Get your kicks on Route 66

Saturday, March 14


With the furnace running and one more blanket on the bed it was not all that bad. There was no rain last night, nor this morning, just really foggy and a heavy sky. It’s so depressing; I need Chocolate!
There is nothing to see, just flat, flat, flat crazing land. It’s like Saskatchewan. When your dog runs away from home, you can see it running for three days, until it reaches the beautiful rolling hills of Alberta where is disappears.
We stay on US 83 and stop to stretch our legs at a picnic area. I make some more hot tea and we’ll keep on going.
I have just about enough of it and am craving for a brisk walk in the fresh air. cold or not. I start to suffer from cabin fever.
Somewhere in a lonely city named Childress, another ghost town with a bunch of abandoned homes, we pull over on a commercial parking lot for lunch and discuss the remainder of the route. We can’t quite agree........Discussion continues.

I am shocked when I see a ray of sunshine enter the RV. I look up and see a tiny piece of blue in the sky. Not large enough to make a farmers shirt out of Mom. (Some Dutch expression, indicating if it will be a sunny day or not).

Further north, I see tiny little mounds of snow along the road, the size of cow pies. Ramiro does not believe me, which really ticks me off. (Yes, we’re still talking to each other). I knew something would prove me right and soon we see snow lined along the entire road. Now you believe me Ramiro??


I am starting to get pretty cranky and insist that we stick to our original plan of three days on the road and one day rest. Ramiro wants to keep going, he’s getting nervous about the weather and the road conditions. Well, one way or the other we will be facing freezing temperatures and snow.
My argument is, that too long behind the wheel makes him tired and that’s not good either.
I win!!! Why? Not because he thinks I am right, (as I usually am) but because as we enter the city of Shamrock, the Shamrock Festival is in full swing. There are antique cars and a fair and lots of antique stores.
My camping book tells me, that there is an RV park just west of the city, right along the old Route 66 mother route. I’ve never seen Ramiro hook up the RV and undo the car so fast. Within half an hour we are back in town with the car. We check out the old cars, the restored Conoco station and some of the other attractions.
The Rotary club is cooking sausages and selling drinks to raise funds for a scholarship. This is their main fundraiser for the year. Annual average $ 2,000!!!
We do pretty good in Alberta I would say.
These guys are all so friendly, they offer us one of the jalapeño, cheese sausages and talk about Rotary. Their Texas brawl makes me chuckle. Y’all this and Y’all that. This is Texas.
Shamrock is actually a pretty neat city. Would you believe it actually has a MacDonalds and a Dairy Queen? In the 50s it was very prosperous. I can imagine the scene. Drive in movies, guys with 57 Chevies. girls with pony tails. Today its totally different.
Shamrock came to existence when in 1902 the railroad build a stop here and named it Shamrock. In 1890 there was already a post office 6 miles north near the home of an Irish sheep rancher who selected the name Shamrock.
The Shamrock festival takes place every year in the week of St. Patrick’s day.







As we return to the RV, the sky has cleared, the birds are singing and it is a totally different world out there. Bring out the BBQ we are going to cook fish.
It’s still a bit cool, but the forecast for tomorrow is good. I look up some Geocaches on the web for tomorrow, talk to my friend Anita, do the laundry and enter the last few days on my blog. Ramiro entertains himself with a bag of chocolate covered almonds and a King Kong movie.