Route 66 - Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma

Today was my first drive in the RV for this trip - I usually drive every second day, and today was the day. I didn't drive for more than an hour (as I spied an interesting looking cafe), but my route took us on parts of Historic US Route 66 - also known as The Mother Road. It was America's first continuous paved highway, established in 1926, and stretched from Chicago to Los Angeles. We only drove on a small section of road today, but traversed the states of Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma. You can see the small section we covered by the circle on the map below.

The blue circle shows where we travelled in 3 states on old Route 66

The original Route 66 has now been bypassed by many highways, but we got to see the start of the only remaining section (15.6 miles) of the original 9' wide pavement between Miami and Afton in Oklahoma. The start was an unsealed section of road and it looked a bit narrow, and we didn't want to chance getting started on it and then not be able to turn around if we came to a low bridge or similar obstruction. We took our photos and drove on. 

Note the old section of road in front of the RV

While I enjoy short stints of driving, I feel rather torn, as I also like to take photos as we are going along. Thankfully my trusty navigator took on camera duties and did a great job. He took the photo below as we followed the historic Route 66 markers.

Sign out the window reminding us that we were on Historic Route 66

It was right on midday when I spied Hemi's Cafe sign below. Phew! There was a parking spot almost directly opposite that I quickly pulled into, and when we walked in the front door of the cafe, I thought we had walked into a time warp. A really old fashioned diner of sorts. Great food, great prices. I got a 'one egg' all day breakfast which came with hash browns, two slices of bacon and 2 slices of toast - all for $4.50. For an extra $1 you could get an extra egg, but 1 egg is my preference. They provided a selection of jam and honey for the toast. $1 got you a freshly brewed coffee topped up as often as you liked. 

We are now safely parked right on the edge of the lake at Grand Lake RV Resort - part of the Grand Lake O' the Cherokees - which is about 1.5 hours NE of Tulsa, Oklahoma. We will stay here for 2 nights and then spend a night in Tulsa on the way to our next destination of Guthrie, Oklahoma. After washing and drying a load of towels, Murray is chilling out hitting golf balls on a driving range they have here. Very handy I must say!