Day 35 - Route 66 from Oklahoma City to Tulsa, OK

We had a huge amount of fun driving along Route 66 from Oklahoma City to Tulsa looking at some of the interesting but often weird or wacky sights, many of which we didn't manage to photograph as we couldn't get the camera out in time, including someone's garden which was decorated with aliens!

We downloaded a Classic Road Trip playlist from Spotify and spent a lot of the time singing away to old school rock songs! It was perfect music for this road.

We made a couple of stops along the way to break up the driving. First stop was Pops! in Arcadia. It’s a convenience store and gas station with a giant 66ft LED soda bottle. It’s also known for the soda, they have more than 700 different pop products for sale! We had to go in and buy a few!

Next was Round Barn, a ‘World-renowned Rt 66 icon’ and the only rounded wooden barn in Oklahoma. Inside is a museum describing its initial building in 1898 and then its restoration. We went up to the second floor where there was a ukulele concert.

Next we drove onto the town of Chandler where we saw the historic Phillips 66 Filling Station. We wanted to visit the Route 66 Interpretive Center which had lots of old film, pictures and records of the route but it was closed when we arrived. The door was actually open and when we walked in, the lady inside thought we'd broken in! I'm still not sure she believes us, maybe she think we're expert lock pickers!

As we entered Tulsa, we had to be playing 24 Hours from Tulsa which got us debating about where this actually is. The best answer we got was somewhere like Las Vegas assuming you drive at 40mph for 24 hours solid (google helped us with this). Anyone have a better answer?

In Tulsa, we stopped off at the doctors for Fin (our car) so he could have a checkup. Luckily he was in good shape and ready for the next 5,000 miles. Whilst Fin was getting checked out, we went to a nearby Mall. The Mall was really run down, with the majority of the stores now closed and the units empty, including a Macy's. We wondered if it was just due to the area of if it is common for Malls to be losing business like this due to online shopping and this is just an example of what many other Malls in the country now look like.

We stayed in the Desert Hills Motel in Tulsa, in what looked like a recently renovated room. It was so much better than our expectations and the reviews we had previously read on TripAdvisor. It was clean, the furniture whilst with a 50's theme, looked in good condition and there definitely were not any bed bugs although a couple of mosquitos outside did get me!

Downtown Tulsa was also a lot more fun than we expected. The highlight was the Center of the Universe. If you stand in the middle of the circle marked on the ground and make a noise, it echoes back at you a lot louder. It did actually work although not because it is the center of the universe but due to the acoustics of the circular wall that surrounds it.

We stayed in the Arts District in downtown Tulsa for the evening where we saw a free concert in Gutherie Green. The concerts are on every Sunday from 2:30pm until 6pm. We only managed to catch the last 20 minutes of the final band called Western Horn & the Hush but it looked like a lot of people had been in the park all afternoon, despite the scorching heat.