Cars, Cars and more Cars

#route66 #pontiac #galena #cars #servicestations #BobWaldmire #cadillacranch

Funnily enough when travelling Route 66 cars play an important part in the experience. Our first experience of this was when we visited the Route 66 Hall of Fame and museum, in Pontiac.
Here we were looking forward to seeing the artist Bob Waldmire's converted bus, unfortunately this had been moved, although his earlier mode of transport the campervan was on show. We did get to see examples of the many images from along the route he had painted over the years.

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We also visited the Pontiac-Oakland museum to view the impressive cars there. Many were a thing of beauty but I would have hated to try to park them in our local supermarket car spaces!
​ A shame they stopped making them in 2010.

Our next visit was to the National Museum of Transport outside of St Louis. A fascinating tour of a range of unique cars including a recent one that had travelled in Australia using Solar power.

Arriving in the small town of Galena, which has been made famous by it's connection to the Pixar movie Cars, and is home to "Tow Tater," the 1951 boom truck that inspired the character Mater in Cars.
Around the town there were other cars made to look like the characters as well as the gift shop that was on the same theme. 

Our next car themed stop was completely different with a visit to Cadillac Ranch (Amarillo, Texas): Created in 1974 by members of the art group Ant Farm (Chip Lord, Hudson Marquez, and Doug Michels). It features ten vintage Cadillacs buried nose-first into a dust field, where public spray-painting is actively encouraged. 
Here the group were able to join in and leave a reminder of the visit, We are now a permanent part of this artwork although my name will be sprayed over eventually.

As we drove through the Painted Forest National park on the side of the road was this reminder of the cars that drove along this route The Highway of Dreams 1932 Studebaker.

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In other towns, garages and their cars have been used to advertise the route or provide interesting places to stop along the way. In Williams Arizona there are several examples of this with a store selling old car parts and cars on display.

This theme continued in Seligman AZ where several stores were set up to advertise Route 66.

The last experience of cars was an unusual one! As we were driving to the town of Kingman, our last stop before Las Vegas, we kept overtaking classic cars driving along the road. There were so many we soon realised that something was going on.
Arriving in Kingman AZ we realised that there was a car rally meeting and asking around we found that it was the start of a timed race. Some beautiful old cars, although, I'm not sure I would fancy racing through the desert, in the heat, with no air conditioning in many of them!

There were even two of my favourite British cars the MGBGT and the MGA. They seemed very small compared to the American cars and cramped for two people and all the accessories they need for the race.

Travelling on this long stretch of the original route 66 road and seeing all these cars that had once travelled it or had been associated with different aspects of it, was an unexpected bonus for all of us  on the coach trip.