After leaving Red Oak II and heading back down the cornfield road we entered yesterday, we got back on Route 66. The charm of traveling on Route 66 is that it passes through all the old small towns that the highway does not stop at. According to American road traffic laws, the speed limit when passing through a village is usually 30 miles per hour. Of course, you can avoid such slow speed on the highway, but on Route 66, you WANT to drive slowly. From Chicago to LA, you always pass through the town centers on your route. If driving without stopping is the virtue of the highways, stopping 'everywhere' is the unique virtue of Route 66. ‘There are so many things to see and do on Route 66 that it is impossible to include them in this guidebook.’ As written in the Route 66 guidebook for the Missouri-Oklahoma section, all the old roads run from east to west as short as 30 miles or as long as up to 90 miles. The basic pattern of traveling on Route 66 is to head west patiently while observing the towns and the scenery between towns. Stopping somewhere or delving deeper into one of the many places is an option that allows you to experience another trip during your cross-American trip. Like that one night at Red Oak II.
The guidebook, which said it was impossible to include everything, recommended a whopping 95 places. Among them, we chose ten places for today. The distance is about 250 miles in total. It's a 5-hour drive if you just drove through, but I didn't know how long it would take if you added time for sightseeing. It seemed like we would drive for about 30 or 40 minutes, stop and look around, and then drive again for another 40 minutes. The last stop was Soda Pop near Arcadia, Oklahoma. The neon sign in the shape of a giant soda bottle is a can't-miss. The basic plan for our trip is to get to the accommodation or campsite before the sun sets, but since we had to see soda pop at night, we decided to drive until dark today. Alright. We spread out the still-wet laundry that had been washed on the back of the car and set off for the Top Ten of our choice, from Carthage to Soda Pop.
The first stop was Carthage we stopped by for dinner last night. Unlike the desolate night scenery, Carthage was a small city full of low-rise, pretty buildings. Last night's desolation seemed to come from the flat, low, unfamiliar cityscape to me. People who were born and raised in a place with a wide horizon sometimes feel claustrophobic in a place surrounded by mountains, but to me, who was born and raised in a place where 70% of the land is mountains, the flat terrain seems dreary.
I didn't know what kind of place it was until I arrived, but it was a theme park with characters based on Christian religion. It seems to be somewhat popular, but it was my first time seeing this character.
Neon signs, researched and commercialized by British and French scientists, are said to have caused a global craze in the advertising and signage industry. It arrived in the United States in 1923, and for the next 20 to 30 years, American neon signs reached their peaks in popularity. Since the opening of Route 66 in 1926, it was natural that neon signs would decorate Route 66 at the beginning of its prosperity, and the heydays of both came around the same time. The fact that road trips enjoyed in primary-colored cars under neon lights became one of the symbolic images of the 50s and 60s is a result of its heyday. The decline of neon signs came after the mid-1990s, but the decline of Route 66 began much earlier, therefore some neon signs and signs that decorated Route 66 share a historical trajectory with Route 66. The dramatic revival of Route 66 in the 2000s made it possible to travel through the cultures of the times, where both the decaying and the current were co-existing.
A famous burger restaurant on Route 66. It started as a drive-in burger chain in the 1960s and at one time had dozens of stores, but now they are all gone and only this one remains. In fact, it is a Mom & Pop store (meaning a small store run by mom and dad). Even though the fortunes of the family have declined, it is a place that is still alive and well. The taste and quality are the best of any chain burger I've ever had. There is no comparison with McDonald's, and Burger King, Wendy's, and Shake Shack are also well below, and although the styles are different, they are comparable to Five Guys. However, since only one Cuckoo Burger remains and McDonald's has spread all over the world, it seems that taste and quality are not necessarily proportional to business in the food industry. I hoped that the Ku-Ku Burger's superior quality wasn't the cause of its decline. It would be very sad if it did not prosper because the ingredients were not spared. I imagined a world where there were many moderately sized chains like Ku-Ku Burger, hoping that there would be a global movement of people who love good neighborhood burger restaurants, and I rapidly ate up the hamburgers cheese sticks, and fries that can only be eaten at Ku-Ku Burger.
By lunchtime, we had stopped by 4 places and there were 6 places left.
Jingoogk's Sketch Trip America is written originally in Korean.
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