Route 66 - Texas panhandle

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Many of the famous sites on Route 66 are in the short Texas piece so we only planned to cover 250 or so miles today so we could make all of our stops. The first was Glenrio - a small ghost town - which gave us an excuse to get out of the car and take some pictures. From there, we went to Adrian - the midway point of Route 66 - and stopped for a late breakfast at the Midway Cafe. If you go there, have the pie. It's great - and the women who run it are fun to talk to. We did a few caches in the area and even ran into some fellow geocachers who were on their own road trip adventure.

4. In Texas, I discovered a fascination with armadillos. I only saw one or two dead ones on the side of the road but kept an eye out the whole time. I peppered Gabe with lots of questions throughout the trip but narrowed it down, for this purpose, to how often do they procreate? Since there were so many all over the road, I wondered if they reproduced like rabbits or if they were just particularly dumb. I've found out several interesting facts but the answer to this is that the Texas type give birth to 4 genetically identical quintuplets in a litter about once every 8 months. Also, they aren't dumb but due tend to jump up a foot or two when startled, such as by a car, putting them at fender height.

Near Amarillo is the famous Cadillac Ranch and, of course, we stopped. Then there was the Bug Farm in Conway, the giant cross in Groom and the Jericho Gap (the last unpaved section of Route 66 famous for its sticky mud that trapped unsuspecting cars on a regular basis). One of our favorite stops was the Devil's Rope Museum in McLean. Gabe and the kids thought I was nuts when I kept insisting we
get there before it closed but I did feel vindicated when we got there. Who knew that there were so many people interested in barbed wire?

5. It was somewhere in here where we started wondering about the difference between a totem and a fetish. We saw both for sale in local shops and wondered the difference. The definitions I found were that a totem is something that watches over a person or family like a guardian. A fetish is an object that has supposedly has supernatural power.

We passed out of Texas towards our next stop - the Flying W Guest Ranch in Sayre, Oklahoma. This was intended to be a unique stop for the kids. It's a working cattle ranch and they have airconditioned cabins (where we stayed) as well as tents for the more adventurous. Unfortunately, we were there on Monday night - the only night the restaurant was closed - so once we were checked into our cabin by the real-life cowboy who runs the place, we had an MRE picnic on the porch. After dinner, we curled up and watch "City Slickers" in keeping with the theme of the evening.

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Photos

Glenrio ghost town
It was really quite anticlimatic. I had a nice conversation with a couple from Britain though while Gabe took a lot of photos.

Breakfast at the Midway Cafe
Definitely get the pie.

Cadillac Ranch
I only took one or two shots and spent most of the time talking with a British couple about how anticlimatic the whole thing was.

Bug farm
However, we didn't really learn - and did go to the Bug Farm, too.

Billboards abound
We read a lot of billboards on this trip. These didn\'t entice us - but others did....

Jericho Gap
This would not be a fun place to drive a car in the mud.

Devil's Rope Museum
Definitely worth a stop!

part of old Route 66
This part of Texas was prettier than I expected, if a bit isolated.

Crossing state lines
Admittedly, we were leaving rather than entering Texas at this point - but we'd forgotten to stop before.

Flying W ranch
Waiting to get let in, we pet the horses for a little bit.