Route 66 Road Trip: Part 4 - Moab to Home | Episode 16

Hello RV family – welcome to Episode 16, and the final episode of our Route 66 series. I suppose this episode isn’t really Route 66 based, but we did pick up some of it on the way home and it is the finishing leg of that trip which took us all the way down Route 66 from our home in Ontario Canada to California right to the End of the Trail Sign at Santa Monica Pier. 

• To hear all about California, tune in to our episode on Leg 3
• For all the Historical Route 66 Icons we saw between Oklahoma and Arizona, listen to Leg 2; and
• To hear how our Journey stated, and what inspired us to take the trip in the first place, check out our Leg 1 episode

As always, we couldn't have done this without a few tools along the way, namely our super-duper planning app: Roadtrippers as well as a hard copy of the EZ 66 Guide for Travellers which we picked up on the trip, but you can find on Amazon

If you want to try Roadtrippers, the basic account is free, but when you're ready to upgrade to Roadtrippers Plus, (trust us, it's worth it), you can sign up HERE and get $5 off your membership by using our exclusive listener code: RVCANUCKS

As always we feel blessed that you take the time to tune in each week and we love taking you along on this journey.

Transcript

0 (5s):
Hello,

1 (6s):
The phonetics and welcome to episode 16 of the RV Canucks podcast. And the final episode of our route 66 series. I'm kind of sad. It's coming to an end, to be honest because recounting R 2018 adventures, which covered about 23 days and just over nine 8,500 kilometers, or about 15 900 miles give or take for our American friends, it's actually made me really miss the road. So luckily we're hoping to hit the road again in 2021 for another Epic Journey so stay tuned for detail's in the new year about that one as always, I am Molina and I am joined by the stable half of the relationship, my husband, Dan Hello and together with our team and tween, we are the RV, Canucks a Canadian family of Roadtrippers who make the most of our status as part time, our viewers and lay down a ton of miles each year in our goal to see all of North America, we're glad.

1 (1m 6s):
And you've decided to join us whether as a listener or on Instagram or Facebook at RV Canucks or both, if you haven't listened to our first three episodes are our first three legs of our journey. You can check those out in episode 13 or 14 and 15 to get the skinny on what is happening so far in the Trip. So I suppose this episode in particular, isn't really a route 66 based, but it is the finishing leg of that trip, which we kind of went all the way down on route 66 and then looped back home. So on today's episode, we're going to talk about going through Nevada and what Colorado, Utah, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Home.

1 (1m 48s):
Yep. So day 15 and 16 of our trip. On day 15, we left California and we left Pismo beach and we actually had to track down South again towards LA and then just North of LA, we cut off on highway 15. I think it is that it takes you right into Las Vegas, Nevada. It was again, super hot. We've talked about this a lot. We kind of, we had a heat wave sort of following us all across the nation and back the drive up from California to Nevada is kind of barren. There's not a lot there. It's very hot. At some point they have signs on the side of the road, basically telling you to not use your air conditioner in your vehicle because of the grades and they don't want you blowing your engine.

1 (2m 28s):
So we tried that for a little bit with the truck, but sitting in a black truck with a black leather seats in a, a, a 112 degree heat was not doing it for us. So we did keep the air conditioner on and we just drove pretty slow. We kept to that 55 limit.

2 (2m 42s):
One of the things that happened over several days on this trip, as we would have to go up a Hill and we never overheated the engine, but the dash would start to read the temperature of the engine. And so when you went down the back side of the Hill, you would often cool down the engine, but one of the things you've got to keep in mind folks, a little thing in the back of your head, intuitively sometimes when you're going faster down the backside, you're cutting things off because more air is going over the engine. So maybe just to keep an eye, I guess, were to the wise, is to make sure your vehicle's well maintained, nothing to worry about, but just think about those kinds of things in how you can keep the engine little bit cooler as you're going through the mountains, especially in a way.

1 (3m 21s):
Yeah, so we did arrive in Vegas at the end of day 15. At the end of our travel day, we stayed at the Oasis Los Vegas Resorts so we're not gonna get too much in to the resort. We loved it, but we do talk about it in depth. On episode 11, where we talk about whether RV Resorts are actually worth the price and some of them are, and this was definitely one of them. It was a fantastic five star RV resort. We loved every minute of it. The only negative I would give was that the lawn I did laundry there and it was really expensive, but I think that's probably more due to the fact that water in the desert is kind of a scare. So they charge you more for the luxury of doing your laundry, but it was the perfect place. And I mean, a perfect place. If you have an RV to experience Las Vegas, like it's maybe less than two miles away from the end of the strip, you can unhook, you can take your car and you can take a cabin two, the strip in, into Las Vegas.

1 (4m 12s):
And we decided to stay there for two nights. So we had one day in Vegas and Dan and I have never been to Vegas, which is, I'm sure a surprising to all of you since we're so wild and carefree, but we kind of missed, we missed our Vegas days when we were younger, I guess. So this was actually the first time we had been so doing Vegas, I think with kids is totally different. The night we got there, we unhooked and we drove in to the strip. We found a parking garage because it was almost dark.

2 (4m 38s):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We, we stopped in the parking garage and again much like Santa Monica pier parking was cheap and easy and nothing you needed to worry about if you're using a big pickup truck, unlike being in a place like Chicago or Toronto or Montreal.

1 (4m 54s):
Yeah. So we parked in a parking garage that was really close to New York in New York. So if that, if you know the strip, it, all that kind of tells you about where we were like right near the M and M store. So of course we had kids that was nice time. We went and we saw the M and M store and we went to the Hershey store and we just walked around. We saw the New York, New York a rollercoaster, and then we crossed the road to go all the way up to the Bellagio because I wanted to see the Bellagio fountains. And I thought the kids would find that was really cool. And, you know, we can walk down the strip at night. One thing I will note is that they don't make it very easy. If you need to cross the strip, like there's bridges and stuff that will take you inside casino's and then you have to go down an escalator and then outside of the casino to get back on the other side, but like kids aren't really supposed to be in casino's.

1 (5m 40s):
So the whole thing, it was kind of confusing are kids thought they were bad ass is because they were, he went into a casino, but I don't think that we were supposed to do that.

2 (5m 46s):
Yeah. Well, and Island really wants to play poker. So we had to grab her by the color or they don't want to holler back. Yeah.

1 (5m 51s):
Yeah. They are. The kids totally thought that they could live in Vegas and be totally fine. They would just make all their money at the casino, but won. We eventually found our way and it was a long walk. Like I was exhausted by the end of it. So, you know, say it was like a mile up to the Bellagio. Like it, we probably walked three miles because of all of the criss crossing we had to do, but it did start raining. And one thing that blew my mind is that at least this part of the strip, like the, it doesn't rain a lot in the desert obviously, but the sidewalks, we were like almost like a marble finished, like they were shiney really smooth, really smooth. And so when it started to rain, like you would fall, like I was in Birkenstocks and I almost died. Like I had to Eila saved me.

1 (6m 32s):
My nine-year-old at the time I started to go down and she grabbed me and helped me out. But there was this poor girl were wearing high heels in front of us who went down with her drink about five or five times with, so yeah, if it's raining in Vegas, I don't know. I don't know if it seems like a huge liability issue or a huge safety issue, but that's one thing to note, if you've never been in Vegas, when it's raining, it gets slippery. So watch it wherever it is. Yeah. And definitely if I had a four-inch heels, like I would have been a gun or like I would have had a broken ankle.

2 (7m 2s):
Yeah. And you know what? I think we all have this image of the Las Vegas of like the city, the drinking, the gambling, you know, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. But we were out after dark, we were walking the strip, having a good time. There wasn't really any hooligans. There was lots of good atmosphere. You know, we were definitely home before midnight, but for a family of four with kids, I don't think there was anything to worry about that you could have a good time. Didn't drop a lot of money. I got to see something cool. And back to the rig.

1 (7m 32s):
Yeah. The Bellagio fountains were awesome. When the kids thought they were really cool. Well done. Yeah. We walk back to the truck and grabbed some Shaddai and then the next day we drove down the strip again, but specifically the kids want it to go. There are big fans of pond stars and they are big fans of a counting cars. So we went to golden, silver pawnshop, and two are the pawnshop. We went behind, we went to Chumley's candy shop. We met Chumley, got a picture taken with him. And then we drove over to counts, customs to look inside the shop there, which was pretty fantastic.

2 (8m 3s):
Yeah. And you know what both of those places did not, they are not heavy on your wallet. I don't, I don't remember what we spend, but it certainly wasn't a lot of money if it was anything.

1 (8m 12s):
Oh, no. I think we are just at counts constants. We had to sign like a guest book or something to get in. I don't even know that we pay it off at all.

2 (8m 17s):
I think we paid, I think I remember it counts customs, the merchandise, like a t-shirt was pretty expensive, but Hey, don't fault the guy who has got to keep the lights on. Yeah.

1 (8m 25s):
Yeah. But it was really cool. We have a couple of motorheads in our kids' so they thought it was awesome. And we just kind of drove around and experienced greater Las Vegas. We came to experience the delight known as raising Cane's chicken fingers or chicken strips, which is awesome. You guys, like we hear people talk about Chick-fil-A all the time in this puts Chick-fil-A to shame the most amazing chicken fingers, the best service. Like they brought it to our table. It's a fast food joint. And they brought our food to our table in offered us refills. And like, it was amazing. I would say that it probably compares within the service at, in and out as far as like service is concerned. Yeah. Yeah.

1 (9m 5s):
That one,

2 (9m 6s):
I think you have to know just a little side. Tangent here is, were always mesmerized by the amount of fast food joints. And so when we go to the U S we'd like to try a fast food joint we've never been to before. So we've done Sonic in and out burger, raising canes Chick-Filet and, and probably a few of Bojangles. Just, just to try that. Yeah.

1 (9m 26s):
Yeah. And for reference, I tried to look it up once, but I don't know that I could get an accurate number, but it was something like in Canada, there's something like maybe like just over 200 different brands of fast food and you can double that in the States. So there's just so much variety. So if you guys are probably, if you're listening to us from the U S you were like, okay, yeah. So white raising canes, whatever. No big deal. But to us, it's like, it's so good. And, but it is seriously good. Like just the other day I was watching my Instagram reals and there was a hilarious video about a guy who had gotten pulled over by the cops because somebody had called the cops on him for doing jello shooter's in his car, but he was drinking the raising cane sauce that came with his chicken fingers.

1 (10m 8s):
So when the cop pulled him over, he had to show him like, it's not jello shooters. It was a little plastic cup of raising cane sauce. And that's how good the sauces you will literally be like, lik it out of the container. It's so good. So if you've never been, put it on your list, you'll want to do it. You know,

2 (10m 23s):
In Vegas was really easy to get around parking, driving things, to see no traffic jams. I remember we saw the airport, which the girls thought was cool because it was a really close to downtown. I think it was, we headed out after, at the end of it all, we saw the Las Vegas motor Speedway, just lots of little cool stuff is what makes the trip kind of neat. It doesn't, it doesn't cost a lot of money if you're a cheapskate like me.

1 (10m 45s):
Yeah, for sure. And I think if we had another day, we probably would have driven out and did the Hoover dam. But like I said, we only had one full day in Vegas and the girls wanted to swim in the most amazing pool at the RV Resorts. So we spent a lot of time just chilling, honestly, and getting laundry done and getting prepared for the next leg of our trip, which took us through Arizona to Moab, Utah, which was really only like six and a half hour drive from Las Vegas. So it was a nice, easy drive. I did get us lost while I took a wrong turn in, during construction on the inner state, just outside of Las Vegas. So that took half an hour to figure out and get back on the right route. But before long we were on our way. Yeah.

2 (11m 21s):
And it's just a scenic drive. I think. Listen folks, once you get to Moab, Moab, it was another change in geography in that was what was it amazing over these last 23 days? But we were on just the changes and the geography. Utah's just amazing. There's tons of like scenic lookouts and places to just pull over and take pictures. Just a really good ride. I'll tell you, keep an eye on when you're going to get gas. We didn't have any problems we did coming into California. But one of my little tip is to keep 20 gallons on the tongue of the trailer, a little Jerry CAN and we use that. So it was really cool. Just that whole drive in was just one of those chill days in a truck, listen to podcasts, eating and food and looking at sites, taken pictures and stress in your life.

1 (12m 3s):
Yeah. And Moab is super like red rocks look at Ryan's its like Mars, its just, it's amazing. It's like your stepping in on to another planet. We stayed just outside of Moab, proper on interstate one 91. So we stayed at the arch view RV resort, which is a sun. Are we Resorts property? Well-maintained a very clean, we had no issues. The washrooms were a little bit dated. I think I showered there, but super clean. Like it just was a little bit older.

2 (12m 29s):
You used the pool, just a really cool here's what's really neat about this place, your right up against BLM land Bureau of land management, right?

1 (12m 38s):
Yeah. You're right on the edge of arches national park, basically,

2 (12m 41s):
Which to Canadians is the equivalent of crown land. And so at your camp site, if you ATV, you can leave from your campsite on your ATV. If you mountain bike, you can leave on your mountain bike. If your run walk or whatever it is you want to do on that land, the Trail literally comes right to your campsite literally right. To your campsite. Yeah. And so there's tons of things that you can do. Scenic drives. We went downtown in to Moab because we were there for two nights. We went down into the town, there's a little municipal museum. We went to the tourist information and then you want to tell them about the dinosaur hunt.

1 (13m 18s):
Yeah. So we found out about the dinosaur tracks site at the MOA museum, which again, at the time it's, it's a small museum, its a two-story museum, but its not very big at all. Yeah. Like Dan is that it's a municipal museum. It's primarily run by volunteers. It was good for kids. Like they had a scavenger hunt, all laid out that they give you a piece of paper and you have to find, you know, different exhibits like clues and different exhibits to take it. And then you get a little prize. Like it was, it kept there interest. I think it was really cool. I actually also we learned about moabs history as a uranium mill site, which I didn't know. And they are actually still in the process of moving all of that uranium out, like trucking it out of Mohab, still into another secure location, somewhere else in Utah.

1 (13m 59s):
So we learned a lot about of that. We just didn't even know it's not just famous for, you know, trails and dinosaurs, but one cool thing actually in the museum or the people at the museum told us about the dinosaur tracks side, but they also had to go out back of the museum. There's like a little portable and we have some volunteers today and they're actually working on some dinosaur bones. So some lady was just like canoeing down the river and saw something, sticking out of her rock and called it in. And basically it turned out to be a dinosaur fossil and they've dug it out. And then they have volunteers at the museum who is it's, you know, it's all wrapped in plaster when they, when they take it out of the field and then the volunteers kind of chip it away as much as they can.

1 (14m 41s):
And then the scientists come back in and kind of do the detail work, but it just fascinated me. It was really cool. The girls got to see it and touch it. Yeah.

2 (14m 46s):
Yeah. And when you do on these trips, that's one thing maybe just keep in the back of your mind, hit the local tourist information center, the local museum. Cause they've got tons of information. It's really inexpensive. And it's when you stopped there that you learned about something else that you can check out and that makes the trip really enjoyable to find out those little nuggets of information. 'cause that's one thing like America does just awesome. The Welcome centers, tourist information, all those things are just amazing. Top-notch yeah. Yeah. And so Moab to me is not pretentious, but its got that Doorsy feel like say Whistler and you know

1 (15m 20s):
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I would agree with that. And you know, we went to both the museum in the information center, we went to the Moab diner, which was fantastic. I had a really good burger. It's kind of like a fifties style diner, really good food. We went to the grocery store. That's actually where we discovered Kodiak cakes like the Kodiak, a pancake mix and muffin mix. Its fantastic. So we went to the grocery store and then we went to the dinosaur, a track site, which is the mill Canyon dinosaur trail. So this was right, right outside of where we camped. And you just have to look for like a mile marker. And I think it's around mile marker one 41 on the interstate, one 91. And so you've kind of have to just watch the mile marker. And then you see this called mill Canyon road, but its really not signed or you just have to watch it.

1 (16m 3s):
And then you turn off the interstate off the highway and then you were going to its going to, you're going to see a sign that says private land, but that's okay. You just kind of cross over, you'll cross over a set of railroad tracks and then you're on BLM land and then you just follow this kind of dirt track road in, I don't know, it wasn't very far back from the road, like half a kilometer or maybe not even, you know, it wasn't too far out of the too far back, but we saw some antelope. I remember we pulled over and there was an antelope just in the field, like a Stone's throw away from us. So we got some great photos of them and we stayed there for the longest time until they kind of made their way. The girls saw that it was pretty cool. And then we were, we wrapped around this dirt track road and then there's this dinosaur tracks site and its like this Lake or mud patch that I guess dinosaurs walked in and then it got covered up for years and years and years.

1 (16m 49s):
And The, there is the coolest footprints in there. And the end they have probably going to say like half a dozen or more different dinosaur tracks. You know, there's a little boardwalk that kind of goes over top because obviously they don't want you walking right on it. But they have a sign up that tells you what the dinosaur was, how big it was. And then it points out exactly. Kind of illustrates which footprints are theirs. There was a, an alligator slide that, that was kind of, kind of, you could see a picture of it coming out to the Lake, just the coolest place. And we were the only ones there. Like I don't think a lot of people go there and a lot of people don't know about it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

2 (17m 21s):
It's a self talk. And we found out about that at the tourist information museum. It's self-directed at your own pace, doesn't cost any money, just a couple things were to the wise, don't get in over your head if your vehicle isn't supposed to go off-road and so we didn't really need to worry cause I don't think we were on anything worse than a gravel road, but there was more than one story out there of people taking the rental car and get it stuck. So just don't get outside of your skill level or your vehicle's abilities. But this was easy to get too with a half dozen pick up truck. Yeah. Never needed four wheel drive. We did kind of explore a little bit more, but we cut it short cause at a high end of the day, he didn't have a winch. I didn't have a shovel. But lots of cool stuff. I'm a member. There was also a Bureau of land management, camping, horse paddocks, all of those kinds of things.

2 (18m 5s):
Like we didn't even get to try that stuff out, but just so much more than that,

1 (18m 8s):
The dinosaur track side is actually right beside the courthouse rock campground, which is four or five sites on BLM land. I think there was a small fee for those ones. Some of them are free, but that one I think is about $15 a night and they had, yeah, they had a little kind of horse shelter. Like if you were, if you were on horseback, you can stay pitch a tent. You can definitely bring in an RV in there. You wouldn't wanna go too much further than that campground like Dan side because we did actually use our four-by-four and we did go further than that campground, but it gets really Sandy and there was a storm really. And so at the end of the sun was going down and we had no water. So that's why we actually did turn around. But I would say if you were going to go any further than that courthouse, rock campground, you would probably wanna be in like an ATV or a Jeep or something that could really handle that Sandy terrain, like Dan said, but definitely I would say, I mean it's a dry camping, so you have no services, but I would definitely stay there if we can see if we went back.

1 (19m 5s):
Yeah.

2 (19m 5s):
And that was our day in Moab. Really great sunsets, lots of picture taking opportunities. Really just one of those cool little things, which I don't think it's talked about it. Yeah.

1 (19m 14s):
Yeah. We went for like a little trail walk inside, like in arches on our way as well. But there's, there's a lot, I mean you can spend a week there and still not seeing enough. So we kinda just had to do victory tour or I guess like a short tour and just kind of make notes for when we want to go back again. But Moab, I think still is probably one of you are the most special places that we've ever been.

2 (19m 35s):
And then from there we took off and went through Colorado. So do you want to talk about that a little bit? Yeah.

1 (19m 39s):
Oh yeah. So originally, so we stopped in Georgetown, Colorado when we visited the visitor center there, it was a good place to stretch our legs, cutest town ever like the whole town I think is like a heritage building. Like it is amazing. It's the cutest town. They have a great railway called the Georgetown loop railway. It was like a steam train that takes you in the loop tour around the mountain. And, and, and Georgetown is kind of like down in the Valley. So you're kind of surrounded on both sides by mountains. I was really just picturesque and very beautiful, but we had opted instead of doing the cost and the time to do the Georgetown Lupe railway, we moved that end, did the grand Canyon railway. So we didn't get to do the Georgetown Lupe, but I would go back to Georgetown in a heartbeat. I think it's a really good jumping off point.

1 (20m 21s):
If you are a hiker, there's a ton of trails in the area mountain trails. And I just think it's a fantastic place to go to an overall. It doesn't take us. We, we, we stayed over night in Colorado, but they didn't take us to, to long to get through Colorado. We stopped for lunch and that no-name Colorado at that rest area. Yep.

2 (20m 39s):
A great rest area, washrooms green space, lots of room to park the trailer. And there was lots of other RV years in their, you know, just throw a blanket. I had some snacks and lunch and kids played a bit of a Frisbee and stuff like that. Yeah.

1 (20m 52s):
Yeah. And I actually went back and I try to find the name of the place we stayed in Colorado, but I actually couldn't even find it. Cause it was one of those super last minute RV Parky. Like it was getting dark, there was a storm, it was raining. And we were like, okay, we're back to like, we needed to stop for the night. So I jumped on RV Parky and I found this like the only RV park in the area. And I was like, okay, fine. I called the guy. And he was like, yeah. And he gave us a really confusing instructions on how to get there. And he's like, you know what, don't worry about it. Just come to like this exit and like call me when you're five minutes away and I'll meet you and guide you in. So we called, he met us at the exit where we got off the interstate and he guided us in. So it was kind of an RV park in transition.

1 (21m 33s):
I'm going to say it was a newer view Park

2 (21m 36s):
And he was still building it. And there was a few people that were living there full-time and you know, Hey, you were just in the middle of a farmer's field and it was pouring rain. It was muddy. Everybody got in, we had a good meal, we went to bed and when you leave town, you have to start at the coffee, shop five blocks away and pay for your site there. But Hey, got the job done.

1 (21m 53s):
Yeah. Oh for sure. It was great. And on, on a rainy night, I think we showered, it had full hookups and we just had a nice cozy dinner inside the RV. And like Dan said, we had to find this cafe in this tiny little one horse town and pay and it was no problem. And then we got on the road and headed out. We actually had breakfast at the <inaudible> diner, which is, you will know it if you see it because its got a gigantic, like an, a full size, like an actual, a pink Cadillac on top of their Sign fifties or earlier vintage dial diner. And if they had a really good breakfast. So yeah.

2 (22m 23s):
Yeah. And so maybe just a couple of things I remember when we drove like kind of Missouri, Oklahoma, Arizona New Mexico, that whole stretch out to California there. It wasn't uncommon to see one or two accidents at around two, three o'clock in the afternoon on the highway because the highway's long and straight in the sun is probably in your eyes. What was really interesting about Colorado? The road's through Colorado, we're through the mountains, there its ups and downs and twists and turns and had a bad road and California, pardon me, a bad road in Colorado is like a good road in Michigan. I don't want to turn anybody off it. You don't need to worry if you're a novice, but you've got to focus on your driving. And there wasn't one accident. And I just wanted to take a break here that I got the best gas mileage of the Trip going through Colorado going up and down the mountains.

2 (23m 6s):
And so the West side of Colorado is like really through the mountains. And by the time you get past Denver and you get to the East side, close to Kansas, it really flattens out. So just something that I remember as a guy focused on doing the driving and his gas mileage, I want to say,

1 (23m 20s):
Oh, should I give you a slow clap right now? I feel like I need to clap. So we're Colorado meets Kansas. I think the sky was really cool. Like we saw a couple of storms roll off way in the distance. Like it's a really flat, you can see for a really long time. And I think at one point we almost thought that a tornado, my role through the sky was just amazing, but it's kind of cool to go from the Valley's so deep that you almost feel claustrophobic going through them too, you know, four hours down the road and is completely fine. Yeah.

2 (23m 48s):
Yeah. And I think there is a couple of times when we were starting to think, do we need to pull over here? And what do we do? But like some of those storms are just amazing point being don't discount the planes or the flat spaces. Cause there's always amazing stuff to see.

1 (24m 0s):
Yeah. So in Kansas we made a quick stop at the Basilica of st. Fidelis, which is also called the cathedral, have the Plains, which is this beautiful cathedral Basilica in a very small little town in Kansas. And it's kind of like out in the middle of nowhere, like it's a tiny, tiny town Hamlet. I would even say like there wasn't even any stores or anything that I saw, but gorgeous church, beautiful twin towers that are like 140 feet in the air. And we were the only ones that are, again, like you just kind of opened the door to the church and show yourself around. And there was a couple of brochures, but it was a beautiful place to stop and big, big parking lot that we stopped in. And so it was just nice to see that architecture kind of out in the middle of nowhere really.

1 (24m 43s):
And then we had On to Kansas city for the night.

2 (24m 47s):
Yep. And that, why are we still glad were married after that? That I thought that might have been a, there was nowhere to Camped. There was no way we couldn't find an RV spot to pull it into that night. Yeah.

1 (24m 57s):
Yeah. We stayed at Cracker barrel, which was fine. We like Cracker barrel. It's a great place to stay, but it was incredibly hot that day we ate at Cracker barrel. It was stifling. The problem was that it was hot and there was a zero When like you could stand outside and not even a leaf in a tree was moving. It was just like stagnant error. And this has nothing to do with Cracker barrel, but there are so hospitable and fantastic that Cracker barrel. We even got free coffee in the morning. Anybody who stayed there and got free coffee, but we went in and had breakfast Anyway we did run the generator a little bit because we didn't bring the generator on that trip. And we ran it before we went to bed to go to sleep. But the problem was this Cracker barrel backed on to the holiday Inn or something. So people's hotel rooms are like the trucks parked basically right outside of people's hotel rooms.

1 (25m 40s):
So at like seven o'clock at night, we ran the generator for half an hour to cool down the trailer with the air conditioner. So it stayed cool for maybe a couple of hours, but gosh, you guys like, like I went out like I'm in my skivvies, like in my PJ's and in my best 90, I'm not even kidding you. And I literally went outside at three o'clock in the morning and I stood outside the trailer, like a crazy person with like my arms outstretched, just like hoping to catch a breeze. And there was nothing and I cried that night. It was that hot. I was like a kid do it. And the kids came out of there bedroom and they slept with one of them crawled up on the table, I think like in the main living area because their bedroom was stifling. So I ended up digging out a one of those like battery powered fans that you would like carry around with you.

1 (26m 22s):
And it has like a little spray bottle that you would like miss yourself in. And I burned through all of the batteries we had in the trailer and I just lay it on the coach in the living area of the trailer and just blasted this tiny little Phan on my face until I fell asleep. It was the one that it was the worst sleep I've ever had. Yeah.

2 (26m 38s):
Yeah. And just somebody out there as saying, why is this guy not running his generator at night or the generator we have? We didn't originally, we didn't re originally by this generator for our vision. We bought it before we even had the trailer. We bought it because we lived in a place where the power went out in a lot. So I think what I want to do before our next big trip is to get a proper RV generator, a proper, let me back up a proper generator that we can use for our vision that we can put in the back of the truck.

1 (27m 3s):
Yeah, for sure. And you know, noise makes a huge difference. Like this thing is so loud, it would probably rattle windows. So we didn't want to be bad neighbors and disturbed, you know, the people sleeping in the hotel or jeopardized the ability for other people to camp they're at this Cracker barrel. You know, if, if it ended up getting shut down or something because the hotel complained, you know, who knows, but yeah.

2 (27m 26s):
Yeah. So we made trails out of there and we went to Marcel lean. Do we want to talk about that? Yeah. So yeah,

1 (27m 30s):
We made it a little detour in Missouri and we want to only about a 125 miles into Marceline, Missouri, which was actually Walt Disney's hometown. I mean, he lived in Kansas city in a couple of different places, but when he was about nine or 10, they own his family owned a farm in Marcelene Missouri. And that was actually, he used at the downtown of Marlene to model the Disney lands, like the main street USA, kind of a small town feel. And they have put a museum in that town called the Walt Disney hometown museum. So that was something we really wanted to see. And it was, it was a little bit out of the way that I'm so glad that we went. I'm so glad we went, it was the cutest little town. There's not a lot going on there. I think its past its hay day.

1 (28m 11s):
For sure. I think that is probably the best way to put it, but what a cool museum, it's not very big. It's in the old rail station and the railway like plays a huge part in this town over the years. And we actually met one of the ladies who runs it. Her name is <inaudible> and she's actually getting up there. I think she is close to 90 now, but we went and we met with her and she took us into a couple of the exhibits and she explained what a few of the artifacts we're in the museum and the exhibits. And then she told us, you know, a super cool story like her and her husband were actually friends with Walt Disney and his wife Lillian. And they came into town. They invited them into town to open up the town swimming pool that they had named after Walt Disney.

1 (28m 54s):
And they of course agreed. And, and I know it has this great story about how everybody in the town got together, but they were kind of the hotel at that time was even past its prime time, even back then in the sixties. And so they were, they didn't want to put up, you know, Walt Disney in this, this little hotel that wasn't very good shape. So they decided to house them in China's and her husband's house. I think his name was rush, but they didn't have any good furniture. She said like all of the issues that we spend, all our money building this house and it had air conditioning, it was the only house or the only building in town that had had it had air conditioning, but we spend all our money on the house. She said that we couldn't afford any furniture. So they had like hand me down furniture, right? And so they basically went around the town and with our pickup trucks and they gathered all of the nicest pieces of furniture from everybody's houses, brought them in and like staged the house so that it would have a nice furniture for Walt Disney and his wife to stay.

1 (29m 47s):
And then I just thought that wasn't the cutest storey. And I'm so glad that we went in, saw some of these exhibits about his early life and you know, stories about his generosity. And it was just really neat. And I think if you are a true Disney fan and you have to make the drive there and if only to support this town and support the museum that runs completely on donations. So that's something that was definitely the highlight of our trip. After visiting the museum, we went just a couple of miles down the road to the old farm or a Walt Disney or, or the Disney family lived. And there was a barn in the back, that's a recreation of the original bar and that was there and you can actually sign it inside and put a little message in. So our girls signed that inside the barn, which was really sweet and there's a tree Outback called the dreaming tree.

1 (30m 31s):
A, that was a actually where Walt Disney started all of his cartoon ideas and all of these things on his property and that original tree, I think he got hit by lightning or something, but they had like a sapling of it somewhere and they ended up planting this new sapling and they use like dirt and water from Disneyland. They brought in dirt and water from Disneyland to plant this new sapling that's growing, which was kind of cool. So again, I'm nerding out, but it was, it was really fun. So from Marci and we had a nice lunch in the park, the town park was great. It had a nice little band shell and washrooms and it's right outside of the museum. So we just kind of pulled the trailer around, parked on the side of the road, got our picnic lunch, done up in the kitchen and brought it out in the eight in the park.

2 (31m 13s):
Yeah. Just to keep in mind, like from a logistics point of view, we talked about pulling into Colorado when we pulled into Colorado on Camped for the night. We did not unhitch when we got to Kansas, we did not unhitch at the Cracker barrel parking lot. Everything that Molina has described, we did towing a trailer around the town without a problem. We have an unhitched in days at this point. So it's really easy to get around yeah. With the 29 foot trailer and right. And so don't get intimidated by that, you know, dive off into these little towns and see what little towns are made on in Canada and the USA.

1 (31m 45s):
Yeah. Oh for sure. That's a really good point. So when we were done on our picnic lunch, we hopped back in the truck and we drove out to Springfield, Illinois. So in total we went, you know, 320 miles, maybe that day. So not a lot of drive time, but we spent a number of hours in Mahershala and which kind of took up that day. But we stayed at the Illinois state fairgrounds and this was amazing. They were actually setting up for a horse show, which we didn't know, so they could have been at capacity. Luckily I think they had one service site left and we would have just, I mean, its fine. We would have just parked in the parking lot with no services. And that would of been okay to, but we had heard that it was a great place to camp. It's a cheap place to camp.

1 (32m 26s):
And I think it was like $29. We've got there at about nine o'clock at night. And he said, yeah, there's one service site left. And I think it was $29. You pointed out the bathrooms. He said to her back in here, you are all set to go out and we hooked up, we showered, we ate inside. We got to watch a really cool lightning storm from the fairgrounds. That was kind of neat. And then we checked out the next day, but that would have been day 22 by this point when we checked out.

2 (32m 50s):
Yeah. And I would say, we didn't do, we didn't do this, but I think both of us had the same thought at the time. Like if we ever come back here, this will be a great spot. It's not a, there's not a lot of grass. There's a, you're not going to have a fire. But if you want to do Park a few hours from Chicago and like take the train in, we thought about maybe this would be a good spot for us to research that really inexpensive, really friendly, really safe. So maybe just keep that in the back of your mind, if Chicago is on your list, that may be, this is a spot that you want to check it out. But yeah. So we checked out.

1 (33m 17s):
Yeah. And when we left the fellow that was there at the fairgrounds, he said, Oh, he's like, are you going to go see the link in monument and were like, Oh, well we kind of have to hit the road and he's going to see those tree's right there. And he was like, its on the other side of those trees. So it hit it on your way out. So we were like, okay, cool. So we drove in to the cemetery, it's in the cemetery in Springfield there, but we hit it again. No problem parking. They had a ton of parking. And so we just, we just rode around and I mean, it's very obvious once you enter the graveyard, which one is the Lincoln monument? It's gigantic, there's a house, a purpose-built house right beside it where, you know, the graves keeper or the monument keeper would live. I don't know if they still do or not, but it was a very cool monument. You can go inside it, which was a surprise to me. You can't miss it. Yeah. You can't miss it. It was just fantastic.

1 (33m 58s):
They had a couple of statues outside in a ton of plaques in explaining what, what everything was. But then you go inside and it's kind of like a circular mausoleum kind of inside where he's buried. And it was his wife I think is his wife's Baird in there too. I can't remember if it, but it was, it was nice. It was super cool. Very reverent

2 (34m 17s):
Are those things that were like, Oh man, I didn't know we were going to do that today. And it was really awesome. You know, it's just a nice surprise, but a nice extra little treat for the day. And again, Hey we did not unhitch. We still have not unhitched since before Colorado where we were doing this with the trailers folks. Like, is it? Yeah.

1 (34m 31s):
Yeah. And actually we did not have to wait till we got home. Yeah. Because we stayed that night. So day 22, we saw the Lincoln monument and we busted all the way through to Lansing, Michigan. That was about six hours without stops. So we, you know, obviously stopped to eat and use the rest areas and things like that. But we just stayed on points that last night we had points on our hotel points for that we had gathered up and we stayed the night at a hotel in Lansing, Michigan,

2 (34m 56s):
A good example of how do you travel further and make it easier. And that's were we, we made strategic use of a hotel right in the next morning we, we had breakfast for free. We were already hitched up and off. Yeah.

1 (35m 8s):
Yeah. And the great thing about that is that we were only four and a half hours from home that final day. So even if we had a weight at the boarder, even if, you know, This, even if that, even if we had to stop for gas or whatever, we knew, we were still going to get home at a reasonable time. And that's why we did the hotel side of the night before, because that allowed us, I think we were home just after lunch and then we got everything unpacked. We cleaned the trailer and we hit it up and we put it back into storage. Yes. Yeah.

2 (35m 31s):
I think your mom made us dinner that night. She kind of made dinner for us. I mean, so a couple of little things here we stopped in, which is maybe an hour and a half from home just with time to use the washroom. And it was at a service center in Ontario. So Woodstock, Ontario. And there was a, there was a family in a, a chartered bus, not a full school bus, something a little bit smaller, like a shuttle bus. And they were having some trouble, they were trying to get the grandma's birthday party and Toronto, and I think a couple of times, but I think a couple of ladies had been into the sauce. So they were a little bit happy. And in a couple of the gentlemen were worried. We were going to miss grandma's birthday and the driver didn't know what was wrong with the vehicle. And so that was where we pulled out the spare fuse kit that we keep for our trailer. It popped into a new future for something or other that had blown on him.

2 (36m 12s):
And we got them on their way and hopefully they made at the grandmas and hopefully most of them were still standing up when they got there. Right.

1 (36m 17s):
Yeah. I wish I had totally forgot about that. Yeah. They had like a party, but it was a party bus atmosphere, but they were all Scottish and they were, they had flown in from Scotland, a number of them to go to this 90th birthday party. And so we, yeah, we pulled out the fuses and were like, yeah, it was kind of fuse. Do you need it? I think we give them a spare just in case it blew again. Yep. But our girls do Highland dancing. So when they found out what they were, when we found out they were from Scotland, like our girls dance for them while they were off, like the other guys were off changing the view's, which was really cute. They did some Highland dancing for them, which they thought it was awesome. Yeah.

2 (36m 46s):
Oh yeah. So like, listen, those are those things that we've talked about already, like make use of a hotel or keep the spare fuses, you know, give somebody a spare fuse. Cause you never know when you are going to need help from somebody else to pay it forward and keep the gas handy. Cause sometimes you just need 20 gallons to get to where you need to go. I think it was one story I had forgotten to tell you. I think in the last episode I had knocked one of the bar's off the, the hitch, pull it into the Pismo beach campground. Well, I did it again later on and I needed the tool kit to kind of pull things back on and get us down the road. So we had the toolkits. So those are all of a really simple little things. He just keeps your Trip going along. And it doesn't because it to become a disaster than it costs you an hour here and there. Absolutely. But you'll make it up somewhere else.

2 (37m 27s):
But if you hadn't had the fuses, you hadn't had the gas, you hadn't had the toolkit. That would have been a disaster. And it wasn't because you have those little things that are all real cheap that make the trip so much easier.

1 (37m 37s):
Yeah, for sure. And I think if you want to see a really good list, go to the show notes for episode 10 or listen to episode 10 because we actually list our pick for like your top 10 RV essentials and stuff like the tool kit and the, in the fuses and stuff are in there because it's all great to have like a fancy Craig coffee makers and InstaPot's and like countertop ice makers. But literally when the poop hit the fan, which is going to happen at some point, you want to have those basic, those essential. So maybe check out episode 10 if you're interested in seeing that list. So that's it, that's the route 66. That's 23 great days of our lives.

2 (38m 10s):
Yeah. And I think what I've always said, this a good Trip always wants you to go back because you have miss something and we missed so much on this Trip you can probably do it three times and still not see everything in and be satisfied each day.

1 (38m 21s):
Yeah. The girls are itching itch. And for another trip down route 66 because they know some of it, I think there are probably, maybe it's just their age, but they feel like they are starting to forget some of it. I certainly, I have not forgotten anything, but like I said, I mean, if you look at Leg too on Episode what 13, when you look at it, like in those two days between Oklahoma and Arizona how many times we stopped and we could stop that many times again and not see the same things. Like there's so much to see you on route 66. Yeah.

2 (38m 48s):
Yeah. Yeah. And just listen to folks just to push your boundaries are just a little bit more were on episode 16. But I remember back at the beginning one, two or three, I don't know which episode I was telling you about the headless Deere that we ran over the top of it. So, you know, push your boundaries, your, your weekend and camper. And when you go for a week and then a little bit longer, and then just a few hundred or more miles than a few little tips in, you'll be, you'll be crossed in the car, out our queen of the road came of the room. Yeah. It was probably a good spot to end it.

1 (39m 16s):
Okay. And that, no, that's it. And we'll see you next week. Have a good week everybody. Bye bye.

2 (39m 21s):
Yeah. <inaudible>.