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The ROUTE 66 RV Network is an exclusive team of independent recreational vehicle dealers committed to giving RV'ers a better value and more enjoyable RVing experience. With over 145 locations nationwide - the largest in North America - purchasers can rest assured that wherever the road takes them in their RV, they will never be far from a friendly smile and helpful hand.
The ROUTE 66 RV Network was selected by Extreme Makeover Home Edition as the preferred sponsor of RV’s for the cast & crew. ROUTE 66 Dealers throughout the U.S have partnered with Extreme Makeover Home Edition.
As Route 66 gains even more popularity with travelers world-wide, more businesses will link themselves to the Mother Road, and this is but one example. Look for a Route 66 Edition car or truck any day now. Ron Harsh
March 15, 2007: UPDATE: Overland Park, KS.: RV Dealer Network offers their own line of Route 66 themed towable trailers.
Using 100-year-old brick and an original 1916 medallion from a demolished Baxter Springs, Kan., structure, Rice hopes to give Joplin residents a glimpse into Main Street’s past by restoring the building to its original look and use. Even the building’s new name, Historic Miles-Block Mall, is a throwback to its 1905 owners, J.A. and C.M. Miles, according to records at the Post Memorial Art Reference Library in Joplin.
Standing next to an uncovered Coca-Cola sign with jean shorts covered in white with plaster dust, Rice acknowledged that he’s a hands-on developer, a trait grounded in his Chicago upbringing and his love for all things vintage.
“I’m like a vintage addict,” Rice said as he showed off 1920s advertising murals and a 1915 Joplin Independence Day celebration poster that were uncovered as his crew removed the building’s interior plaster. “I love historical buildings. I grew up around these kind of buildings, so now when I go to a new building, I cringe.”
Rice said that when the project is completed in May, he wants to fill the 4,000-square-foot downstairs with retail businesses like a hair salon and chic restaurant, modern versions of the building’s past occupants. An architectural salvage business already has shown interest in the 118 S. Main St. storefront, taking advantage of the vintage brick and medallion exterior to show what salvaged materials can do for a building.
Rice also has plans for the upstairs portion, measuring nearly 7,000 square feet. In the not-so-distant past, the building’s upstairs was used as studio space by local artists. Rice wants to bring the arts back to the structure by creating what he calls the “Artists’ Attic,” serving as a studio and gallery. The art venture is essential to downtown’s revival, Rice said, because it would bring with it interesting people and businesses.
Rice said this is the largest and one of the few commercial projects he has undertaken, but it won’t be his last. He said he thinks he has a good grasp of how to economically and accurately restore an old building. He said he will be able to complete his project for less than $400,000.And if nothing else, Rice said he knows his work will continue to live on well past his lifetime and the life span of most recent construction.
“Whatever else happens, we’re saving a downtown business, and that’s a good thing,” he said.
Route 66 Note: This building is located just north of the intersection of Main and 2nd. Street in Joplin, where historic Route 66 turns south through downtown. The Route originally connected to Main using 1st. Street, but was relocated to 2nd. Street after the old Broadway bridge was removed, and a new bridge was built to it's south side. Both the original 1926 route and the 1937 alignment entered Joplin through it's downtown Main Street before turning west on 7th. Street.
March 6, 2007, Tuesday: Joplin's Historic Route 66 Downtown Main Street see's another historic building being restored.
Over its lifetime, the 100 block of Main Street in Joplin has fed residents as a bakery, a grocery store and several restaurants, soothed the soul as the Baptist Rescue Mission, brought color to life as Watt’s Paint store, and offered the weary traveler a place to rest as the Joplin Hotel.
Robert Rice, owner of Quartersawn Properties, saw all this history rotting away as the storefronts from 112 to 118 S. Main St., also known as Route 66 from 1926 to 1958, continued to sit vacant for years. He decided to save the property, restore it to its original glory and, in the process, persuade Joplin to reinvest in its downtown. Rice had been trying to buy the building for the past year. Since the sale was completed two months ago, the property has gone back in time 100 years.
UPDATE from Dave Francis, ROUTE 66 RV Network, 913-317-6678, www.Route66RV.com
We finally have our new website up and it offers a number of features that visitors would be particularly interested in, like . . .
1. Details about the Route 66 Flyer fifth wheel and travel trailers and which dealers are carrying them
2. The opportunity to signup for a FREE Online Subscription to Scenic Route magazine as well as all past feature articles archived by region of the country
3. Interesting U.S. Route 66 links (yours included)
4. Helpful travel sites including national/state park sites and campground locator sites by state
5. RVing tips for new and experienced RVers
6. Information about the ROUTE 66 RV Network
The content on the site will obviously grow from here . . . if you have some ideas, please don’t hesitate to let me know.
I have also contacted the organizers of both the 2007 National Route 66 Festival in Clinton , OK and the 2007 International Festival in Springfield , IL . We may participate in these events in some fashion.
Thanks.
March 15th., 2007: GALENA, KS. UPDATE: More property saved for Route 66 restoration.
Left: This photo, taken on Friday, March 15th., shows the truck that inspiredTow Mater's character in the Pixar movie "CARS", Tow Tater. Located at the corner of North Main and Front Streets (both Route 66) in Galena, the old filling station is being restored as it was in the 1940's as an APCO station. Tow Tater will be on display here, just as it was in 2001 when John Lasseter and Joe Knaft of Pixar first saw it while touring the Route looking for character inspirations. The rest is history.
Left: This old brick building with the decorative metal facade was constructed in 1896, and is located directly across the street from the APCO station on North Main. The building later became a Phillips 66 filling station, and plans are underway to restore this piece of Route 66 history as well.
This old house located across the street from the 2 filling stations, has also been purchased, and when restored, will become a Bed & Breakfast Inn. The home has a rich history as an infamous bordello during the mining era in Galena. Note the Route 66 sign on the corner. >>>
Saturday, April 7th., 2007 Joplin, MO.
Route 66 Classic Car,Truck & Cycle Show
BBQ, Brats & Beer
Inside Hammons Convention Center
Saturday, June 9th., 2007 Kansas
Route 66 Parade Across Kansas
Missouri to Oklahoma borders, 13.2 miles
Above: Author and Parade Grand Marshall Michael Wallis is interviewed by a KOAM-TV reporter. Wallis rode the Route on the "Anaconda", a ten-seat motorcycle.. Below: Photos of the parade forming at the MO.- KS. State line. The Parade took about 1 hour to travel across Kansas Route 66.
Route 66.
An Article by Bob Boots.
When Nat King Cole sings it, eyes get misty and the mind rambles down the mystical road through the storied West and on to magical, golden California , where all dreams come true---so it was said. Get your kicks on Route 66. A lot of “Okies,” “Arkies” and many Missouri Hillbillies believed it, but “The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck told the story more honestly.
Highway 66 has taken on a glow that is nearly mystical and that doesn’t happen unless there is something there that we respond to. I lived beside it for many years, so it seems quite practical and down to earth. Dad built Boots Motel in 1938, in Carthage , Missouri, and later built Boots Drive-In. The Mother Road ran by the front door of both of them and both have become landmarks, largely because of Route 66.
But where does the growing popularity of the Mother Road come from? Every summer people come from around the world, shipping their Harleys and 1950 autos to Chicago and follow it clear to California . They drive every foot of it at considerable cost and simply love it. It is considered quite an accomplishment and it is. Do they come to assuage their wanderlust, or is it their wonder lust?
They roll through the ancient Ozarks, once the highest mountains on the continent but now worn down to only steep hills through countless millennia and from the ineluctable, measured cadence of the changing seasons. They wheel across the Great Plains of the continent where once our forbearers drove their covered wagons pulled by oxen. Not the least of the perils of the ‘far seeing lands’ was the Prairie Sickness. This happened in the minds of the sturdy settlers that could not stretch the boundaries of their awareness enough to accept much less encompass the endless emptiness they saw around them week after week. Similar in many ways to the ailment of modern day astronauts.
In the early days, if the settlers got by the Indians, who were enraged by the ‘white-eyes’ treatment of them, bad turned to worse as they came to the Llano Estacado [Yah-no Ehs-tah-cah-do] in the high plains country of the Texas Panhandle and eastern New Mexico. It was once the most feature-less, desolate and barren country in the USA . The Staked Plains were named by the early Spanish explorers who had to plant stakes in rows to keep from becoming lost in the flat, semi-arid land.
When the ardors of the Plains finally ended, the high mountain desert-valleys offer little relief. But perhaps the raw, awesome natural beauty of a petrified forest of large trees that have turned to colorful stone would help compensate for the wearysome journey. And the flat-topped mesas and buttes of the Painted Desert , where the ravished bones of the world laid bare by the erosion of endless millennia, hold the eye. And the surrounding mountains lay like a multi-colored layer cake; surely this surreal landscape would make any journey seem worthwhile. These things, and more, are a part of the journey on Route 66. Let’s not tell them after they reach the promise land that they have yet to cross the Mojave Desert.
Yet that alone doesn’t quite cover the question of “why?” Part of that answer must be that each of us is imbued with an insatiable wanderlust. More than just a little curiosity, it is instinct that tells us to go seek, to ask, to question and to learn what ever new thing presents itself is all about. Let us hear or remember the lonesome wail of a locomotive’s steam whistle on a slow summer afternoon or the chatter of migrating geese flying low on a rainy night and we know that they know where they are at and where they are going and they are free to go. Free to explore, free to wander and free to search for those far away places with the strange sounding names. The urge will rise in us to go somewhere, to wander. It’s just in us.
Show us a long winding road and we will start wondering (there are those words again) what lies at the end of it. What mystical thing awaits us just over the hill and around the bend? We begin to rationalize our need to take that road to wherever. It’s our fate... our destiny and we simply must go. It lends a purpose and an exciting direction to our rather work-a-day, dull life that cannot be found elsewhere.
The trappers and mountain men of the old west would disappear in to the mountain ranges of the Rockies for a year at a time and when asked why, some would reply; “I went to see the other side of the mountain.” What they were saying was; “I love the journey and the goal has little to do with it.” The quest is the thing that thrills is. The quest for the golden fleece, for the holy grail, for a gold mine in the west or to rescue the fair maiden. That just may apply to our lives. If so, it may even run deeper that just wanderlust. There is a power in wondering; it initiates action. To wonder is a thought---to wander is an act. Wandering leads us into adventures of new thought, of passionate feelings and aesthetic experience. Wandering, mentally or physically, is the spice of life.
There is another long and famous road. One that has very much the same appeal for many of the same reasons. The fabulous yellow brick road to Oz. The perils of Dorothy, Toto, the Lion, the Tin Man and the Scarecrow had such impact on us fifty years ago that they have become idioms in our language. It is not unusual to hear remarks like; “This isn’t Kansas, Toto", or "Lions, Tigers and Bears—Oh My!" Is there anyone over fifty who can’t sing a line or two of; “We’re off to see the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz? ”
I believe that both Highway 66 and the yellow brick road have a strong appeal to something inside us. Both have become metaphors for our journeys through life. I didn’t see many lions, tigers or bears in my eighty years but I certainly have had my share of chug-holes and detours. I’ve also been up the proverbial creek without a paddle and slid down Sandpaper Mountain on my tail end---life does have its own surprises along the way.
For instance; in the early forties, as a teenager sitting on the metal lawn chairs in front of the office of Boots Motel in Carthage, watching the traffic on Highway 66 go by, I never dreamed I would be writing about it sixty some years later.
Highway 66 comes full circle? Or was it Bob?
July 21st., 2007: Carthage, MO.:
Son of Boots Motel owners, Bob Boots, sent this item regarding this historic Route 66 Icon that is an endangered property.
Boots Motel owners house.
Former Boots Drive-In..
Note:
Click the image to the left to see more photos and updated information about efforts to save the Boots Motel.
Webb City & Carterville MO., Sat. Aug. 3rd., 2007
Woody and the Great All American Road Show visit area towns.
Kit Cat Clock Company President Woody Young and his able-bodied crew of two found their way to the Bradbury-Bishop Deli in Webb City Saturday evening and conversed about the Great All-American Road Tour which is entering it's 45th. day on Route 66 enroute to Chicago. Note the Mural is of Route 66 locations.
Left: The 32 Ford Hot Rod is parked across from the deli on Main Street.
Right: Barbara Harsh of the Carterville Route 66 Visitors Welcome Center poses with the red machine.
Above: The tour is using this motorcoach, and is pulling a trailer with the Hot-Rod stowed inside when traveling. The tour stopped in Carterville for a few hours Saturday morning before making an appearance at the YMCA in Carthage, and a later showing at a car show in Joplin at Woody's Bar-B-Q (no relation).
Photo Right: Woody and Rod Harsh pose for the papparazzie behind the 1930's soda fountain at the deli.
Left: Woody shows off the worlds largest Kit-Cat Clock, the design of which has become a favorite of people around the world for seventy-five years.
The tour will be leaving the Route for a side trip to Monett, MO., Eureka Springs, Arkansas and Branson, MO. before returning to the Route in Springfield, MO..
Webb City area resident Karen Oheim was able to field a group of five pristine Nash Metros for a Sunday cruise on Route 66, and a stopover at the Visitors Center in Carterville. Karen has also restored other vintage cars including a flawless 1927 Ford Model T.
After many hours of heavy rainfall, local streams in southwest Missouri flowed over several sections of Route 66, causing temporary closures that forced travelers to take alternate highways. This photo shows the receeding floodwaters just east of Carterville.
This 85 year old Route 66 bridge marker located near the flooding area, shows signs of an attempted theft that resulted in damage to the historic sign.
Popular local singer Duke Mason entertains the crowd with vintage Elvis songs. Duke is a "little person", but his Elvis singing is as good as the original.
On display was this beautifully restored 1927 Model T coupe, owned by a Webb City resident.
Ron Jones, aka. the Tattoo Man, poses with Duke Mason. Ron and his wife drove to Carterville from his home in Bartlesville, Oklahoma.
