Route 66 - Shamrock

From Amarillo, we continued east across the Texas Panhandle. And along the way I saw these really cool old grain silos, so I exited the freeway and stopped to get a few pictures. They sit along the interstate access road, which was actually Route 66 back in the olden days.



The silos are probably all that remains of the town of Boydston, which was a little farming community that only ever had a population of 40 people.





The silos used to sit along some Rock Island train tracks, which connected El Reno, Oklahoma and Tucumcari, New Mexico. The tracks, and the little town that they once passed through, are all long gone.



After that we drove to the small town of Shamrock, where we stopped for the night. Shamrock is home to one of the most iconic buildings along Route 66 - the Tower Station and U-Drop Inn. The art deco structure was built in 1936, and was a gas station and cafe.



It stayed open for decades, until the 1990s. But in the 2000s, it was fully restored and reopened as a museum, visitor center and cafe.







It was a quiet night in Shamrock, except for the fireworks. It was the Fifth of July, and there were plenty of people out shooting off their leftover fireworks.



The Tower Station and U-Drop Inn was the inspiration for one of the buildings in the town of Radiator Springs in the movie Cars. Here it is shown as Ramone's body shop:



The next day we continued driving east, heading towards home. We were eager to get back, so we didn't make any stops along the way (besides gas and food, of course). One really nice thing about this road trip was having the World Cup going on - we were able to listen to a lot of the games while we were driving. It really helped break up the time spent in the car. On this last leg of our trip, we listened to Spain play Portugal.

We crossed into Oklahoma, and then back into Arkansas. It started pouring down rain as we reached Little Rock, and it turns out the worst weather on our road trip hit once we were almost home. But we made it. We drove through six states for a grand total of 2,665 miles (and one flat tire).