Brooks Fabrics is located in Bountiful, UT, north of Salt Lake City. I found this one by accident while I was trying to locate a thrift store that didn't exist. The ladies inside said that the store has been open since the early 1950's.

The Grand Canyon Cafe in Flagstaff, AZ offers, of all things, chop suey. I stopped inside and was about to ask why the sign offered that dish when I met the owner, a very nice Asian man. Here are a few shots of the sign and the cafe.

There were several folks eating breakfast and I didn't want to be snapping photos of folks eating. Next time we go through, we'll be sure to stop & try the chop suey. 

Grants, NM. Los Alamitos Motel is gone and all that remains is this sign. This one resides on Route 66 as well, just west of the closed Uranium Cafe.

The Tonto Drive In on the west side of Winslow, AZ on Route 66. The screen and the projection booth are gone and all that remains is the sign & probably not for very much longer.

Here is a shot of the screen & projection booth. 

The lovely (closed) Sage Motel in Needles, CA on Route 66. I enjoy the palm trees in the background. Clicking makes it bigger.

I bet you thought this was gonna be 30 consecutive days of neon. Well, so did I, pal, so did I. Let's get back to it shall we?

Motel Sierra Vista in Flagstaff, Arizona. This sign, obviously not in working order is a nice oddity. It is two sided but the two sides are separate and set at an angle to each other. In between is what looks like a landscape with a cactus.

Of course, if you click them they get bigger. 

Sorry about the gaps, the wi-fi at my hotel stinks (I'm in Utah, teaching classes for Spacely Sprockets) 

When Lovely Wife & I took our Route 66 trip we didn't make it to Santa Monica, just to Needles, CA. Here is the 66 Motel right off of 66. The sign is on 66, but the motel is about a block off the road. I'm not sure how much of it works, but I think the color scheme is pretty interesting. It is all pastel colors, very appropriate for California. Normally signs of this type are all primary colors and very bright, but Ca. does things differntly

Here is a shot of the motel. Click on the pics to look closer.

Gallup, NM, a mecca for the neon lover & the Route 66 lover. Gallup was just chuck full of cafes and motels. Sadly, Lovely Wife & I were pretty tired from the days drive and we were also chuck full of Mexican food, otherwise we would have tried this place. Since we were so tired, I didn't take the proper time to set up the tripod and collect several fine shots of the night-time neon. I tried holding my breath and being very very still. Of course, it didn't always work.

 I think it odd how the various parts of the arrow have been blackened in an attempt to make the arrow a series of vertical lines. We also snapped this night-time shot from the other side.

Of course, you can click on the pictures to view enlarged versions.

The Plainsman is a closed restaurant on Route 66 in Holbrook, AZ. It's just west of the Wigwam Motel at 1001 W Hopi Rd.

This sign has a lot of great things going for it, the "Cocktails" powder horn, the giant rifle, the 60's portrait of the Plainsman himself. The lettering has some nice neon work. I wish I knew what colors they were. The restaurant appears to be closed but I did find a review from March.

With our recent trip west on Route 66 and me finally getting the pictures uploaded and cataloged, I thought this would be a good time for 30 Days of Neon. 

Jacks' Bar-B-Q at 4418 NW 39th St. Bethany, Oklahoma. This is on Route 66 and Lovely says that the ribs are very good. We haven't eaten here yet, but we did talk to the new owners and they are using the original recipes and are excited about being part of Route 66. 

Here are several links for our Flickr pages for the photos that we took on our recent Route 66 road trip.

Here is Day 1 - OKC to Amarillo

And Day 2- Amarillo to Santa Fe

And Day 3 - Santa Fe to the Gallup NM

And Day 4 - Gallup, NM to The Grand Canyon

Day 5 - Grand Canyon to Kingman Az

Day 6 - Kingman to Needles to Flagstaff

Day 7 - Flagstaff to Holbrook - not uploaded yet.

Day 8 - Holbrook to Tucumcari

Day 9 - Tucumcari to OKC

Day 10 - Wellston to Bethany

We decided to extend our vacation just one more day and travel Route 66 from Wellston west to Bethany. We hopped on the turnpike and exited at Wellston. The first thing we discovered, thanks to our book, was a concrete totem pole at the BBQ joint right before you take 66B into downtown Wellston.

We continued on through Wellston and past Luther. Just north of Luther there are several large concrete leggings of the old 66 when they had a very high bridge over the river. Just west of that is a private section of road that is the original 66.

We kept on west through Arcadia and stopped at the Round Barn. The upstairs was rented out and therefore closed, so we will have to make another stop so that Lovely Wife can see it.

Through Edmond and then down Kelly into OKC. Heading west on Britton we came upon the Owl Court that is slowly being restored...

and then over to Western, down to 23rd, past the Gold Dome

and then over to May and up to 39th. We stopped in at Ann's Chicken Fry and looked around and stopped at Jack's BBQ for a small sample.

We continued on 39th, through Bethany until we came back to Lake Overholser. Tired, we swung home and tried to rest up for the coming week.

Coming up: Restaurant reviews, Motel reviews, links to photos for each day on Flickr, and a double butt load of neon. Can ya handle it? 

For the last stretch of our trip home (Tucumcari, NM to OKC, OK) we decided to be sure to hit the parts that we had missed on the way out (except for Amarillo which we will pick up on a later trip). Of course, if you're traveling through the Texas panhandle you have to stop (again) at the Mid-Point Cafe in Adrian and grab a piece of ugly-crust pie (and leave the tip you forgot to leave the first time).

After the pie we stopped for a stroll at the Cadillac Ranch. Out amongst the cars we found a couple of paint cans and learned one very very important rule. When using a spray can in the Texas Panhandle, be mindful of wind direction. Lovely Wife also brought along a Sharpie and both I and Ralph used it to show our eternal love and devotion that will last forever....or about one day, judging by the thickness of paint on those cars.

Once we hit Oklahoma, Lovely Wife asked if there was anything, according to our book, that we had missed. I mentioned a 7 mile stretch of original Portland Concrete road so we exited the slab and went Ka-thunka-thunking along the way into Clinton. Clinton has a nice old downtown, about 3-4 blocks long with several nice shops all along it's length.

Finally we reached El Reno and the siren song of the Eischen's chicken far to the north finally won us over and we made a detour to Okarche for dinner. We finally pulled in to the Hendrickson Motel, weary, happy, tired, and sad that the trip was over. However, we decided to extend the vacation just one more day and travel 66 through Oklahoma City. 

Packin' up at the Wigwam we thought we needed a good breakfast. We tooled down the road and there was Joe & Angie's. Mexican food? Not havinig got enough of that, we parked and went in. I got the breakfast burrito and Lovely Wife got the Ranchero Eggs. She had both red & green chili sauce and I had just the green. That breakfast held all the way to Tucumcari!

 We once again picked up some missed parts of 66 and snapped a few photos that we had missed earlier on the way west. We drove through a lava field, saw another pueblo and an old auqaduct (Ralph & Lina thought it was some relation but we explained differently to them.)

  On 66 we visited Montoya, nothing there but an old building with Cold Beer written on the side, but that was one of the first 66 ruins that we had encountered years ago. A couple of folks had stopped and were snapping photos. We then made our way through a VERY narrow tunnel and then to a dead end on 66. We backtracked to a Stuckey's and got back on the big slab.

  Rolling in to Tucumcari we started playing the soundtrack to Cars and pulled int to the Blue Swallow. Bill showed us our room, I picked out a shirt to buy and then we headed out for dinner. Having had our fill of Mexican, we thought we would stop at Del's. However, we decided to wander around town (which didn't take long at all) and we ended up at La Cita (a Mexican place). The food was good but we had hit it between the dinner rush and whatever rush was going to be next. After dinner it was back to the room and some needed rest.

 (sorry for the late posting, but the WigWam has no WiFi) The drive into Flagstaff eastbound was fantastic. The road winds through the trees and the San Francisco Mountains covered with snow beckon ahead of you. We found a large slab of road heading off into the trees. Trees had actually grown up through the road but you could still identify old 66.

Further on we came to a sign that explained what we had seen was the 1931 alignment. From that point you caould also see the older 1921 alignment and both were now walking trails about 3/4 mile long. We snapped some photos and headed toward Flagstaff and ended up taking some more dirt road but the drive was worth it.

The next morning, Day 7, was a piddle day. We piddled around downtown Flagstaff (a college town) taking pictures, hitting a coffee shop, a thrift store, a scrapbook store, a Thai restaurant and then Bookman's, a resale shop that actually counts all the game pieces before they resell a game.

Back on the road we remembered Winona (not much to see) and Winslow (they had another scrapbook store to explore). We picked parts of 66 that we had missed and finally made it into Holbrook and the Wigwam Motel.

Some folks we had met in Seligman and Oatman (the same couple) weren't too impressed with the Wigwam. I think they didn't know how to enjoy simple things, kinda like Oprah Winfrey, who, back in 2006, checked IN to the Wigwam, looked at a room and then stayed in another Motel (despite what her website states. I watched the episode and she didn't stay here).

The Wigwam rooms have plenty of room. Ours had a queen bed, a table, a tv, a few chairs. It was more than enough room for two people and two little ducks....and a plastic 'Mater' wrecker. Lovely Wife stated that the bathroom was bigger than what she grew up with. The shower was a little off-kilter due to the shape of the wigwam. You kinda had to shower on an angle but the water was hot and felt very good.

We ate at the Mesa Italiana on 66 on the north side of I-40. It was a step above the normal 66 findings and it has homemade pasta. Back to the Wigwam and a good nights sleep. No pictures got uploaded but we'll make up for that later.