Night .5 / Day 1

We set out Friday evening to stay the night in Oklahoma City. This would give us a good night's sleep (ha) and let us wake up right on route 66 ready to start our trip. This is great for me because we usually wake up super early - depending on where we're going 3-6am - and get a good bit of driving in before the kids wake up for the day. So, by the end of the first day of vacation, Melissa and I are usually wiped out. I decided this trip should be more relaxed than that, so we left Friday night.

...we should have left early Saturday morning. We stayed at the Comfort Lodge in Oklahoma City. They were listed in the Route 66 Lodging and Dining book we've been using, but the hotel was Foreign-owned, dirty, scary, and not a good way to spend a relaxing night. Just as I was getting out of the shower, the electricity went off (through no fault of the hotel's - it was an area-outage). The "continental breakfast" was mini-chocolate donuts, mini-powdered donuts, and cut-up danishes with your choice of OJ or coffee. Moving on...

We at breakfast at Jimmy's Egg just down the road. It's a small, local chain in OKC. The food was super-good and inexpensive (especially since Jaden and Jaron were full of mini-donuts) :) Melissa had the Wisconsin Omlette. It was awesome. The biscuits and gravy were excellent also, but I'm partial to sausage gravy when eating out.

We followed our guide book down the road, and stopped at Fort Reno. Fort Reno has a very colorful past (that you can read about by clicking on the previous link and then clicking "History") and was most recently a POW camp that housed German prisoners during WWII. The Chapel on the grounds was built completely by hand by the German prisoners. This included digging the basement, making the pews and the altar. They were setting up for a wedding that night and the chapel was beautiful.

We snapped some shots and hit the road. Time to look for some lunch. We ate at Lucille's in Weatherford, OK. I can't find a link for them, but this is a re-model (re-creation?) of the original Lucille's on Route 66. It was a famous cafe and roadhouse. The food was good and the atmosphere was very retro. Jaden's lunch came in a cardboard Ford Thunderbird. Cool!

We stopped at the Oklahoma US Route 66 museum in Clinton, OK. They had stuff from all up and down route 66 and we got some good pictures. The museum was really interesting and I'm glad it's there, but the film at the very end of the presentation was very depressing. I would suggest they should make a film that inspires the viewers to take some positive action to help support reviving and/or restoring something old along the route. There are so many old gas stations, motels, and other businesses along the way that would be so cool if they were restored - like this Uniroyal in Canute, OK.

While driving through Texola (right on the edge of the OK/TX border), we saw a small, hand-written sign that said, "Historic Jail and Museum." I do not know if this is real at all, but a guy that could have been in the jail, came out of a house across the street when we drove up and offered a "historic calendar" for $5 that had obviously been printed on an Inkjet printer. He looked like he could use it so we took it. The guy told me a story about some guys from Benonine, TX that got drunk and came over to Texola and burned down a couple of houses. This got the Texolans riled up, so they went to Benonine and burned down the whole town! I couldn't confirm this online anywhere, but who knows, a crazy guy living across the street from an old jail in an old abandoned ghost town just might be telling the truth... LOL!

We rolled into Shamrock before dark and snapped some pictures of an old Conoco station that's been restored and now serves at the Chamber of Commerce for the town of Shamrock, TX. We ate at Dairy Queen (mmm, steak fingers!) and stayed at (where else?) the Irish Inn. They have very clean rooms. They're not cheap, but they're well worth the price. Even if it is on evil I-40 and not route 66, they're a mom-and-pop place and we'll stay here again if we come this way.

We should make it through Texas and into or through New Mexico on Day 2, so until then, Happy Trails!