Painted Desert Inn photos wanted March 4, 2009
Posted by Ron Warnick in Attractions, Preservation, Restaurants.1 comment so far
Some roadies with photo archives might be able to help with this project. From the Examiner.com:
Petrified Forest National Park is looking for photos taken at the Painted Desert Inn during the 1940s and 1950s. Specifically, the park is looking for any photos that show the soda fountain counter and stools in what was known as the Inn’s lunchroom. [...]
With assistance from the Petrified Forest Museum Association, donations and other funds, the park will be recreating the soda fountain counter.
Anyone with photos of the interior of the lunchroom from the mid-twentieth century is asked to contact Lynn Carranza, Chief of Interpretation at Petrified Forest National Park at (928) 524-6228 ext. 245.
Apparently some memorabilia was returned to the Painted Desert Inn after it was refurbished and reopened, but they are too fragile to display.
Consumer Reports’ car issue is out March 3, 2009
Posted by Ron Warnick in Magazines, Vehicles.4 comments
Consumer Reports has just published its annual auto issue. As usual, it contains a lot of useful information for Route 66ers who are in the market for a new or used car. Consumer Reports has been doing this for decades and has a lot of credibility in its judgment about motor vehicles.
Some of highlights of the issue:
- Honda scored the best on the magazine’s report card for test scores and average predicted reliability. Not far behind was Subaru; 100 percent of its tested vehicles were recommended by Consumer Reports. Toyota was third.
- The worst in the report card, by a significant margin, was Chrysler.
- Of Detroit’s Big Three, Ford graded average or better, General Motors improved but remains inconsistent, and Chrysler was below-average across the board. In fact, Chrysler failed to have a single tested vehicle that was recommended.
- In terms of reliability by brand, Scion (a division of Toyota) scored first. Acura and Honda were second and third.
- The least-reliable brand was Land Rover. Near the bottom were Saturn and Chrysler.
- Toyota Prius was declared by the magazine having “the most bang for the buck.”
- The Lexus LS 460L scored a 99 of 100 in the magazine’s testing and reliability survey. The lowest was Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Sahara, scoring a 17.
- The best-performing battery brand is EverStart.
- Tire brands that keep popping up in CR’s recommendations are Michelin and Yokohama.
Much of CR’s content is behind a paid-subscriber firewall, but there’s also plenty of free data, too. You can surf parts of the auto issue here.
Rebuilding the Rock Cafe March 2, 2009
Posted by Ron Warnick in Preservation, Restaurants.14 comments
This is the man who’s behind the rebuilding of the Rock Cafe in Stroud, Okla.
He is David Burke, owner of David Burke Historic Preservation, based in Perry, Okla. He’s the one who is directing the painstakingly reconstruction of the Route 66 restaurant after a devastating fire last May. And he’s reasonably certain the Rock Cafe will reopen to customers before Memorial Day.
Burke is an affable man who speaks deliberately, which matches his exacting work. On a day we toured the facility, the rock walls had been restored and the main roof was nearly complete, save for the installation of a heating-cooling unit. Burke was waiting for a delivery of lumber to complete the pent roof that juts from the restaurant’s stone walls. The work on the pent roof, he estimated, will be finished within 10 days.
Rebuilding the Rock was a bit more difficult, Burke said, because there were no blueprints from when it was built in 1939. Burke also discovered that other blueprints made during a remodeling a few years ago were inaccurate.
“Whoever drew this up,” he said, pointing to a latter-day blueprint, “didn’t even get on the roof, and was just guessing.”
He had to essentially became a detective to figure out how the Rock Cafe was built. Paint, insulation or tar lines – Burke calls them “ghost marks” — on the “guntower” corners of the restaurant’s stone walls helped him determine the pitch of the pent roof.
Burke also relied on a lot of photos — vintage ones and even recent images taken by Rock Cafe owner Dawn Welch. The image below, taken during the 1950s, turned out to be a crucial guide for the reconstruction. Many of the old photos — and of the rebuilding — are stored on a computer for quick reference.
The Rock Cafe during the 1950s.
Burke said the large “ROCK CAFE” letters on the pent roof seen in the photo will be brought back. Also, he plans to eventually to re-create the “Rock Cafe” neon sign, above the doorway, that’s in the photo.
David Burke in what will become the kitchen area.
This former storeroom in the back of the restaurant will be converted into a kitchen, Burke said. Also, two handicapped-accessible restrooms will be built and be accessible from both the dining room and the outdoor patio. The storeroom/future kitchen has heat and air-conditioning, and serves as a workshop area for the entire reconstruction project. The big Coca-Cola sign, incidentally, was a gift from Burke to Welch and her family.
The main dining room will have knotty pine and cedar and 10-foot ceilings, Burke said. The counter and stools won’t be brought back. However, Welch told me that jettisoning them and moving the kitchen to the storeroom will increase the Rock Cafe’s serving capacity from 25 customers to about 75.
The dining room area.
Burke said the most difficult part was reconstructing portions of the stone walls that had collapsed after the fire. It wasn’t the actual wall-rebuilding that proved vexing, he said, but finding the right color of stone to match the original.
Welch wants to have the Rock Cafe open again by May 20, the anniversary of the fire. Burke said he’s optimistic he can make that possible.
“I think we’re way ahead of schedule,” he said. “We jumped in and got a lot of things accomplished early. It set us up so we could take the time and do a lot of things properly. We’re setting about well as we could expect.”
As I left Stroud on Route 66, I saw Burke’s shipment of lumber for the pent roof arrive on a flatbed trailer.
No recession here March 2, 2009
Posted by Ron Warnick in Businesses, Road trips.add a comment
Intrepid Travel, a small-group guided-tours company, is seeing increased sales in North America and is going to boost the number of vans it uses to operate these trips, according to a news release.
Intrepid is projecting a 25 per cent increase in sales to North America this year. [...]
“People are making the most of cheap airfares and flying to the US. When they get there they want to travel without breaking the budget and that’s where Intrepid Travel steps.” [...]
Intrepid offers over 60 itineraries in North America through its California-based operations company, Intrepid Suntrek. The trips range from a seven day trip of California to nine weeks expeditions that zig zag across the country, taking in iconic experiences such as Route 66 as well as getting off the beaten track to enjoy North America’s immense wilderness.
The Intrepid Travel Web site contains itineraries for Route 66 lodging and camping. Prices range from about $1,400 to $1,800 for two-week excursions on the Mother Road.
So much for an economic recession with this particular company.
Wild West vacation with Babs March 2, 2009
Posted by Ron Warnick in People, Road trips.add a comment
This is goofy, but funny:
There are a lot more “Life with Babs” videos here.
Grand Canyon Park marks 90th anniversary March 2, 2009
Posted by Ron Warnick in Attractions, History.add a comment
The Associated Press has a story about the Grand Canyon celebrating its 90th anniversary as a national park. Some highlights of the article:
- The park was declared several years before Arizona became a state.
- About 44,000 visited it the first year.
- Now, 4.5 million visit annually.
- The Grand Canyon isn’t on Route 66, but is inextricably linked to it because so many travelers took that road to see it — and still do.
And this quote from a park superintendent about the canyon resonates with Route 66 as well:
“As loved and appreciated as the Grand Canyon is now, I think if you peer into the next 100 years, I think it’s going to be a greater value for the United States and people of the world,” park Superintendent Steve Martin said. “Having these places are going to be rarer and rarer.”
From the Church of Bizarro March 1, 2009
Posted by Ron Warnick in Religion.2 comments
Stuff like this is the reason your mama told you never to pick up hitchhikers:
Redforkhippie, who just saw the video, commented: “I thought preachers weren’t supposed to drop acid.”
The video is part of “Route 66: A Road Trip Through the Bible.”
The explanation:
We’re hitting the historic “Route 66” to cover all 66 books of the Bible in 66 practical, life-applicable messages.
We’ll be travelin’ with the top down – from Genesis to Revelation – and filling the Ford with hitchhikers from each stop along the way.
So, if you ever plan to motor west, just take my way, that’s the highway that’s the best. You’ll get more than kicks on this Route 66!
This video of random biblical observations was brought to you by His Place Church of Burlington, Wash. Your mileage may vary.
UPDATE: A laugh track has been added to the video. No, I’m not kidding.
A thorny situation in Seligman March 1, 2009
Posted by Ron Warnick in Attractions, Businesses, Towns.2 comments
Here’s a thorny situation in the Route 66 town of Seligman, Ariz.
According to the Arizona Republic, Cemex wants to build a big cement plant on the outskirts of town, thus creating jobs and boosting Seligman’s tax base.
But folks also are concerned that the plant will be a big-time polluter, fouling the air of nearby communities and messing with the views at the Grand Canyon.
Here’s some on the “pro” side:
Dee Dyers, manager at the Historic Route 66 General Store, is one of the townspeople looking forward to having Cemex as a neighbor.
“Anything that brings growth to this town is a good idea,” said Myers, whose family has lived in Seligman for decades and owns four local businesses. “People are excited about it.” [...]
The state consumed roughly 5 million tons of cement in 2007 and is expected to need 6 million tons annually by the end of the next decade, despite the current construction downturn.
The Cemex plant would help reduce the need for imports because it would produce 1.9 million tons of cement each year, 90 percent of which would stay here, company officials said.
And here’s the “con” side:
Cement plants make their material by heating limestone in kilns at temperatures up to 2,700 degrees. The process commonly produces a variety of pollutants, most notably nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide and particulates such as dust.
All three can aggravate respiratory problems in sensitive groups.
Cemex’s Borgen says the Seligman Crossing plant will use a variety of state-of-the-art materials, including high-tech fabric filters and storage systems to capture dust and new kilns that cut down on nitrogen oxide emissions. [...]
In January, Cemex reached a settlement with the Environmental Protection Agency, over alleged air quality rule violations at its cement plant in Victorville, Calif. [...]
Cemex also faced a major pollution controversy last year after high levels of chromium 6, a known carcinogen, were found in the air near its 100-year-old cement plant in Davenport, Calif.
I’m on the “con” side until Cemex can persuasively show that emissions from the proposed plant will be low enough that they won’t dirty the air at the Grand Canyon. I’m skeptical it can. The Grand Canyon is too much of a tourism behemoth and a national treasure to be put at risk.
The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality hasn’t yet issued an air permit for the plant, and must conduct an environmental assessment before issuing one.
Paul Harvey, R.I.P. March 1, 2009
Posted by Ron Warnick in Businesses, Motels, People, Preservation, Radio.3 comments
Paul Harvey, a legend in radio for more than 50 years, died at age 90 Saturday at a hospital near Phoenix.
Rather than recount Harvey’s unique delivery and his many accomplishments in broadcasting, it should be known that the Tulsa native also left his own unique stamp on Route 66 at least twice.
First, Harvey on his radio show touted Wrink’s Market on Route 66 in Lebanon, Mo. Harvey in particular heaped praise on longtime proprietor Glenn “Wrink” Wrinkle and his freshly made, 99-cent bologna sandwiches. Harvey’s boosterism undoubtedly drew a lot of new visitors to Wrinkle’s business.
Wrinkle’s son, Terry, reopened the store a few years after his dad died and is keeping up the tradition of freshly made sandwiches and hospitality.
Second, at a time when the nonprofit preservation group Friends of the Mother Road was trying to secure donations from celebrities for a sign restoration project at Vernelle’s Motel near Doolittle, Mo., Harvey came through with a $1,000 check. Harvey’s donation, more than anything else, made the project financially possible. You can see the before-and-after shots of the motel sign here.
And now you know … the rest of the story. He truly was a friend to the Mother Road.