Elk City - or where we crossed Route 66

Thursday, May 2nd

Happy 60th birthday to me!  When we first started planning this trip, I tried to think about where I wanted to be to celebrate my 60th birthday, but as the itinerary evolved, I knew that if it were important to me to be in a particular place, it was going to complicate logistics.  

So we started the day leaving the Quartz Mountain State Park Lodge and headed north towards Elk City, Oklahoma.  Elk City was about an hour's drive, and it is also home to the National Route 66 and Transportation Museum.  Like the Natchez Trace Parkway, our path was only going to cross, not follow at this point.  (Although later in our trip we will be on Route 66 coming out of Illinois into Missouri.)  But since we were passing through, we stopped to check it out.

The iconic Route 66 sign beckons you to the museum, and Myrtle, the giant Kachina doll, is there to greet you.

The museum is part of the Elk City Museum Complex, so our ticket (I got the Senior price as their Seniors start at age 60 - of course it was the same as AAA would have been) included access to the Old City museum, the Rodeo museum, and some other exhibits.  We walked through those as well.

The Route 66 and Transportation Museum part was pretty interesting; there was a really good film about how transportation evolved in the U.S. and how Route 66 became the Mother Road.

Here are a few pictures from the museum.

You can take a virtual tour of the Route 66 Museum via this YouTube videol