Day 2: Across the Divide
The next morning I drove over to get gas figuring everyone else had done that the night before. When I got back I found that I had missed the drivers meeting where the main points were first, everyone needed to get gas, and second, Frenchy was going to take the lead for the next leg.All good by me as my confidence was not fully recovered yet from the night before. It was a beautiful morning and the countryside was greener than the California desert...though my co-pilot, Dave Whitaker, kept commenting how the desert was never this green so it was an exceptional rain year. But it was still desert so I was looking forward to getting to greener pastures. After a hundred miles Route 66 ended and we were back on the freeway. We were soon on a long grade up to Flagstaff and at the base we were joined by our 5th Type 3 Ghia of the trip driven by Steven Ayres. I was thrilled to see as many '66 T34s on that one trip as I had seen in total the whole time we've owned ours. There just aren't that many '66s around. Everyone...well not everyone...was making good time. Rachel and Bill didn't have the horses to get up that hill with us so our support vehicle stayed back with them. Our lunch stop was Winslow, AZ and a few of the cars headed downtown to check out the famous landmark that they found had tragically burned down several weeks before. The rest had directions to meet back at the parking lot near the freeway after lunch but the stop wasn't planned well and the plan fell apart with people starting out early so the next leg, over the continental divide and into Grant, NM, was a futile attempt to pull others together. That night we had a sometimes heated meeting to straighten out the expectations and rules for the rest of the trip. From now on we would attempt to keep a pace that everyone could handle. As we only had one more day left in the desert this would be increasingly easy to do.
Day 3: Our First Disney Gig
The next morning was one of the only legs of the trip that was further than one gas stop. Our destination was University VW in Albuquerque, NM. The trip chroniclers were taking advantage of the open freeway to get some shots of the string of VWs and I was trying to make use of the hills, faster downhill to get a running start on the uphills, to make best use of the capabilities of our slower cars. This approach worked well most of the day until a particularly long hill just before our afternoon gas stop. When we pulled into lunch we were thrilled at the number of people that turned out to greet us. A big western barbeque was spread out for us while Richard Troy set up his traveling History of the Karmann Ghia slide show. After lunch a couple cars were up on lifts in the service area and after spending several hours there were able to join us later that evening. That afternoon we got surprised with a request for our presence at a Disney gig in front of a local theatre in Amarillo, TX. The timing forced us to keep a steady pace with few breaks but we managed to arrive on time not long before sunset. About a hundred locals had come out to be seen with Herbie.
Day 4: Finally Some Trees
As we put miles behind us the next morning the landscape started to change. By the time we got to Cable VW in Oklahoma City we were seeing a mixture of long flat farmlands with an occasional woodland down in the valleys. The wind in this part of the country seems to preclude the possibility of trees in the unprotected areas. The OKC VW club was out in force to meet us and we had another great lunch. After lunch we headed for another stretch of old Route 66 that would take us through the town of Stroud where we stopped for a taste of the Rock Cafe's famous peach cobbler. The whole town came out to meet us, even the mayor. Then it was off for a few more miles on 66 before we got to our dinner stop at Brad Noe Autoplex in Tulsa, OK. The Tulsa VW club was the biggest yet and here was another one of those '66 T34s.
Day 5: The Mississippi
Today we are to cross the Mississippi but the first hurdle for us is to survive a real midwestern storm. It started raining hard before dawn and when it came time to group together to leave we were fortunate to find a gas station overhang to stage from. Several of us were double checking wiper systems that we have only rarely used. Bill had to stop on the freeway to fix his and we all stopped after the toll entrance to regroup after surviving the sloppy morning commute. Fortunately we ran out of the storm within an hour and by the time we reached the Missouri border we were off the freeway and following another pleasant 2 lane highway, US 60, into Springfield for lunch at Youngblood VW. In spite of it being a weekday there was a good crowd awaiting our arrival. The highlight of this stop was an original dealer installed vinyl roofed Ghia in excellent condition. After lunch we were back on a rolling hills kind of freeway headed for St. Louis at rush hour. Our challenge was to cross the Mississippi over to Auffenberg VW in O'Fallon, IL while staying in a group. We did well keeping each other in site and in contact on the walkie talkies until just before the bridge. Then just after Dave and I turned on the bridge it fell apart as we heard that Rachel was stopped on the approach to the bridge. With only a couple other cars with us and no shoulder or off ramps in site we had little choice but to continue to Auffenberg VW. Fortunately a can of gas got Rachel back on the road and everyone else straggled in with a half hour.
NEXT
BEGINNING
The next morning I drove over to get gas figuring everyone else had done that the night before. When I got back I found that I had missed the drivers meeting where the main points were first, everyone needed to get gas, and second, Frenchy was going to take the lead for the next leg.All good by me as my confidence was not fully recovered yet from the night before. It was a beautiful morning and the countryside was greener than the California desert...though my co-pilot, Dave Whitaker, kept commenting how the desert was never this green so it was an exceptional rain year. But it was still desert so I was looking forward to getting to greener pastures. After a hundred miles Route 66 ended and we were back on the freeway. We were soon on a long grade up to Flagstaff and at the base we were joined by our 5th Type 3 Ghia of the trip driven by Steven Ayres. I was thrilled to see as many '66 T34s on that one trip as I had seen in total the whole time we've owned ours. There just aren't that many '66s around. Everyone...well not everyone...was making good time. Rachel and Bill didn't have the horses to get up that hill with us so our support vehicle stayed back with them. Our lunch stop was Winslow, AZ and a few of the cars headed downtown to check out the famous landmark that they found had tragically burned down several weeks before. The rest had directions to meet back at the parking lot near the freeway after lunch but the stop wasn't planned well and the plan fell apart with people starting out early so the next leg, over the continental divide and into Grant, NM, was a futile attempt to pull others together. That night we had a sometimes heated meeting to straighten out the expectations and rules for the rest of the trip. From now on we would attempt to keep a pace that everyone could handle. As we only had one more day left in the desert this would be increasingly easy to do.
