I decided to take a road trip from Las Vegas, NV across the US traveling on some of the old historic Route 66 which originally ran from Chicago, IL to Los Angeles, CA.
I left Las Vegas and drove south to Laughlin, NV then took a shortcut on a very bumpy gravel road to get to Oatman, AZ and start my Route 66 journey.
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I only saw one car and at least 12 wild burros along the way. Here are two of my new friends!
After about an hour of slow driving on the gravel road I finally reached Oatman, AZ. Oatman is famous for all the wild burros that roam the main street and also the home of the Oatman Hotel where Clark Gable and Carole Lombard spent their wedding night on March 29th, 1939. I actually spent a night there years ago. There was only one bathroom at the end of the hall – just like in the old days!
After leaving Oatman, I got on the original Route 66 and headed east. The road winds through the mountains and has many narrow and steep turns. Here are a couple of views of the road.
Next stop – Winslow, AZ a sleepy little town on the original Route 66. Currently, this town is popular for the line in The Eagles 1972 song “Take it Easy”. You can listen to the song here
while you view the Winslow pictures below.
Continuing on the old Route 66 I came across more Route 66 memorabilia.
As I was driving on Route 66 I saw a sign for Las Vegas, New Mexico. Since I live in Las Vegas, NV I thought this might be an interesting town to visit. Las Vegas, NM is a sleepy little town of about 13,000 people. It reminded me of a dustbowl town that has seen better days.
The below “Calumet says Howdy” sign is from the 1980s Patrick Swayze commie invasion movie “Red Dawn,” set in the fictional town of Calumet, Colorado although the sign is actually in Las Vegas, New Mexico.
The historic El Fidel Hotel in Las Vegas, NM
My next stop was the Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, TX. Standing along Route 66 west of Amarillo, Texas, Cadillac Ranch was invented and built by a group of art hippies imported from San Francisco. They called themselves The Ant Farm, and their silent partner was Amarillo billionaire Stanley Marsh 3rd. He wanted a piece of public art that would baffle the locals, and the hippies came up with a tribute to the evolution of the Cadillac tail fin. Ten Caddies were driven into one of Stanley Marsh 3’s fields, then half-buried, nose-down, in the dirt (supposedly at the same angle as the Great Pyramid of Giza). They faced west in a line, from the 1949 Club Sedan to the 1963 Sedan de Ville, their tail fins held high for all to see on the empty Texas panhandle.
You can buy spray paint and paint the cars to your heart’s content!
After leaving Cadillac Ranch I went to Oklahoma City where Route 66 heads north to Chicago, IL. I left Route 66 at Oklahoma City and headed to the Outer Banks in North Carolina. I caught the northern part of Route 66 on my return trip.
My first stop at the Outer Banks was Jockey’s Ridge State Park right on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean. The park is known for its huge sand dunes and hang gliding. The park is only a couple of miles from the Wright Memorial where Wilber and Orville Wright made their first powered airplane flights. This is the 4th time I have visited the park. On the first three trips I never got a decent photo. This time I was lucky enough to get a few nice shots at the park.
After leaving Jockey’s Ridge I headed up the coast to Corolla, NC to photograph the wild Banker horses that roam the area. The horses roam about a 20 mile area of the beach. You definitely need a 4 wheel drive vehicle to go looking for the horses. I got lucky this trip and ended up with a couple of nice photographs.
After leaving the Outer Banks, I headed north to Gettsyburg, PA to see all the Civil War sites and monuments at the Gettsyburg National Cemetary. It was well worth the visit. I found the spot President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address on November 19th, 1863. I also visited some of the battlefields with Civil war cannons overlooking the hills.
Below is the Soldiers National Monument where President Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address. He actually stood about 40 yards to the left of the monument in what is now a civilian cemetery. The small white markers are gravestones of Union soldiers.
Leaving Gettysburg I headed to northwest Pennsylvania to the small town of Ridgway, PA to photograph the historic Elk County courthouse there.
The courthouse is red brick with sandstone. The tower originally supported a statue of Justice, which was destroyed by lightning in the 1930s. The interior was modernized in about 1969.
Leaving Ridgway, I headed to Dwight, IL just below the start of Route 66. My first stop was at Ambler’s Texaco Gas Station.
The station operated longer than any service station on Route 66. It was operated by local families for 66 years, from 1933 to1999 and was an auto repair shop until 2002, when the owner Phillip Becker generously donated the station to the Village of Dwight. With the help of a $10,400 matching grant from the National Park Service’s Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program, the Village of Dwight painstakingly restored the station to its former glory, taking the main office and canopy area back to the 1930s and the service bay area back to its 1940s appearance.
Right down the road from Dwight you can still see some of the original Route 66 from the 1940s that was never repaired.
A couple of miles further south I went to Pontiac, IL, to see the Route 66 Hall of Fame Museum.
After leaving the Route 66 museum, I headed down the road to Springfield, IL to visit the Abraham Lincoln presidential library and museum.
My next stop was Commerce, OK to see the boyhood home of my baseball idol – Mickey Mantle.
This is the house where Mickey Mantle grew up. His father and grandfather would pitch to him and he would try to hit balls over the shed on the right of the picture.
After leaving Commerce, I took the back roads and headed toward Oklahoma City and caught I-40W and drove to Meteor Crater, AZ.
Over 50,000 years ago space and earth came together when a huge iron-nickel meteorite, approximately 150 feet wide and weighing several hundred thousand tons, impacted an area outside of Flagstaff, Arizona, with a force 150 times greater than an atomic bomb. The result of this impact was devastation for miles and the creation of the giant bowl-shaped cavity we call Meteor Crater, which measures 550 feet deep and almost a mile wide.
How big is Meteor crater? The Crater is large enough for 20 football games to be played simultaneously on its floor while more than 2 million people could watch from the side slopes!
After leaving Meteor Crater, I had one last stop to make before heading home – Williams, AZ.
This little town is like going back in history. Just about everything is Route 66!
I left Williams, AZ just in time to get back to Las Vegas and photograph two moonrises over the Las Vegas Strip on two consecutive days.
This is the real moon rising over the Luxor. It is well worth the effort to watch a full moonrise in person. This was a spectacular moonrise! If you look very close you can see a dark mark on the left side of the moon. It’s a plane taking off from McCarran airport. It’s blurry because of the long exposure.
I missed a lot more sights than I saw. I traveled 6,400 miles through 18 states over 26 days and enjoyed every minute of it!
I hope you enjoy the pictures!