roadmaven

Greetings from Amarillo! We pulled into the Big Texan about an hour ago and have set up shop in the "Cattleman's Hotel" wing of the BT's motel. The steakhouse was packed when we got here, but it's slowly thinning out, so I think we're heading over shortly. VERY windy in the Texas panhandle today. Knocked a good 2mpg off the car's gas mileage from the tank yesterday. Not much open today, which is OK with me. Means that a lot of businesses out here think Christmas should be a day of closed business, which I'm cool with. But, I'm also glad the BT chose not to. I'll post more following dinner. I'll see about getting my mug on the 72oz Steak Cam.

Greetings from Claremore, Oklahoma! We logged in 630-some miles, mostly on the Evil-I. By the time we checked in here at the Will Rogers Inn here, just about everything was closed, so we had a swell meal from the gas station! We've got a little less than 400 miles to go on Thursday, so it should be a fairly short day. Hope you all have a GREAT Christmas!

As if the Thanksgiving on Route 66 trip wasn't enough, now comes "Christmas on Route 66". I've been wanting to get my dad out on the road with me for a couple of years & now he's finally agreed. Destination: A Christmas steak dinner at the Big Texan in Amarillo. He's picking me up Christmas Eve morning & we're interstating Wednesday & Thursday and bunking up at the Big Texan Motel Christmas night after a steak dinner at the BT. Friday we'll turn around and mosy on 66 Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Should be a cool father/son bonding thing. I've always been intrigued by the story he told me of his family's trip out to California in '49. On the way back home...on Route 66...my grandpa had to be admitted in the hospital in Tucumcari, NM with stomach ulcers. Being the stubborn German he was, he checked himself out of the hospital 3 days later and my dad drove he & my grandma home via 66. So, I'll be taking him on some of those sections of 66 that had been bypassed, but were in use in '49, mainly in Oklahoma. No, I don't expect he'd remember much about those sections, but it'll be cool to tell him that this abandoned stretch is the same road he would've driven 60 years prior when he was a teen. Anywho, I'll be bringing along the laptop to provide updates as internet connections allow. Have a swell Christmas!

The Town of Speedway is going through a nearly complete redevelopment of its commercial districts. A big part of that is the area surrounding the speedway. The rumor that's been going on around here is there'll be a new hotel and conference center, and I expect it'll be many times larger than the 96 rooms they currently provide. With the speedway touting its 3 year Centennial Celebration (you read that right) beginning in 2009, it surprises me they'd close it down at this time. The only thing I can guess is they've already got the blueprints and will be breaking ground before long. Since this came out of left field, it wouldn't surprise me if something's announced in the next few months on a new hotel. Still, it'd be nice to have kept this one and built a bigger place as well.

It was announced today by Indianapolis Motor Speedway president Joie Chitwood that the Brickyard Crossing Inn is closed effective immediately and will be torn down in a matter of months. It's been speculated for some time that this would eventually happen, but not with this short of notice. Actually, this decision must've been kept from even those who run the motel, as a group of Corvair enthusiasts from all over the country had set aside a block of rooms at the Brickyard just a couple of weeks ago for an event here in March. It's a sad day, as this classic, 1960's era motel once housed The Beatles in 1964 and several portions from the 1969 film "Winning" with Paul Newman were filmed there. We had said recently that we were going to stay there (even though it's less than a mile from our house) before they knock it down. Too late. However, Bliss and Denny both stayed there in 2007 during our Cool Roads Cruise, so we'll all live through their tales of slumber. The full article can be read here. The cool sign in the first pic below was replaced sometime in the early 1990's. The 2nd pic is one I took last year. RIP, Brickyard! 1963-2008:

Gas is down to $1.36 on the south side of Indy today. I saw a report recently where crude oil may dip as low as $25/barrel and we *may* see gas below $1/gallon in the coming months.

Thanks for the replies, gents! I figure if it's a looooong winter like it was last winter, I'll be doing a lot more of these to keep my sanity. There are plenty of roads in this state that have a story to tell, so I'll do what I can.....along with Jim.....to get these dudes up on search engines. Jim -- State Road 134!!! Wow, that thing's practically in my own backyard and I forgot all about it! Of course when the road's not longer than 1/2 mile, it's bound to be forgotten. Delorme shows it going from US 136 all the way down to US 40. Not sure if that's how far it went, but I know today it doesn't even reach 21st Street.

I had little to do on this cold, post snowy Sunday. Well, check that, I had plenty to do here in the house, but there wasn't any of it I actually "wanted" to do. I had a geocache to replace out in North Salem, so I decided to get that done today and do a "coast to coast" trip on the entire length...all 41 miles...of Indiana State Road 236. It was a chilly day, as it was in the upper teens/low 20's all day after a 2" snowfall Saturday throughout most of the state. Mobilene thinks that it doesn't get any more obscure than IN-42. Well, I think I trumped him on 236! Details of this journey can be found here, and the rest of the photo shoot can be found here.

Dominic, Here's a shot we took in '06: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/236/5190869...d0fc597.jpg?v=0 I happened to be coming back from Connecticut in '07 and went through Huntingdon to see what the status of Grubb's was, since we heard it might close. Just so happens, they were loading up the sign the day I arrived, and the diner itself had been detached from it's block building portion and was in two pieces next to Jerry's motel. My post from that day can be found here. Scroll down to my July 30, 2007 post in this thread.

It turned out to be a really good trip! Since we didn't have a destination to worry about, we took our time on this trip and that made it all the more worthwhile. Unfortunately we didn't see Jim Ross or Laurel Kane, but we did meet some new folks along the way, including John Hargrove, who was the subject of Johnny V's "66 Kicks!" installment in AR magazine recently. And Pops is a MUST STOP. Good food, good photo opps, and a slew of carbonated goodness! We walked out of there with 4 6-packs of various colas, root beers, and other drinks that are hard to find. All the details can be found in blog form here.

Hi Dominic, and I know of one you can have. It's the former Grubb's Diner in Huntingdon, PA. Forum moderator Jennifer did an article on it for the Diner Days segment of American Road magazine about 3 years ago. The owner, Jerry Grubb, closed it so a drugstore could be built on the land. He did save the diner and hauled it to one of his properties in Huntingdon. I found the full details on the Diner Hotline web site. I'm not up on my diner manufacturers, so I can't tell you what kind it is other than it's stainless steel. Contact info to Jerry is in the article.

Our Thanksgiving weekend is being spent cruising Route 66 into Oklahoma. We took most of US 40 through Illinois after getting a late start Thursday afternoon. We'll be leaving Finn's Motel here in St. James, MO shortly and resume our journey west into the Sooner State. We probably won't get much beyond Oklahoma City. Looking forward to visiting AR Forum member and matchmaker extraordinaire Laurel Kane's Afton Station, most likely on Saturday. Another place we're looking forward to is out near Jim Ross in Arcadia, OK called Pops, which has just about every soda known to exist. It hadn't been built the last time we were through there, which has been 3 or 4 years ago. We had been planning this weekend around a trip to the Atlanta, GA area to do some hunting for filming locations for "My Cousin Vinny", but the weather wasn't going to be cooperating, so we decided to head west. The weather out here looks promising, so we shouldn't run into any issues. As for Finn's, it's not a bad little place for $38 for 2 bodies. Unfortunately the cool old neon sign that you can find on Google doesn't exist any longer and was replaced by a generic plastic one. We'll provide updates as internet connections allow. Hope you all have a great weekend!

BACK! For those of you reading this, Tony's a moderator on the roadfood.com forum. I was browsing through their site last night, and the restaurant review lists are quite remarkable and put together very well, state by state. Be sure to check it out! I'll be putting together a list of potential eats from that site for our excursion this weekend.

Congrats on the discount! Lowest price I've seen out here was $1.53 at a Murphy USA station. Definitely makes those trips A LOT easier on the wallet.

Denny, more important than any of this is......did you get the Memory Motel!?

Greenup is a very cool town, and the bridge adds to it. If I'm not mistaken, the bridge was built in Wisconsin and hauled to its location. Looks like it could use a new coat of Thompson's Water Seal on it.

$1.72 at a Speedway in Speedway. Meanwhile, crude oil is down to $56/barrel today, and gasoline futures are at $1.26/gallon.

If it's the same one I'm thinking of, it's on the south end of Springfield just north of Lake Springfield at the Toronto Road exit off I-55. I believe there's a Motel 6 at that interchange that I stayed in once. We've been to two Hen Houses.....one on Route 66 in Mitchell, IL and the other in Arcola, IL. I know the last time I was through 66 in Missouri, the one in Bourbon was still in business. Thanks for the post and

Dave, Many factors for the traffic. Up the road in Pigeon Forge, it's wall-to-wall hotels, restaurants, novelty stores, go-kart tracks, etc, etc. That's the reason for the backups there. In G-burg, it's the same, only a little more condensed. Either way, traffic be no fun when you're trying to have fun! Chris & Alex, I think we covered just about every highway in Kentucky EXCEPT 421! The main routes we took in Kentucky were US 27, US 127, and US 60. We decided not to head through the Cumberland Gap tunnel due to some time constraints, as well as the fact that we'd have to head northeast to get to it. Denny, I'm sure Gatlinburg has grown quite a bit since the early 1980's. One needs to have patience when going through there on a Saturday in the fall when the leaves are at peak colors. Now, if I mosey on to my next reply..... Bliss, I plan on checking with one of my brothers who stays in a cabin when he & his family go there a few times a year. If we don't do that, then we'll probably stay in G-burg instead of Pigeon Forge. This way we can just leave the car at the hotel & walk to every place we need to go. Can't really do that in PF, since everything's so spread out. A somewhat detailed report can be found here. I was tired when I started it last night, and I was tired when I finished it tonight, so my apologies if there's some things that don't make sense.....I'll edit in the morning.

Great weather & scenery for our first trip to the Pigeon Forge/Gatlinburg, TN area. Traffic in both towns is insane. Backs up for miles & miles. The trees are probably just past peak, but not by much. We spent Saturday in Gatlinburg and caught a show Saturday night in Pigeon Forge. Today we're going to mosy our way back up to Indiana via some twisty two-lanes.....the US 25-E tunnel through the Cumberland Gap looks enticing. Meanwhile, here's what the view over Gatlinburg looked like last night:

As a service to those who might go to Hinkle's in the future, we made a quick afternoon trip to Madison Saturday afternoon. Just about everything but the eating joints down there close by 6pm (a lot of them at 5), so if you plan on heading down, go early in the day. Details of the day are here.

OK, now that I've seen the documentary, I'm ready to explore! I've only done the LH in bits & peices, but I'm ready to have a major trip on it after watching PBS tonight! My question for you experienced Lincolners, is there any kind of guidebook out there that directs you on the entire route? I see there are various state books, and I'm not sure if all the states are covered. Just curious what the best sources are. Thanks!

Welcome back, ypsi! We've missed you around here. Really looking forward to tuning in tonight. 8pm on Channel 20 for the Indianapolis members on the forum.

WOW! Tonight in Brownsburg, Indiana:

That's some excellent photography by the photographer who took the "now" shot. After trying my hand at that kind of thing, I know how hard it can be to get your angles just right. It looks like all the buildings are still intact, and the only differences are the trees and pavement....and the horseless carriages.