Day One

Last night around 10:30 PM-- less than eight hours before we were scheduled to leave on our trip-- the "Service Engine Soon" light came on in my car. This sent me (and perhaps Katherine?) into a state of panic, so Katherine and I delayed leacing for a couple of hours so I could hopefully get my car into a shop. Of course, no shop was particularly eager to look at a car at 7 AM this morning, so since the car was recently given the green light by a mechanic back home, we decided to push on through with our voyage engine or no engine.

After a bit finagling of luggage in the trunk, Katherine and I finall headed out of Champaign around 9:30. About thirteen hours later, we pulled into the Tradewinds Inn in Clinton, Oklahoma. Believe it or not, I honestly thought the drive flew by. It really was about the perfect amount of time to do in a day. Long but not exhausting and still gave us plenty of time to do some more laid back things like...

Finding Ol' Route 66! Evidently, in 1927 Oklahoma didn't have enough money to actually build Route 66 with two full lanes, so the original road was constructed using only a single paved lane so small that it has been dubbed (at least by our travel book) the "Sidewalk Highway." This of course has been largely replaced by the new route and the interstate, but evidently small stretches of the original blacktop still exist in the back country of Oklahoma, and Katherine and I set out to find them. It didn't take long. A thirteen mile jaunt off I-44 at Miami, OK led us to a broken down dust trail from which eventually emerged the faintest signs of the remains of pavement, and eventually, whole stretches of a five foot wide blacktop, cracked and crumbling, but still bearing the trademark whitestripes racing down its sides. As we bounced up and down the old route, not being able to go more than thiry miles per hour, it was easy to imagine those early model-Ts, horseless carriages, or what have you, stirring up dust into the wide Oklahoma sky, their loud engines disturbing the soft grazing of local cattle. In the distance you could see the new road-- that twisted four-lane highway-- dust free, but somehow dirtier, twisting into the distance, and I couldn't help thinking that someday someone might find it abandoned, crumbled, and alone.



And now for some Shelley...

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.



Alright, less contemplation more fun... we finished our Old Route 66 adventure by eating at a little diner called Clanton's that was actually really incredible. It served very homestyle, down on the farm meals-- which honestly isn't my favorite type of cooking-- but made them very very well. One helping of potroast, mashed potatoes, and green beans later, we packed back up and headed another 250 miles down the road to Clinton, OK.



In Clinton, OK we are staying at the Tradewinds Inn, a motel that used to be Elvis's favorite place to stay on Route 66 (or so they say). Anyway, they have the room that Elvis stayed in enshrined as a sort of psuedo-memorial to the King with retro furniture etc. They charge $90 a night to stay there, which obviously wasn't in our budget, but when I checked in the guy behind the counter tried to upsell me and when I said no he gave it to us for free. So, right now we're sitting in the very suite where our dearly departed King stayed in his touring days of the southwest USA. It's a piece of kitsch, but a slightly fantastic one.



"Down at the end of lonely street at the heartbreak hotel..."