Route 66: What a Ride!

Some highlights, reflections, eats and characters from the road

A poster from Route 66 Museum in Clinton, Oklahoma

“What’s your number one Route 66 highlight?” friends and family inquire after my husband Jeff and I return from our three-week adventure on Route 66.

Everyone wants a simple answer, hopefully accompanied by pictures, edibles and maybe a recipe or two. I’m here to do my best to oblige, with the big caveat being that it’s a challenge to search through lingering memories and images from among the thousands captured on my phone and in my head along a 2,448-mile stretch of road winding through portions of eight states, from Chicago to L.A., across wildly divergent landscapes and three time zones. Jeff is turning them into six PhotowalksTV episodes and has just completed the first one. Here it is:

My own highlights may coincide with some of Jeff’s—or not. We did travel together, but we don’t always see the world alike! Vive la différence!

One of the more fun and kitschy stops (among many!) was the Elvis suite at the Best Western Route 66 Rail Haven Hotel in Springfield, Missouri. Elvis, it turns out is a constant presence on the Mother Road, along with Marilyn, James Dean, and Betty Boop! But it’s not every day that you get to nod off in a room where “the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll” once slept, though perhaps not in a bed with a pink Cadillac couch. Other amenities included a jacuzzi surrounded by mirrors, a photo of Elvis and Ann-Margret in Viva Las Vegas above the headboard, and a breakfast of waffles, biscuits and gravy—but no peanut butter and banana sandwiches, Elvis’s favorite, I’m told!

The tail lights on the pink Cadillac couch turn on in this room at an 87-year-old hotel in Springfield, MO, where Elvis is said to have spent the night once upon a time.

There are some delicious memories of mile-high cream pies at the diner in Williams, Arizona; the meatloaf dinner followed by the banana bread sundae (for my birthday!) at the U Drop Inn Café in Shamrock Texas; the giant Paul Bunyan-sized characters in Atlanta, Illinois, Tulsa, Oklahoma, and elsewhere; the lop-eared black rabbit on the bright yellow signs at the edge of the road announcing the mileage to a mysterious destination, and then finally “Here It Is!” at the Jack Rabbit Trading Post. (We walked out with our very own rabbit sign marked “566 MI”!)

"The Bunyon Giant," purchased as an attention-getter for a hot dog stand in Cicero, Illinois, until it was moved to Atlanta, IL, as a part of a "giants" exhibit for Route 66. Also: the famous Jack Rabbit sign in front of its namesake trading post near Joseph City, AZ; and a slice of chocolate-peanut butter cream pie from the Pine Country Restaurant in Williams, AZ, where we also sampled the coconut cream and cherry cheesecake pies!

There’s the town called Stroud in Oklahoma where my husband talked me into posing for a lot of pictures because, well, my last name is Stroud, so why not? The town also has a Stroud Drug, a Stroud Dry Cleaners and a Stroud Dispensary. (I was relieved not to see a Stroud Mortuary!)

And then there’s the Rock Cafe, also in Stroud. Its owner Dawn Welch is credited as the model for the pretty blue Porsche called Sally Carrera in the 2006 animated film, Cars, which is set on Route 66. (This is where we had some astonishingly good oatmeal pie. More on that next time!)

Photo of yours truly by Jefferson Graham; the very comfortable Rock Cafe in the same town.

And then there are all the other characters and places we came across during our travels that laid claim to being part of the inspiration or research for that film, which is basically an ode to Route 66—and to the importance of preserving the road and its legacy. After traveling it from end to end, we’re in total agreement.

All these sights seem to come with a big dollop of nostalgia, which is probably the biggest draw for those traveling Route 66. We were surprised to meet more people from other countries than from the U.S.—French, German, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Australian, Canadian and more. I was a bit shocked, given our recent politics and the controversy around tariffs. But the fascination with this historic American highway seems to have staying power. Said one man from Austria. “We like cars a lot, and we don’t have roads like these.”

So much to see, so little time…

The trip was tiring but wonderful—too many sights in too short a time. Just when my brain felt like it wouldn’t absorb one more sight, there was always another one straight ahead— a museum, a famous cafe, a curio shop or a memorial you had no interest in seeing that ended up moving you to tears.

The Oklahoma City National Memorial sits on the site where a bomb destroyed the 8-story Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. A plaque says it “honors those who were killed, those who survived, and those who were changed forever on April 19, 1995.”

That would be the Oklahoma City Memorial that honored both the 168 who died and the more than 600 who were injured. The memorial is on the grounds where the eight-story Alfred P. Murrah Building was blown up in on April 19, 1995 by homegrown terrorists. We visited almost exactly 30 years later—and the beauty and solemnity of the spot, with its shallow reflecting pool, its memorial wall of survivor names and 168 empty chairs representing those who died, was a reminder of the horror and sadness of the senseless violence that persists in America, even as we seek escape onto peaceful backroads.

We sometimes found that those peaceful backroads were hard to find though. No matter how hard you searched for that U.S. 66 shield, you’d find yourself back on the interstate—or at a dead end or realignment that forced you choose between two possible Route 66-es! But the excitement of the journey outweighed the frustrations. Sometimes, as we’ve discovered both on the road and off, it’s the trip itself that’s most important, not the destination.

End of the road

So 2,400-plus miles (counting a few detours!) later, we found there were definitely a few kicks, and even some Kix, to be had on Route 66.¹

And now, after two weeks at home, I’ve been wracking my brain about how to summarize some of what we saw on the road. The hundreds (no, thousands!) of photos I took, and the scores of postcards I purchased but never sent are reminders, along with some notes.

Here’s a collage of some of those unsent cards. Is there a theme? Having fun on Route 66? Dancing for joy like those little hotdogs in the middle? They’re actually the symbol of Cozy Dog Drive In, the Springfield, Illinois eatery famed for its corn dogs.

Founder Ed Waldmire is credited with inventing and naming these fried batter-dipped wienies on a stick “cozy dogs,” and his son, the late, highly esteemed artist, Route 66 chronicler and cartographer Bob (Robert) Waldmire, immortalized them, the diner, his father, and a lot else in his art. (I thought the dogs were delicious, by the way!)

Route 66 Auto Museum, Santa Rosa, NM; Western Motel, Sayre, OK; and the Cozy Dog Drive In, Springfield, IL.

The historic and famous route, which will celebrate its centennial in 2026, is definitely worth some ink. Those 18 days on the road post-Chicago (ICYMI, you can read about that here!) weren’t nearly enough time to explore all the roadside attractions we were meant to see, the others that we happened upon—like the Bob Dylan Center and the Woody Guthrie Center, two excellent museums sitting side by side in Tulsa, Oklahoma. There’s also a third—Greenwood Rising—a historic section of the city once known as the Black Wall Street that was devastated in the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, considered to be the the single worst incident of racial violence in American history,.

Bob Dylan & Bruce Springsteen play "Forever Young" at the opening of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Cleveland, Ohio, Sept. 2, 1995; Oklahoma native Woody Guthrie wrote songs about Dust Bowl refugees like the characters in John Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath" and famously inscribed the message, "This machine kills fascists" on his guitar. (Photos taken at the Dylan and Guthrie museums in Tulsa.)

If I were to advise anyone thinking of following in our tire tracks, I’d say try not to follow a set schedule, as we did, with only one or two nights in each place, for you will surely miss a lot—be it the signs leading you to the next “Roadside Attraction,” the cute little hamburger shack at the side of the road, the fading Coca-Cola mural on the brick wall, the restaurant or motel long since abandoned when a string of super highways replaced Route 66, or simply a moment to catch your breath and marvel at the changing landscapes and skies. Give yourself extra time if you can—or maybe don’t attempt the whole Chicago-L.A. route in one go; do a leg or two and plan a return visit.

A few of the many roadside attractions along Route 66, including, from left, the Golden Driller statue in Tulsa, OK, symbolizing the city's identity as "the oil capital of the world"; the historic U Drop Inn Cafe in Shamrock, TX; the Cadillac Ranch near Amarillo, with its half-buried, multiply spray-painted and tagged Caddies, barely recognizable as cars anymore.

Laguna Pueblo, New Mexico on Route 66—possibly my favorite landscape of the trip.

But of course these ideas are based on 20-20 hindsight. We still had fun, visited parts of America we’d never seen, met people not only from the U.S. but from around the world. Will they still be traveling Route 66 when the Mother Road turns 100 in 2026? The proprietors of those little curio shops and cafes sure hope so. We do too. International visitors, as so many small business owners told us, bring to the world to our doors.

Jeff and me at Midpoint in Adrian, Texas, with 1,139 miles to go to L.A. (or back to Chicago!). I’m not quite sure how that adds up to the 2,400 miles we supposedly traveled, but who’s keeping track? Anyway, we did a lot of meandering.

Okay, that’s it—except for some thoughts on the food that I’ll save for my next post, including a recipe for that five-ingredient oatmeal pie we had at the Rock Café in Stroud, Oklahoma, which I hope to attempt myself before sharing it with you.

Many fond wishes to all of you for a relaxed and happy Memorial Day, and an easy start to your summer holidays. Is a trip along all or part of the Mother Road in your future? Do you have other travel plans? I’d love to know.

Below is one of artist Bob Waldmire’s wonderful maps of Route 66, showing in minute detail in his tiny, careful handwriting towns, small and large, natural wonders, flora and fauna, so much we didn’t get to see. Bob’s bit of philosophy at the end is a perfect sendoff for anyone taking a trip on Route 66—or anywhere. In case you can’t read it, here it is, with Bob’s punctuation intact:

“Small is beautiful—Old is beautiful—Slow is beautiful—Safe is beautiful! (And the scenery? Yup, it’s beautiful too!)”

Thanks for taking the time to check out my blog. See you next time!

Ruth

One of the maps drawn by artist Robert (Bob) Waldmire, beloved artist, cartographer and entrepreneur who fell in love early on with Route 66 and devoted much of his life to traveling along it and drawing and promoting the cities, towns, businesses and scenery. (Expand the picture to read the small type or view on a computer screen!)

1. The reference, of course, is to the song written in 1946 by Bobby Troup and recorded most famously by the Nat King Cole Trio. Click here for a recording. My husband Jeff enjoyed using a box of Kix as a visual on our journey, giving it a few kicks at one point. We ate a handful or two before deciding it was a better prop than a cereal, though kids may think otherwise.