We started our journey on December 16th, 2017 and got home on January 1st, 2018. We live in Minnesota, so the first couple of days were just getting to Chicago for the beginning of Route 66. We visited our friends in Madison, WI, who graciously let Nathan, me, and our dog Rocky stay with them for our first night. I was dreading having to sleep in the back of the truck in December in Wisconsin. We had a ton of blankets (I'm talking like 15 super warm blankets, so we would have survived, but... you know... sleeping in our friends' heated house was amazing.
The next morning, we drove to Milwaukee, WI to visit some more friends and have breakfast with them.
Now that we were done visiting most of our Wisconsin friends, we were ready to start our journey on Route 66, so we headed out to Chicago, where we visited the Chicago Skydeck, which was amazing! The views from up top were breath-taking. As we looked out the windows, there are pictures that show you exactly what you're looking at in the distance.
We tried our first ever deep-dish pizza and Chicago-style hot dog. Seriously, the deep dish pizza was one of the best things I've ever eaten! We also visited the bean (Cloud Gate) in Millennium Park, but we got kicked out because dogs are not allowed in that park. Super weird, but actually understandable since it was really crowded. We decided it would be unsafe to spend the night in Chicago in the back of the truck, so we did splurge on a hotel room that night.
We spent the rest of the day and the next morning walking around the city, taking it all in. There were actually a lot of people visiting from Minnesota that we kept meeting. A sign marks the beginning of Route 66 downtown. Signs like that are all along the route to help keep you on track.
The next day, after we were out of Chicago, the winding down began. I finally felt like our trip was beginning and I sensed the stress of my job, the big cities, everything just melting away. We were off the highways on side roads, following the original Route 66, which helped with less traffic, and set the path for a much-needed wind-down.
We drove through Illinois, stopped at the GatewayArch, and kept going until we hit the border of Missouri.
We made our way across our beautiful country stopping at all of the Route 66 attractions we thought sounded interesting (after sitting in the car for hours, keep in mind that interesting is almost anything). We stopped at a lot of abandoned towns, which I found oddly fascinating. I realize this is the definition of an abandoned town, but there were buildings just totally left behind, including decrepit furniture, toilets, everything! We found a motel that still had beds, tables, everything still in the rooms, with the ceilings caving in. It was just crazy to see! While I realize these small buildings are not safe, we did walk around in and around them trying to imagine what they looked like and feel the energy that they used to have.
We drove over every bridge that still allowed traffic, which was terrifying at times, but I really wanted to say we did it!
- Meramec Caverns in Missouri. These are miles of naturally formed caves. Nathan loved all of the history these caves had to offer. Originally they were used for shelter by Native Americans. Then they were mined for an ingredient in gun powder during the Civil War and later used for shelter by Jessie James.
- Blue Whale in Oklahoma. This was really cool! A guy built it for his wife back in the 70’s. We climbed around in it. There was even a ladder to the top!
- Cadillac Ranch in Texas. Cadillac Ranch was pretty cool to see. It was a little disheartening seeing the millions (literally) of spray paint cans littering the ground. Apparently it's a thing to bring your own spray paint and douse the cars in paint. While Nathan was more sad about the cars being ruined by getting put in the ground, I was sad that people are so self-centered (is that the word I'm looking for?) that they can't even throw their cans in a garbage!! It was still a really cool sight to see.
- The leaning water tower in Texas is an awesome act of physics!
- Also in Texas - there was also a whole field dedicated to Stations of the Cross - life-size statues of each station (the steps Jesus took when he had to carry his own cross to the final place where he would be nailed to it and left to die).
- Meteor Crater in Arizona. Meteor Crater was created when a meteor hit the earth around 50,000 years ago. It's about a mile wide - so it's pretty amazing to see!
- The Petrified Forest (AMAZING!!) in Arizona. The Petrified Forest is a whole park of trees that have turned into rocks. There are tree stumps in the ground that have turned to rocks, where you can still see the tree rings.
- The Silver Moon Cafe in Santa Rosa, NM had some of the best Mexican food I've ever tasted.
Along with all of these
things to see and do, there were some other, slightly more weird things we saw
on our trip like the Rocket Man, also pictured.
We drove through Los
Angeles where we noticed their population sign said something over 4 million
people. The whole STATE of Minnesota has less than 6 million. That was
astonishing!
While the attractions
were really fun to see, I think the best part of the trip was spending quality
time with my little family. We talked about everything imaginable and honestly,
we never ran out of things/places/ideas/dreams to talk about.
Read a little more about our Route 66 experience in Part 3, coming up in a few days! We saw the weird lights above California while we were camping!
Reminder: Our world is such an amazing place. There is no reason for
anyone to not enjoy their lives they way they were meant to. We only get one
life. We get one shot. Are you wasting it, or are you living it to the fullest?
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