Breather

We had a breather today after a full week of crowds at Afton Station.  Between guests, we had time to put finishing touches on plans for our big Clean Up Day on Saturday, when folks from the OK Route 66 Association (and hopefully some Afton citizens) will gather to clean up the triangle down at the Sidewalk Highway monument.   We're looking forward to that.  (10 a..m Saturday at the monument, if anyone is interested in joining us).

Our visitors numbered just 16, and they came from New Zealand, Switzerland, Spain, and Galesburg IL, Neosho MO, and Charleston SC.

Here are six of the eight Kiwis who visited today.  They arrived on motorcycles.  The other two men arrived separately  in a car.  All are doing full Route 66 trips.

 Here are a couple of pretty sisters from Madrid, Spain who are also following the Mother Road all the way to California.

After leaving the Station, Ron M. and I detoured to the small town of Bernice, which is directly on Grand Lake.   I had to pick up sign that I had ordered from a local sign maker who, with her husband, own and run a really great RV park on the shores.  It's about 15 miles from Afton Station, a lovely, quiet spot that deals strictly with the over-50 crowd.   If you're vacationing with an RV and need a place to stay in this neck of the woods, I recommend.  http://www.grandcountryrvpark.com/.   The owners are lovely folks.  Take a look at t heir website.

Ride for the Relay #10

For ten years, a very energetic and committed gentleman named Rodger Fox has organized and led a motorcycle trek across Route 66 with the goal of directing interest and funding to various cancer research projects.  The rides have been so successful, with people from all over the country joining it, that Rodger is getting tired, and I sure don't blame him!  For this reason, he has declared 2015 his last such endeavor.   So many folks enjoyed their trips with Rodger that this one became his largest, and this year 130 people signed up for it!  Many are repeat riders.   As they did every other year, one of their stops was Afton Station today.   And WOW!   That's about all I can say... WOW!   The 130 Relay members plus 16 others made this another jam packed day for us. . .  and we loved it!  ridefortherelay.org

Here is Rodger and his dear wife Susan, who is joining the run for the first time.

Enlarge this photo so you can see all the motorcycles lined up there.   Looks like "Little Sturgis"!

Our own parking lot was full, too.

And I can't deny that I do love to see folks lined up to buy souvenirs, tshirts, books, etc.  That happened today.

Besides Rodger's gang, we had 16 other visitors.  They came from Calhoun GA, Tucumcari NM, Velonia AR, Goodman MO, Orlando FL, Ipswitch England, Madrid Spain, and NovaFeltria Italy.

This happy couple is from Spain.  Their only complaint about their Route 66 vacation is the lack of "true" Spanish food.

We had another honeymoon couple today, this one from Italy and riding tandem on a rented motorcycle.   Lovely folks married just about a week.  They enjoyed signing the wall, too.

Our autograph wall now holds proof of their honeymoon visit to Afton Station.

Need I say that this was another outstanding day?  

Labor Day Raft Race

Years ago, before I arrived in Tulsa, the town had a very popular and well-attended raft race on the Arkansas River every Labor Day.  Rafts had to be hand made and, preferably, have interesting themes.After 20 or more years, folks decided it was time to restore the tradition.

Ron M. and I wanted to see some of the race, but I was delayed by my dialysis treatment so we arrived late at the river.   All the good parking places were gone, but we found a spot on top of a hill overlooking the Cyrus Avery Bridge and Plaza.  It is the hill which will one day be house the Route 66 Alliance Interpretive Center.  We ended up seeing only one raft (out of the hundreds that were signed up to race), and the photo is from so far away that it's almost useless.   We did get a few photos of the bridges from our perch, however.

In the photo, the new bridge is on the left.  People lined the walkway on one side of the bridge.  The old Route 66 bridge, on the right, lay unused.   What a shame that severl years ago, the old Route 66 Avery Bridge was declared unsafe for both vehicles and pedestrians.  It would have been the perfect place from which to watch the race.

It appears that the race was very well attended.   I haven't seen so many people out and about in  Tulsa since I moved here..  The day was fine, a little hot but not unbearable, and the camradarie was evident everywhere.  If I can find some better photos of the event, I'll post them here later.

Impressive!

Should anyone suggest that Route 66 is a "dead" road,  a road no longer used or appreciated, I wish to submit a list of the origins of our visitors on this Sunday before Labor Day.

 To our humble restored gas station they came from:
 Switzerland, Canada, England, New Zealand, Spain, S. Africa, Australia, and France

And from the U.S., they came from:
Oregon, Alabama, Iowa, Michigan, Georgia, Missouri, Texas, Arkansas, Indiana, California, and Oklahoma

There were 88 (or more!) visitors, which created an atmosphere of gleeful exhaustion as Ron M. and I scurried to give each and every traveler a hearty welcome, an invitation to check out the vintage car showrooms, a bottle of cold water if they appeared to be suffering from impending heat stroke (it was over 100 degrees today), and any directions they might need as they proceeded down Route 66 to their next destinations.  It was clearly a day that shouted "This is what  Route 66 is all about!"

So, how about some photos. . .

 These two couples from Toronto, Canada rented this '57 Chevy for the trip.  Yes, rented!   They told us of a place out of North Carolina called blacktopcandys.com , which hires classic cars.  We had not heard of it before, but their website is full of useful information.  We've been saying for years that there would be a market for vintage car rentals.  Glad to know someone is doing it!

 We had honeymooners!   This couple from Gravett, Arkansas were married less than 24 hours before they came to the Station.  Best wishes and a happy future to them!

This guy from France wins our prize for "Most Beer Bottle Caps Sewn on a Leather Vest".   This was most impressive!    All are from beers from the France/Belgium/Switzerland region, he explained.   It must be an incredibly heavy thing to wear!

A group of 20 Swiss motorcycle riders were the first visitors of the morning.  This young man from the group was fascinated by the '65 Chevy, so we let him take a "ride".

Two gentlemen from Madrid, Spain.  Spanish guys are always handsome, and these were no exception.  (One of the perks of this job...  ha ha)

This trailer being pulled behind a hefty motorcycle becomes a pop-up tent for this couple from Birmingham, Alabama.  Very clever and according to the owners, relatively easy to pull down Route 66.   Cool!

This gentleman from Dayton, Oregon had been here before and is very appreciative of what we do here.  We enjoyed a long conversation with him before the rest of the world came knocking at our door.  

There's so much more I could talk about today, but I'm still recovering from yesterday.   On Tuesday we will be at the Station to greet Rodger Fox's "Ride for the Relay" that stops by every year.  We  hear that he has 130 people in his entourage this year.  They ride for various cancer related charities and have been doing so for 10  years.  We always appreciate their visit!

I Surrender

Eighty-eight visitors today and Ron M. and I handled them all by ourselves. Needless to say, I am exhausted. Therefore, I'll wait until tomorrow to post my blog and all the cool photos we took.  It was a great day at Afton Station!   Come back tomorrow to read all about it.   But for now. . . good  night!

The Walls

The walls are popular and the walls are getting full very fast. Recently we've made room for another wall approximately 10 ft. by 20 ft. and it's almost full as well.  It's a virtual room of autographs.  We love and so much appreciate all the signatures on our walls.  But what can we do when we run out of walls?  I won't paint over the thousands of signatures. They're too precious to me.  It's a dilemma. Anybody have any ideas?

It was a big day at Afton Station today, with 33 visitors coming through the door.   They came from Kyoto Japan, Sapporo Japan, Grand Rapids MI,  Rotterdam Netherlands, Calgary Alberta Canada, Derby England, Switzerland Lebanon MO, La Rochelle France, and Sapulpa, Nowata, Grove, and Bartlesville, OK

Seemingly unfazed by the intense heat, this young man from Kyoto, Japan is bicycling from L.A. to Chicago. He came in for a while, took in our air conditioned air, and left with one of our bottles of cold water.

Shortly after the biking gentleman departed, we were visited by two more Japanese fellows, this time from

Sapporo.  They intend to reach the end of Route 66 at the Pacific Ocean in Santa Monica, but they are traveling by car.

 The very personable and fun group from the Ozark Rollers, part of the Volvo Owners group, arrived in....you guessed it.... Volvos!.   It was easy to see that they were having a good time and we enjoyed  hosting them for a little while.

This couple from Rotterdam, Netherlands (actually the smaller town named Hellevoetsluis, or something like that) came in with good knowledge of Route 66 and Afton Station already.   It seems he reads my blog!   I'm very honored.  It's a strange feeling to know that my silly writing is regularly read all the way across the pond.  Thank you for making my day!

We also had visits from "regulars", Tattoo Man, Michael Scruggs, Scott, and Rann.   I hope the 2nd day of the holiday weekend is as good as the first!

Off My Rocker

You can just imagine my surprise when we were driving past the pecan company about 2 miles down Route 66 from Afton Station and glanced to the side to see a giant rocking chair!   Ok, it's not quite as big as the one at the Fanning Outpost, but it's BIG!   Ron M. was with me, but declined my wish for him to climb up on the chair so I could get some perspective on it's size.  (Frankly, I don't blame him!)

 
 We had a visit from the Mayor of Afton today, a rare occurrence.  We had the chance to ask him some questions we've been  harboring for a while, such as where-oh-where are those "Welcome to Afton" signs that he ordered over 2  years ago.   He said that it's taken all this time to deal with state regulations but now all he needs is for the city maintenance crew to have time to do the deed.  We invited him to our Clean Up Day on Sept. 12 but he's not sure if he can come.

                               Mayor Billy Mack Harrison

We had a busy morning followed by a rather quiet afternoon.  Our guests came from Hamilton OH, Spring Mill FL, Mesquite NV, Ogden UT, Tulsa OK, and Enid OK.

Some of our visitors examining the beautiful cars.

These guys, from Hamilton, Ohio and Spring Hill, Florida arrived on motorcycles.  They started out early enough that the could ride for quite a while before being hit with the intense heat that came later in the day.

We were also visited by these two very personable fellows who are following Route 66 from their homes in Mesquite, Nevada and Ogden, Utah.  We really enjoyed their company and conversation.  Good thing they don't have a home arrival date cast in stone, because it took all of  yesterday for them just to go approximately 60 miles!   They're doing it right!

From closer to home came this couple from Tulsa.   They've "done" Route 66 to the west out of Tulsa and today they're going east.  He's originally from Albany, NY.  They're doing Route 66 in small increments, too.  Today, they planned to go from their home in Tulsa just as far as Miami but intend to see everything they can find along the way.

Check out this neat flyer that Ron M. designed to publicize the Clean Up Day!   Thank you, Ron!