Four out of five! Four out of five! Four out of five!
Wooooo!
When we left off, we were headed into Texas, and our first stop when we got to Texas was
Shamrock, Texas, which is a small town - but in this small town,
there is a place called The Tower Station and U-Drop-Inn.
This place was built in the 30's and has a really distinctive Art Deco
architecture going on, on the outside. They've kept it up
really nicely and they even have the Conoco Gas Station pumps still outside.
The inside of the station now is a museum and souvenir shop, and the inside of the cafe is
set up to still have the booths in there. Elvis Presley actually ate at the cafe at some point.
The building's actually on the National Register of Historic Places, and it's been
restored to its former glory. Pretty cool. Very distinctive.
Moving on to something a bit more kitschy, we headed to the Devil's Rope Museum. This is a
museum entirely dedicated to barbed wire. It's so Texas and so Route 66 and so America all at
the same time. There's apparently a group called "The Texas Barbed Wire Collectors Association"
that kind of heads up this place, took control of the organization of it all,
and let me tell you - it is HIGHLY organized and VERY impressive. I have no idea how they would
take barbed wire and make it into these shapes, these forms, without hurting themselves. I can
hardly open a cardboard box without slicing my finger open. This was definitely my favorite
sculpture: barbed wire people making a barbed wire fence. It's hilarious!
Didn't know there were so many kinds of barbed wire or tools to help you put
together your fences. I did find this barbed wire manufacturing machine to be interesting,
because I've never even wondered, I've never even thought about how
barbed wire is made. But there you go - I guess that's how it's made.
They do have a corner of the museum dedicated to Route 66 history as well,
but it's mostly just a collection of objects rather than actual stories or facts. And then we
started off through the Texas countryside. We were going through the very top part of Texas - the
kind of squared-off part that stands above the rest of the big land mass - and funny enough, the
countryside itself in Texas is very distinctive and looked different from the countryside that
we had already been through in past states. We drove through this huge wind farm, which
was really cool to see. This water tower that's slightly leaning is actually a tourist attraction;
it's called "The Leaning Tower of Texas." It's a bit of a stretch, it's a bit of a stretch, but
we'll give it to them. And more and more countryside. More countryside, and then suddenly,
we ended up at the Big Texan Steak Ranch. It was so Texas. [laughs] I feel like I keep saying that,
but it was. There were antlers all over the place, lots of people in cowboy hats,
and lots of people gathered to watch the eating competition that was going on while we ate lunch.
These two people had 60 minutes to finish a 72-ounce steak. That is considered a roast
in my opinion. I don't think that's a steak anymore. But we did not stay long enough to
see if they actually finished it. In the hallway of the restaurant, they have this scoreboard
that lists all of the past winners who have finished the challenge, and these guys that
were eating lunch right now were competing for the 9,999th spot and the 10,000th spot,
so a lot of people have done this challenge.
I love that comment: "wish it came with dessert" - come on!
So gross! The world record holder is apparently someone named Molly Shuler,
and they finished it in four minutes. How do you - how do you - how do you - how do you PHYSICALLY
chew that fast? Anyways, we didn't stay to see the winners, but we kept moving on to
other interesting places. Texas has some of the kitschiest but most "Route-66-feeling"
attractions of the entire route, in my humble opinion. For example, the next place we went is
called the "Cadillac Ranch." It is an interactive art installation - I guess you could call it - of
a bunch of Cadillacs that they buried halfway into the soil, and people have been coming for miles
and miles, countries away, internationally, people have been traveling to this spot
to spray paint some Cadillacs. For decades, I might add; this has been here for a long time.
Of course, we had to leave our marks. I doubt that they're still there, but if one of you wants to
go visit and see if you can find them, go for it. There is a place at the entrance that sells spray
paint, but my tip (if you are to visit) is to not buy any spray paint, because lots of times,
people will leave cans (leftover that they don't finish) by the cars themselves, so you could just
go to the cars and then find the loose cans of spray paint and use that, but because I DO want
to support local businesses, I of course was obligated to buy some coffee at the entrance,
instead of spray paint. After another stretch of countryside, we got to The Midpoint Cafe, which
is exactly how it sounds. It is the midpoint on Route 66 - the halfway point between Chicago and
Santa Monica. The cafe and gift shop was not open by the time we got there, but we did get to take
pictures by the painted line in the center of the road. They had some more Cars stuff here as well,
some old-timey looking vehicles, and that was it for Texas. Right after the midpoint,
we headed off to cross the border into the next state - which I'll be talking about that
and the rest of the road tomorrow. Part five, here we come! See you then.