After leaving Joplin we took I-40 because Rt.66 actually take a turn up into Kansas and then back into Oklahoma around Quapaw. We caught up to 66 in Vinita. From Vinita we moved on through White Oak, Chelsea, Bushyhead, and Foyil.
In Foyil we took a slight detour to take a look at Galloway's Totem Pole Park, another Rt. 66 must see.
The park was build by local artist Ed Galloway between 1937 and 1948. The largest totem pole is 90 feet tall with an 18 foot diameter and 57 foot circumference. Among the 200 carved pictures on the pole, you can find Geronimo and Sitting Bull.
Moving on down the road, we passed through Claremore where the Will Rodger Memorial can be found, and pressed on to Catoosa. There we began looking for the infamous Blue Whale Amusement park, but due to the poor directional skills of our guide book we somehow went right by the 90 foot blue wonder.
Being the girl I insisted we stop for directions, and Carl made me run in to the next gas station. The lady at the counter was very nice and excited to tell me all about the blue whale. Before I went out the door she reached behind the counter, pulled out a bag of wonder bread, and handed me two slices. I guess she could tell I was a bit baffled by this, because she laughed and told me that it was for the fishes. My instructions were to crumble up the bread, throw it into the lake, and watch the "millions of fishes" go crazy. When I came out of the gas station, Carl look just as confused about the bread as I had been, but we both got a good laugh out of it.
The Whale itself was quite exciting. It was build by a local teacher in the early 1970s as an anniversary present to his wife. It is made of steal beams and concrete all of which has been painted a brilliant turquoise blue. The fins of the whale are slides, and the tale was a sort of diving board. Carl and I also fed the fishes, and the gas station attendant was right, there were tons of little spot and blue gill and they certainly did go wild over out bits of white bread.
After Catoosa we returned to the highway roads and made our way to Oklahoma City. Since we were going through this way, I asked if we could stop at the Oklahoma City Memorial since I had studied it in a tourism class. We didn't do the museum, but the memorial itself is striking.
Before getting out of OK, we ran into an insane amount of windmills. They were huge and surrounded us on all sides. I said it looked like an alien invasion; Carl felt like he was in Holland.
Finally crossing the boarder into Texas, it was time to find some gas. We didn't realize how difficult of a task this would be, but thanks to the detour we found yet another interesting Rt. 66 site. In McLean we saw the first Phillips 66 station in Texas. It was built in 1929, and of course Carl had to get a picture of the Toyota next to it.
We made camp in Amarillo. The Koa was very nice, and even though it rained overnight everything held up alright. Today we're sight seeing in Amarillo a bit before heading on to Roswell. More to come :)
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