My husband and I are transplanted New Englanders. These days we enjoy life in the north central part of the Sunshine State. We have traveled the East Coast many times, but neither of us had spent any vacation time in the West (except California). A national conference/convention for an organization to which we are members was scheduled for Tulsa. A friend of ours was seeking the office equivilant of an international 3rd Vice President of the organization, and we wanted to be there to support her. There were two other women competing for the same office. Our friend won. While we were there, we did a lot of sight seeing.
We are in the age bracket where we remember the TV show Route 66 with George Maharis and Martin Milner and their Corvette. It was an exciting and fun show. We knew Route 66 was out west some where. We stumbled across a portion of it shortly after we entered Oklahoma's northeast corner. We had decided to spend the night in Miami (oops, did we take a wrong turn...we thought we had headed north from our house, not south). We quickly learned that the natives pronouce it Miam(a). Our state's Miami is pronounce Miamee. So, I guess we did not make a mistake by taking a wrong turn after all.
We passed Waylan's Ku-Ku Burger, Dotson Museum and Memorial Center, and the Coleman Theatre without realizing that we had stumbled into a wonderful page of history...totally missing any opportunity to absorb these attractions.
We eventually picked up a wonderful booklet produced by the Oklahoma Tourism and Recreation Department entitled Oklahoma Route 66 The Ultimate Road Trip. We decided it would be fun to find some of its many still-standing attractions.
We had bought a GPS before we left home. Maggie Mae turned out to be helpful, albeit, far from perfect.
You cannot beat cheap or better yet free, but one needs to be happy with the simple sights and pleasures. Too many of us today need continuous high-stimulus entertainment. It is good to step back and smell the roses (or in our case see the Blue Whale). This turned out to be much more of an adventure than we thought it would be.
It took us three separate tries to find the Blue Whale and the attraction across the street (Arrowhead Trading Post). The first time we were following the Route 66 signs and found ourselves in the middle of construction where the Route signs had disappeared. In Oklahoma Route 66 follows the general course of the Will Rogers Turnpike.
We found a couple of other places we wanted to visit and gave up for the day. A second time...we set Maggie Mae on the appropriate address. She was doing fine, but we missed a turn. In her correcting us, we found ourselves on some mighty dusty clay/dirt back roads. We eventually found our way to the main highway, but missed the whale. I can never say we were actually lost, but we certainly were not where we wanted to be.
The third time was the charm. We set Maggie Mae and tootled on down the road. Maggie Mae was screaming at us "You have arrived, you have arrived!" Arrived?? what on earth is she talking about? When Maggie said this, we pulled into the driveway and LO and BEHOLD there sat the Blue Whale (outside the town of Catoosa). I don't know what we were expecting, but I got the giggles and could not stop laughing. The book lists it as "a Rt. 66 icon, classic roadside attraction, historic water park and amusement site." Well, in its day, it must have been pretty special, but.....
We got out of the car and moseyed on down to the Whale. It is a huge cement blue whale, looks as though it is made of papier mache. From its sides are round shoots that would carry one into the water. It's tail is a diving platform of sorts. There are picnic tables...the seats have the base of whales. And the restroom doors have whales on them. This was built by Hugh Davis. It was charming and worth the stop. We spent a short while there. There are some nature trails which you can follow. Because we spent so much energy finding it, I guess we would call it one of our highlights. It certainly was a fun adventure.
For more information on the history of the attractions of Route 66 in Oklahoma (along with maps), try
http://www.theroadwanderer.net/. Then click on Oklahoma Route 66.
The Arrowhead Trading Post had been utilized as a car repair business, but from across the four lane highway, it looked abandoned. We did not investigate it.
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