This is the story of how I got my kicks on Route 66.
Route 66 is the Mother Road, the pilgrimage all true road-trippers must one day take. My Dad drove the whole thing in a convertable once, from Chicago to the Santa Monica Pier.
Route 66 is also the Motherland for all things hokey.
Back in the day, small towns would do ANYTHING to get the attention of passing drivers to make them stop and spend money.
ANYTHING.
In these modern times, Roadside Americana has been coopted by The Route 66 Casino.
You know how casinos take a theme and decorate to a cheesy extreme?
This casino started with the already-cheesy theme of roadside attractions...
And brought it to a ridiculous extreme. Unfortunately, no cameras allowed inside.
Tucked between Albequerque and Santa Fe New Mexico is a place called "Tinkertown.
Tinkertown was built by a man named Ross Ward.
It's a cool collection of carving and sculpting.
Ward famously said "I did all this while you were watching T. V."
"Grandmother" offered fortunes for a quarter.
She warned me to beware...
Honest Abe can tell a lot about you by the force of your handshake.
Not that I'm bragging...
The Career Pilot could tell me what career I should take up.
I'm not kidding. He's an actual pilot.
Apparently I'm in the wrong field.
This is Otto.
He's the Automatic One-Man Band.
For only a quarter, Otto will serenade you oom-pa style...
With accordian, bells...
Xylophone, drums, and cymbals.
This exhibit captured the spirit of Tinkertown.
In 1981, Fritz Damler quit his job, bought this sailboat, and traveled around the world for ten years. "Life is Short. Follow Your Heart."
I met Carla Ward, widow of Tinkertowns founder, in the gift shop.
Tinkertown also had awesome copper postcards!
Santa Fe was cool. Chili peppers for sale.
Here's the Santa Fe Cathedral.
I headed up near the Petrified Forest.
In true Route 66 form, there were giant dinosaurs everywhere.
I stopped by Jim Gray's Petrified Wood Co.
They are famous for having a cool alligator fossil inside the store.
Also squished pennies!
Cool Pyrite!
This car was parked out front.
Snow! The ground was covered as I headed towards the Grand Canyon.
But I wasn't in the mood to see the Grand Canyon again, so I visited the Planes of Fame museum instead.
Guess what they have? Lots of planes. This was Douglas MacArthur's C-121A Constellation from the Korean War.
The wreckage of a crashed fighter.
A Japanese Mini-Fighter. (You can see a picture of it hanging from a launch vehicle on the wall behind it.)
A flight trainer.
A Burt Rutan plane.
Burt Rutan designed the famous SpaceShip One, which can be seen elsewhere on this website.
The eagle statue out front.
Yikes!
Next door was the Flintstones Bedrock park. With this junk dinosaur skeleton demonstrating what was inside, I decided to save my ten bucks and skip it.
Just Married!
Cool Pyramid House.
Another weird house. This was originally built as a restaurant, but now is a private home.
"Papers, please..." Welcome back to California!