn’t working properly and knew that we were headed into an unbearable heatwave in the southwest. We reached out to the closest Mazda dealer who said they might beable to help in a day or two. We decided to call the next dealer in Tulsa. We explained we were driving cross country and shared our concern about the air conditioner. They asked if we could be there first thing tomorrow. We arrived at 7:00am with two boxes of donuts for the service staff. They assigned us their top mechanic and in two hours, we were back on the road with many thanks for the donuts and well wishes for a safe trip. They checked over everything to make sure the care was ready to go. No charge – under warranty. How awesome was that!

We decided after our stay in Tucumcari and after driving a thousand miles on RT 66, that we could check that off our bucket list. We decided to head north to TAOS, NM and beyond but that’s for the next blog. Hugs.