Planning and some "minor" detours Pt. 2

   With the hotel in Chicago settled upon our eyes turned towards the journey we'd be making, looking at all the towns and cities along the way and one stood out in particular, Holbrook, Arizona.

   Holbrook isn't a very large town but it hosts one of the more famous landmarks along the mother road, the Wigwam Motel. Opened in 1950, the motel comprises 15 individual rooms, constructed to look like teepees. The "Cozy Cone" in Disney's Cars, was based upon this motel.

   Whilst we are in Arizona, Lisa's sister Belinda will hopefully be coming to spend some time with us. Belinda lives with her family near Salt Lake City, Utah and is very keen to take the opportunity to see her big sister whilst she is relatively close by.

   Previously, I have mentioned my love of the film Twister and we'll be travelling through Tornado Alley during Tornado season (a complete coincidence, honestly...) and one of our overnight stays is in Oklahoma City. A couple of hours drive from there is a little town called Wakita and for those who have seen Twister, you will know that Wakita is a location from the film. The residents of this small town have used its fame to attract a bit of tourism by creating the Twister Museum and so, again with Lisa's permission, another detour was added.

 
   Unfortunately, due to the limited amount of time we have, we aren't going to get the time to stay and explore some of the towns and cities along Route 66, some will simply be places to rest our heads before we head on the next stop. Given the choice we'd happily spend two or three days in each location, sampling food and seeing the sights but without that Euromillions win, it's just not possible.

   We did however agree on spending two nights in Las Vegas, specifically at the Stratosphere Tower Hotel. Here there is a (small) amusement park on top of the tower and you can bet your bottom dollar that Lisa & I will be going to that!

Planning and some "minor" detours Pt. 1

   Wow, it's been a while since I made that first post but time is just flying by. As I type this post, it's less than 100 days until our big trip!

   In this post I'll go into some detail about are planning of the trip and fitting in a couple of detours to places that we're taking the opportunity to visit whilst we're travelling (relatively) close by.

   So first off we had to decide which way to travel, Chicago to LA or visa-versa. It seems that most who make this journey travel East to West and many of the route guides are written this way too so it seemed logical to follow in these footsteps.

   The next big decision was where to stay along the route and how long for. There are countless towns and cities along the way and many more hotels and motels so we were spoiled for choice in this sense but eventually we settled upon the following destinations for our overnight stops. Chicago, St Louis, Springfield MO, Oklahoma City, Amarillo, Albuquerque, Holbrook AZ, Las Vegas and finally Santa Monica.

   During the nights, planning and looking at maps, I couldn't help but notice that we weren't all that far away from an aviation Mecca... Tucson AZ. Located in Tucson is Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, home of AMARG or more commonly known as "The Bone Yard". This is where old, retired military aircraft meet their fate and are dismantled for parts (in most cases). But before they meet the scrapman's axe, they are lined up in the Arizona desert and the Pima Air & Space Museum run guided tours of the facility. Thankfully Lisa is very understanding and accommodating to the man-child she married and said "we should go because we're so close and you may never get another opportunity" - one happy man-child! So now we added Tucson to our list of overnight stays.

   Next up was, how many nights to stay in the locations along our journey? Obviously we'd love to spend 2 or 3 days in each location and see all we could but time isn't on our side in this case and we only have 16 nights to cram it in all.

  Firstly, Chicago. This being our first stop after our flight we thought it would be a good idea to get properly rested before we begin our epic adventure so we settled on three nights in the Windy City. There's plenty to see and do in Chicago and three days wouldn't be enough to fit it all in but we'll strive to visit the main attractions, such as Chicago 360, Navy Pier, Sears Tower, the Adler Planetarium and hopefully a tour of Soldier Field (BEAR DOWN!!!). We also booked tickets to go see Blue Man Group at the Briar Street Theatre, Lisa and I are really looking forward to that!


Part 2 will cover the rest of the journey and I promise, it won't take me as long to write (otherwise we'll have been and come back!)