After 4 states touched yesterday, today was spent all in the same state. Despite that, today was a great riding day!
Route 66 original pavement
Last night at the hotel I was able to look ahead at our route and what upcoming attractions there were, and that helped a lot. We found out that we were really close to a section of what is billed as an “original”section of pavement. It’s only 9 feet wide, supposedly because the budget at the time was limited, so instead of making it half as long they just made it half as wide. Whatever the reason, it was a fun little distraction zipping over the gravel covered pavement for a little while. There wasn’t much of it left and we rode all of it.
The rest of route 66 in Oklahoma is more like what I hoped my ride would be. It’s a nice road, with decent speed limits (65!) between the towns, and there are several towns!
During my research I came up with a very complicated method for keeping track of what attraction we wanted to see in what town…a couple of note book pages stuck in my map pocket. Worked just fine.
Blue Whale on Route 66 in Oklahoma
We saw Totem Park, the Blue Whale, ate at the Rock Cafe, passed the Round Barn, and stopped at Pop’s.
Pop's wall of bottles on Route 66 outside Arcadia
Pops is really just a gas station/gift shop/restaurant, but they’ve made it to be a modern-day Route 66 attraction. They claim to have 12,000 soda pop bottles in their collection, and I certainly don’t dispute it. The glass angular wall in the front is lined with them and it’s really neat to see. A guy sitting out front of the place told us that everything about the place is related to 66 somehow, like the sign out front is 66 feet high, the cantilever is 66 feet long, etc. I don’t know that to be true, but hey, it’s a neat idea.
A pretty decent day.
Total miles travelled: 883
Highest Temp today: 101
Lowest temp: 84
Armadillos: at least 2 dead ones