Day 8: Clinton, OK to Amarillo, TX

Chillin' on the Cadillac Ranch

As we drove away from Clinton this morning, we only had about 70 miles left in Oklahoma on Route 66.

66' Super Service Station in Alanreed, TX

Those last 70 miles contained the little towns of Canute, Sayre, Erick and Texola, each of them containing their own remnants of the old route. As we passed through the towns, you could visibly see the towns aging with lots of old relics and not many new businesses to replace them.

Abandoned Motel sign in Erick, TX

This sign is all that is left in
McLean, TX

Caboose in National Route 66
Museum

Opera House display in National Route 66 Museum

One last bigger town that we drove through in Oklahoma was Elk City. This contained the National Museum of Route 66 - a village built from back in the day where you could walk through and inside the buildings to get a visual of how people used to live. It was well spread out and neatly set up with lots of era-specific tools and items.

Texas landscape

As we approached the Texas border, the landscape that was already stretched out, starting stretching itself some more and soon we could see as far as the horizon let us - a vast stretch of lands with not much else on it. The heat was also starting to get drier as we drove along.

Many of the buildings stand empty in downtown
McLean, TX.

Route 66 in Texas has been very interesting so far. Towns are easily 20+ miles apart and even when driving through them, they are usually only a couple hundred people large. Some towns on the map that we drove through barely had a couple dozen houses.

Boarded up theater ready to be restored in McLean, TX

It was very visible that these towns continue to suffer from the interstate passing them by as buildings are nothing but old and half of them abandoned. In Sayre, the town had the downtown theater boarded up with a fundraising thermometer in front of it to raise the $100K to restore it.

It was a bit shocking to see the results of "modernization" through the eyes of these towns and quite chilling.

Dirt Route 66 in Texas

Old Route 66 cut off to make room for the
Amarillo airport

Another sweet point on the ride today was the nice 8-mile stretch on the old dirt road from McLean to Alanreed, TX. In the middle of nowhere, this sandy road created visions of how things must have been with people travelling on it.



Other than that, Route 66 hugged the interstate very closely in Texas but offered several stretches where the speed limit is 70mph (on the frontage road!). At one such stretch, I had to test our Ford Edge out a little and got it up to 100mph on the 2-lane route. I also got to say I got pulled over by a cop - not because of speeding, but because I forgot to turn on my signal at a turn. No ticket, thank goodness, but low and behold, the cop lived in Belgium for 5 years and even spoke a little Flemish. Small world....

Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, TX

Final stop for today was Cadillac Ranch. This famous site is NOT located on Route 66 but we had to swing by to see what the fuss was all about. The ten cadillacs sit with their nose down in the dirt on a ranch in the middle of nowhere. As people stop by, you can spray graffiti on them as several were doing while we were there which makes it a very colorful display as you can see. I read that a couple times a year, they clean them up, but they never stay graffiti-free for very long.














Dinner tonight was at The Big Texan, a steakhouse that offers a free 72oz steak to those who finish it in less than an hour. "Many have tried and many have failed." I only ventured with the 18oz ribeye but it was a nice experience!

Miles driven today: 194
Time driven today: 6hrs 15min

Total miles driven: 1,199
Total time driven: 40hrs 25min