Save Ferris

Today has been one of my favourite days so far, probably
because we spent almost the entirety of it on Route 66
rather than the interstate.

We made our first stop Carthage, Missouri. We wandered
around the town square, made up of antique and bric-a-brac
shops, packed full of dusty remnants of America-gone-by.
Then we headed for Carthage's historic Route 66 drive-in
theatre, which was wicked!

We stopped in a couple more towns, including Webb City,
where we found ourselves right in the midst of their annual
Spring Carnival!

We ate crappy food from burger stands and watched a local
barber shop quartet perform. The minature fairground was
probably the biggest event since 1861, when the town became
the location of the first battle of the Civil War.

We left Missouri for Kansas, following Route 66 through endless,
seemingly deserted towns. We passed the Rainbow Bridge, which
predates Route 66 and became part of the famous journey west.

There's armadillo roadkill all over the place. My emotions get
all mixed up when I see one. Excited or sad? I just don't know!

Route 66 took us through the South-Eastern corner of Kansas
before we found ourselves in Oklahoma. We pulled up in Afton
to take pictures of a now-derelict Rest Haven Motel, and went
into a weird mostly-empty grocery store where we were presented
with an autograph book to sign. Foreigners are apparently a novelty
in this town. And, likewise, this town was a novelty to us.

A man walked in behind us, holding some kind of metal torture
contraption in his hands.

"You wanna buy a meat grinder?"

Will kindly declined, and asked him why he had a meat
grinder anyway?

"I was gonna sell it to a guy" he informed us.

Well, I'm glad he cleared that one up.

We got out of freaksville before we were grinded to a pulp,
or worse, and headed for Foyil, where a man had single handedly
created a Totem Pole Park, within which lies the world's largest
totem pole. Much less freaky.

The race was then on to make it to Catoosa before the sun went
down; we had a whale to ride!

I'm not entirely sure why there's a gigantic blue whale in an
otherwise normal lake by the side of the highway in this town,
but there is.

In days gone by, the whale was a well-known rest stop for
travellers, who can walk into the whales mouth and dive off it's
tail into the lake. The whale was one of my absolute favourite
things so far.

I loved it!