Gettin' Our Kicks on Route 66

Raise your hand if you know the old song by Nat King Cole. That song has been running through my mind for the last week. As we pulled out of Santa Clarita I started to notice names of towns that were familiar to me but where I had never been before and I realized that I was traveling down that classic road, route 66, just in the opposite direction from the song. "You'll see Amarillo; Gallup, New Mexico; Flagstaff, Arizona, don't forget Winona; Kingman, Barstow, San Bernadino..." Well we didn't hit San Bernadino and we didn't drive through Barstow but we were in that general direction as we headed out of California. Theresa Bischoff supplied us with Trip Tiks from AAA and those were fun to read as we drove and, being a map lover, I followed where we going on the map and found the little towns mentioned in this song along with the big ones.


Arizona had some fun topography and there were times I felt like I was in the middle of the Disney movie "Cars". I kept looking out my window expecting to see rock formations the shape of old cars. But this was as close as it got.


I also saw this beautiful mountain side and thought it looked like a man's face.


Our God is amazing, making beauty abound in many ways. It's a different kind of beauty than the Great Northwest which I have been more familiar with up to now, but beautiful just the same.


We drove through Arizona and stayed our first night in Flagstaff. We had checked weather ahead of time and knew that it had recently snowed and was supposed to be cold. We weren't disappointed. The kids were excited to see the snow and really wanted to touch it.


On Saturday, we left Flagstaff and began our longest driving day, planning on driving all the way through New Mexico and into Texas, spending the night in Amarillo. The sign for New Mexico as we crossed the border stated that it was the land of Enchantment, but I have to say that maybe they were talking about another part of New Mexico. Where we were driving was not all that enchanting. But the miles rolled by and the kids traveled well that day. God gave grace to everyone in the van so that Brenton didn't cry his day away, no one got car sick (Isabel got pretty car sick the first day on the way to Flagstaff) and we had minimal potty breaks considering we were traveling with three potty trained kids and two adults. James and Brenton loved seeing the many trains along the way and Brenton sat in the back seat saying "choo choo" over and over again. Michael kept his own pace driving the big moving truck and the kids looked forward to every stop that they might be able to see him. We saw a couple of other Penske trucks as we drove along and each time the kids would yell out "Uncle Michael!" Sometimes it was him, sometimes it wasn't. We met up in the end in Amarillo and enjoyed dinner at Red Robin before heading to bed.
Sunday was our final travel day and the kids eagerly anticipated arriving at our new home. We left Amarillo and drove through the great state of Texas all day, some 350 miles, in order to reach home in Hurst, Texas. Along the way we saw miles and miles of open ranch land, many small towns that were once oil towns but now that the oil is gone they are little more than ghost towns.

People who have stayed on because that's where their family has always been, even though there is no oil industry there anymore. We chuckled a little as we came through Wichita Falls. I hadn't thought about a town in Texas having the word "falls" in it's name before but once considering it it did seem a little out of place. Thanks to Trip Tiks I found out that the original falls was a mere 5 ft. falls but so unusual to find in the area that the first settlers named the city after it. But 5 years after settling the area a giant flood washed the falls away and the falls that you see now as you drive through Wichita Falls is a man made falls in memory of the original 5 ft. falls. The things you learn as you go...
It was a great opportunity to see and learn about things we haven't seen before, never having traveled that way. We enjoyed our trip on route 66, but enjoyed even more arriving at our destination.