A longer ride today with a few stops planned, our destination was the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, some 413km (256 miles) away.
The plan for the day was visit the following places:
- Ghost town of Plano, MO.
- Gay Parita Sinclair Station, MO.
- Spencer, MO.
- Cars on Route 66, Galena, KA.
- Ghost Town, Picher, OK.
- Allen’s Conoco Fillin’ Station, Commerce, OK.
- Route 66 Vintage Iron Motorcycle Museum, Miami, OK.
- Afton Station Packard Museum, Afton, OK.
- J.M. Davis Arms & Historical Museum, Claremore, OK.
Not far out of Springfield is the ghost town of Plano, little of it remains, there is a private residence that was once the service station and the remains of the general store.
Today seen another unplanned detour through some back roads due to roadworks. There was no indication of these road works nor was there any directions for the detour. Luckily we had a GPS on the bike and I just followed the map around the road work site.
Disappointingly we just missing Gay Parita Sinclair Station on Route 66. The road sign said the 266 had ended, the 226 was the old Route 66. So we followed the road around onto the 96 to Spencer. We missed it by about 200 metres, got to say some of the signage is absolute shit to follow.
From Spencer we basically just rode along Route 66 without stopping to look at much until we got to Galena, Kansas. We pulled up for a cold drink at Cars on Route 66. Not sure it’s really worth the effort to stop aside from the photo opportunity to say you’ve been there.
Once we hit the road again it was on to the ghost town of Pilcher. More than a century of unrestricted subsurface excavation dangerously undermined most of Picher’s town buildings and left giant piles of toxic metal-contaminated mine tailings heaped throughout the area. Very odd to be riding up streets where the grass and trees and taken over once again.
After Pilcher we rode on to Commerce to get a photo of the old Allen’s Conoco Fillin’ Station.
Signage can be hit and miss in Route 66 it gets stolen or it just is missing at times. We made a couple of wrong turns today, at least we didn’t get too far off the track. At one stage we ended up at the entrance to a cemetery, there was no indication we had to turn anywhere. Once we went left of the cemetery we picked up Route 66 again.
In Tulsa the signage says old Route 66 is part of highway system, this conflicts with both the Route 66 websites and the tour books. It does run close so maybe it was a later alignment.
We also managed to visit 2 Harley-Davidson dealerships.
- Hideout Harley-Davidson, in Joplin, Missouri
- Route 66 Harley-Davidson, in Tulsa, Oklahoma
Tomorrow we head to Clinton Oklahoma and some more Route 66 adventures await.