The friends that I mentioned in the Quincy post spend their winters in Arizona. So this year, we decided to drive out and visit them in January. Our plans were almost derailed by an unexpected sickness. We had done everything possible to avoid Covid for almost three years but it was Christmas 2022 when it finally caught us. We had fairly mild cases to start, thanks in large part to Paxlovid and the booster we had in November. I had the worst case of the two of us but it didn’t last long and by early January, we were ready to go. We decided to limit our meals to takeout for the first few days and wearing mask anytime we were around others.
Our first stop was Tulsa and since we would be roughly following Route 66 and were using the Roadtrippers app as a guide, we thought it would be fun to hit some of the classic Route 66 sights on the application guide. For those of you that have been subscribers from the start, you may remember our visit to the Route 66 museum in Lebanon, Missouri.
We were driving our car and we tried to pack so we wouldn’t have to bring everything into the hotel each night. Our Equinox gets excellent gas mileage and prices were hovering right around $2.80 per gallon as we left.
We adopted Kismet in March of 2022 and she has already been to 9 states. They say that the average American has visited 12 states and she would get 4 more on this trip so I think she is doing pretty well. She truly seems to enjoy traveling!
I know everyone complains about inflation and I may be out of the loop but I found the hotel prices quite reasonable. Our night in Tulsa at part of the IHG chain was a good experience. The hotel was new and very nice plus this included a pretty decent breakfast which we brought back to our room to eat. Takeout the night before was at a Japanese restaurant that was right next door to the hotel.
We made one kitschy Route 66 stop before hitting Tulsa. We visited the Catoosa Blue Whale which was built in the late 60s by Hugh Davis. He originally built it for family and friends but it became a fun stop for travelers on Route 66 to spend the day picnicking and using the whale’s slide. It is now a small roadside park owned by the city of Catoosa.
It is 393 miles to Amarillo, which was our next stop. So stay tuned for more.
Nice to hear you are "On the Road Again." I wrote about my travels to Korea in my newsletter this week. I'm so happy, a Jordanian man made a pledge and subscribed! I emailed him my Destiny poem, (I translated it to Arabic, google translate:)
There are none so blind as those that won't see,
We are all enslaved in this land of the free,
Imprisoned by death’s destiny.
There are none so deaf as those that won’t hear,
The end of life can be gripped with fear,
Beside the soul once judgment is near.
There are none so dumb as those that won't speak,
Of equality with the ego weak,
Altering the destiny of the meek.
Destiny is retrieved when we help each other,
Destiny is perceived when we are friendly together,
Destiny is believed when we love one another.