Erick, Oklahoma

Friend and Route 66 traveling partner, Chip,

 giving Lil Dude a hand in front of the

Welcome to Eric sign.

A few miles down Route 66 from Sayre, Oklahoma is the small town of Erick, home to the Roger Miller Museum and the famous Sandhills Curio Shop. Lil Dude was traveling Route 66 and stopped in for a visit.

The Roger Miller Museum is dedicated to the life and career of Erick's native son, entertainer Roger Miller. The hours open are not many (Wed - Sat 10:00 - 5:00 and Sunday 1:00 - 5:00) so don't be like Lil Dude and expect it to be open on a Monday or Tuesday. Since he was just passing through and was there on a Monday, he had to be content with trying to look through the window!

The Sandhills Curio Shop is not to be missed if you are traveling Route 66. After driving down the Mother Road for awhile, the auto museums, historic motels, rusty gas pumps, throwback burger joints, and tchotchke shops start to blur together. The nostalgia can feel a bit canned and inauthentic, but then you happen upon Sandhills Curiosity Shop, owned by a true and proud redneck hoarder named Harley. The shop is filled with antique signs, whiskey bottles, ashtrays, tambourines, and guitars interspersed with tourist photos and nothing is for sale. Harley has been entertaining Route 66 travelers for over 30 years. With his late wife Annabelle, they formed The Mediocre Music Makers and gave many a traveler a memory that will last a long time.

If you happen to find yourself near Erick, Oklahoma traveling Interstate 40 and its mind-numbing miles of nothing but concrete, give yourself a break and a treat. Lil Dude says stop at Erick for a while and see what there is to see!

Sandhills Curiosity Shop

Harley & Annabelle took a shine to Lil Dude!

The Mediocre Music Makers & Lil Dude in

front of their Sandhills Curiosity Shop

 

Devil's Rope

At the entrance to the Devil's Rope Museum

In McLean, Texas along famous Route 66 is an interesting, but little known museum where you can find out all you ever wanted to know and more about barbed wire - the Devil's Rope Museum. Housed in an old converted brassier factory, it contains the largest collection in the world of published material about barbed wire. It features exhibits and collections from private collectors from across the United States, salesman samples, barbed wire as it has been used in war, and an extensive library of patent information. The building also contains a small exhibit dedicated to the portion of Route 66 which crosses Texas.

You can touch many of the museum pieces, but Lil Dude Troll advises against it!

Tools of the trade

Barbed wire used in war

This is Bob Wore. Looks like he hasn't
been very careful handling Devil's Rope!

The Route 66 display includes a pretty realistic-looking
 diner scene.

Santa Monica - The End Of Route 66

Lil Dude Troll on the Santa Monica Beach

 After beginning an epic Route 66 road trip in Chicago, the Troll family and their traveling friend Eeyore made it to the end of the Mother Road in Santa Monica. A bucket list item has now been checked off and a life-time of good memories made.


Check out the full blog entry on our sister site 1dustytrack.blogspot.com.

Monet Troll on the Santa Monica Beach

Earth Troll on the Santa Monica Beach

The Troll Family's good friend, Traveling Eeyore made
the whole trip with them.

At the end of the Santa Monica Pier - as far as you can go
without getting wet!

At the Mariasol Restaurant on the Santa Monica Pier

Lunch of yummy Mariasol Mexican food

Lil Dude Troll on the Santa Monica Pier

Across the freeway in the Santa Monica hills
overlooking the pier and beach

Play time is over Lil Dude. Time to head back home.

Elmer Long's Bottle Tree Ranch

Can you find Lil Dude Troll?

 Elmer Long's Bottle Tree Ranch at 24266 National Trails Highway (Route 66) in Oro Grande, California is a must stop for travelers of the Mother Road. When you arrive, you know immediately you have arrived at some place different, a special place built and assembled by some special person.

Pull off the road and park on the narrow dirt strip in front of the "ranch." Bottles and a lot of odd, old stuff is everywhere. But this is not like a normal junk yard; this is an interesting, weirdly artful junk yard - bottle trees everywhere you look; typewriters, cash registers, wrist watches, galvanized tubs all arranged with various colored bottles to form what I guess would be called modern art or perhaps interpretive art would be a better name for it. Not hundreds of bottles, thousands and thousands of bottles. It's weird and it's interesting and you will have a great time just wondering around the place.

Elmer has spent a lot, a whole lot of time putting his
bottle tree ranch together

Elmer Long is the artist behind the Bottle Ranch. He used to go with his dad out into the desert and collect the objects they found, including many, many bottles. After his father passed away, Elmer was left with all of these bottles and other objects with no idea what to do with them. He finally decided to craft a bottle tree and in the year 2000 when he was finished, he liked the way the light shown through the bottles and the melody the wind created as it flowed over them so much that he decided to make another one. He hasn't stopped yet and now there are more than 200 "trees."

Check out the full blog entry on our sister site 1dustytrack.blogspot.com.

Lil Dude has plenty of time on his hands.

The Mother Taco of Taco Bell

In 1940, two brothers, Mac and Dick McDonald, opened a small eatery called McDonalds Bar-B-Que in San Bernardino. In addition to bar-b-que, they sold hamburgers. Eight years later, they were selling more hamburgers than plates of bar-b-que so they decided to revamp their restaurant and feature hamburgers as the main menu item. Since they would no longer be serving bar-b-que, they renamed their business to simply McDonalds. In 1954, milk shake mixer salesman Ray Croc came calling and was mightily impressed with the efficiency of the system the McDonalds brothers had designed.  He bought the business a year later, began franchising it, and the McDonalds chain of fast food restaurants was born.

Lil Dude in front of the Mitla Cafe at
602 N. Mt. Vernon, San Bernardino

Glen Bell, Jr. was born in 1923 and honorably served as a Marine in World War II. After being discharged in 1946, he settled in San Bernardino and in 1948 opened a hot dog stand he named Bell's Drive-In. In 1950, he sold his hot dog stand and opened another stand selling hot dogs and hamburgers - Bell's Hot Dogs and Hamburgers. His new place of business was in the West Side barrio of San Bernardino directly across the street from The Mitla Cafe, a Mexican restaurant that had been in business since 1937. The main item the Mitla Cafe was and is still famous for are their hard-shell taco's. Bell fell in love with them. After eating the tacos, he would go back to his place where he tried to figure out how to make them the way they were made at the Mitla Cafe. Try as he might though, the right combination of herbs and spices eluded him. Finally, in desperation, he began asking the owners of Mitla to teach him their secret.

A short time later, Bell began selling tacos through a side window of his business. The tacos proved so popular that between 1954 and 1955, he opened 3 Taco Tias stands. He took on a business partner, sold the 3 Taco Tias stands and opened 4 El Tacos stands in Long Beach.

Not in the safest part of town, chains and bars protect
the premises at night after closing

By 1962, the chain of McDonalds was proving to be very popular and they were opening up all over the place.  With McDonalds' continued growth right there at his back door, Bell decided they were too much competition and sold his hamburger place. He then sold his share of the 4 El Tacos to his partner and focused exclusively on selling tacos with his new place - Taco Bell. He franchised his business in 1964 and eventually sold 868 Taco Bells to PepsiCo in 1978 for $125 million. Today, the company is based in Irvine, California and has almost 7,000 locations which sell more than 2 billion tacos each year.

Check out the full blog entry at our sister site 1dustytrack.blogspot.com.

Troll at 3,333.33 Feet

Located at 120 W. Beale Street, Kingman, AZ.

In Kingman, Arizona just a couple of blocks off Route 66 is the Powerhouse Visitor Center. The Powerhouse was placed in business in 1907 to generate electricity for the city. It served in that capacity until 1938 when the Hoover Dam was completed and started providing all the electricity the city needed. The building sat unused for a few years until a group of citizens rescued it and transformed it into a Visitor Center. It also houses several other organizations, including "The Historic Route 66 Museum." The Route 66 museum is interesting and worth a visit in itself, but another intriguing reason to stop is because of a marker located about 12 feet up on the wall just to the right of the entrance. That marker is exactly 3,333.33 feet above sea level.  There is nothing magical or mystical about being 3,333.33 feet above sea level. It's just something different, another roadside oddity.

Lil Dude Troll at 3,333.33 feet above sea level

For the full blog entry, please go to our sister site - www.1dustytrack.blogspot.com.

Giganticus Headicus

To Lil Dude Troll, this is indeed
Giganticus Headicus!

About 66 miles west of Seligman, Arizona in Walapai, at the corner where Antares Road  meets Route 66 (N 35° 25.137 W 113° 48.481) is Giganticus Headicus, a 14-foot tall wood and stucco Polynesian Tiki head thingy. It sits next to a convenience store at the Kozy Corner Trailer Court. It is one of those off-beat things you sometimes run across during a road trip; so off-beat that it has almost become legendary. It was built in 2004 by Gregg Arnold so it is not a nostalgia remnant of the Mother Road, but in less than 10 years, it has become firmly associated with taking a Route 66 road trip. People from all over the world stop here to get their picture taken in front of Giganticus Headicus. It’s just kinda cool.


Check out our "Daddy Daughter Mother-Road Trip" on our sister site 1dustytrack.com.

Oatman, Arizona

"Downtown" Oatman

 Oatman, AZ is an interesting place, but today it is a tourist draw complete with fake gunfights in the street and very docile "wild" donkeys looking for a hand-out. It began as a gold mining town named Vivian because most of the residents worked for the Vivian Mining Company. A post office opened under that name in 1903, but the name was changed to Oatman in 1909 to honor a young girl, Olive Oatman, who had been rescued a few years after being taken captive by Mohave Indians in the area and sold into slavery. 

Eventually, Oatman became Arizona's largest gold-producing district and for a while had over 2,000 residents. The town's business district had a theater, a lumber company, restaurants, saloons, general stores, service stations and hotels. Upon completion, the Oatman Hotel became the first adobe structure in the county. In 1938, Clark Gable and Carol Lombard got married in Kingman and spent the first night of their honeymoon in the Oatman Hotel.

The mines began to play out in the 1930's and the town began sliding to ghost-hood.  The last mine closed in 1942 and Route 66 was realigned and bypassed the town in 1952. By the mid-1950's, nearly all the stores were boarded up and abandoned. With its rustic scenery and buildings, several movies were filmed in and around Oatman in the 1950's and '60's includingHow the West Was Won and Edge of Eternity.

Lil Dude Troll riding a "wild" Oatman donkey.

More recently though, Oatman has found new life as a tourist town. There is a little mining activity that has resumed and the old buildings have been refurbished to sell paintings, do-dads, gewgaws, souvenirs, and antiques. The numerous "wild donkeys," descendants of the burros brought in by miners back in the day, are accomplished moochers and will even try to push their mouth into your pockets if they think you have something tasty to give, but are holding out on them. 

See the full write-up at 1dustytrack.blogspot.com.

Seligman, Arizona

Perhaps no other town on Route 66 harks back to the glory days of America's Main Street more than Seligman, Arizona. When the road came through in the late 1920's, tourist traffic, along with the railroad station in town, became the main source of income. On September 22, 1978 though, I-40 opened, bypassing Seligman and the town's roads became almost deserted over-night. In 1985, the railroad closed the station and the little community was on the verge of becoming a memory, just another ghost killed by the interstate. Today though, Seligman is still alive and doing well on tourist business. 

Read about Seligman and how the town survived on our sister site www.1dustytrack.blogspot.com.

At the world famous Snow Cap Drive-In. No start-to-finish Route 66
trip is complete without a stop here!

The outside tables at the Snow Cap Drive-In

The 1936 Chevy Juan Delgadillo drove around to advertise
the Snow Cap Drive-In

One of the eclectic shops that make shopping in Seligman
a real experience

Old police car in front of a Seligman store

The Route 66 Seligman Sundries store

You can easily spend all day just walking around Seligman looking
at the many interesting items in and around the stores

Lil Dude Troll and Elvis!

Lil Dude Troll and a new buddy rocking to Elvis on the juke box

Lil Dude and his big Indian friend.

Red Garter in Williams, Arizona

Lil Dude Troll at the Red Garter Bed & Bakery

In Williams, Arizona on Route 66 is the Red Garter Bed & Bakery. A former saloon and bordello built in 1897,  this 2-story Victorian building is right across the street from the Grand Canyon Railway train which takes visitors to and from the Grand Canyon every day. 

At the front outside table, a great place to have a cup of coffee
and one of the excellent pastries offered

The interesting history of Williams, Arizona and the Red Garter Bed & Bakery can be read on our sister site  www.1dustytrack.com.

Haunted Places in Flagstaff

In 1931 Flagstaff, Arizona, Dean Eldridge, built the largest log cabin in the southwest. He filled his home with trophy heads of many animals in the region. When he died in 1936, a saddle maker, Doc Williams, bought the cabin and turned it into a nightclub named "The Museum Club." He kept all the mounted heads on the walls to add atmosphere. It is now a country music dance club. For years, stories have persisted that the place is haunted by the ghost of the original builder, Dean Eldridge as he hated country music.

The hotel Monte Vista in Flagstaff was built in 1926 and opened for business January 1, 1927. During the 1940′s & ’50′s, over 100 major movies were filmed in and around Flagstaff. Since the Monte Vista was the best hotel around, many movie stars made it their home while working on location. For years now, the Monte Vista has become a legend for being haunted. Paranormal investigators and several TV shows like “Unexplained Mysteries” have all confirmed what many, many guests have reported – there’s a lot of weird, unexplained stuff going on in this hotel! Haunted rooms, hallways, and music coming from the ballroom when nobody is there are common. The hotel's front desk staff also reports the lobby phone will often ring, but when answered, the only sound is static and an eerie, other-worldly voice saying, “Hello? Hello?”

The very haunted Hotel Monte Vista.

For a write-up on The Museum Club.

For a write-up on the Hotel Monte Vista.