When you think of the word fall, what comes to mind?  For me, it’s always about the fall season – my absolute favorite time of the year.  For others it might be about the time he/she took a face plant fall or saw a magnificent water fall or …

Fall

I love the coolness that comes with the evening hours.

I love the rich colors of gold, red and orange as the leaves say good-bye to summer and begin to fall from the branches.

As we entered Tucumcari, New Mexico, we knew it was going to be one of those places where we wished we had more time so we could stay a day or two.  I’m looking forward to retracing our drive one day so we can plan accordingly based on the unexpected discoveries of this trip.

Following Route 66 while driving across the Texas panhandle was nothing to write home about.  No offense meant to any Texans out there, but whoa… there’s just nothing out there and it’s just how we saw it.  Until we found the infamous Cadillac Ranch.

Does age really matter?  Is it in fact just a number?  Today, Abi put both feet into his 6th decade of life.  Happy Birthday babe.  When I was a kid, teenager, adolescent, I thought 60’s!  OMG!  That is SO old!  Isn’t it interesting though – now that Abi has arrived (with me following a few years behind) I’m looking at 60 and thinking, eh.  It’s just a number, right?

I’m a sucker for a classic Disney movie and in my book Hayley Mills did them best.  Hayley brought me such classics as The Parent Trap, PollyAnna (for which she won the 1960 Academy Juvenile Award in 1960), The Chalk Garden, Summer Magic and the list goes on… but my favorite has to be The Moon-Spinners, (the 5th out of 6 Disney movies in which she starred) which is when Hayley introduced me to Greece and to windmills.

Leaving Oklahoma City we easily picked up Route 66 and followed it for quite awhile.  We happened upon, of all places, the Fort at El Reno which is on the Chisholm Trail and then we found ourselves in Clinton, Oklahoma.  Both unexpected stops, but both were well-appreciated.

When we drove Route 66 in 2008 we had a basic game plan, but some of the most memorable times on our trip were the unplanned side trips and stops at places we didn’t realize would even fall into our path – such as finding the national memorial in Oklahoma City, or Abraham Lincoln’s home in Springfield, Illinois.

While visiting Rocky Ridge Farm – home of Laura Ingalls Wilder and her husband, Almanzo – we met two moms and their young daughters who were on their own special road trip; following the travels of the Ingalls family. When we told them we were following Route 66 and would be passing through a corner of Kansas, they eagerly encouraged us to take a side trip to Independence, KS to visit the Ingalls homestead.  And that’s just what we did.

On our way to Galena, Kansas we said good-bye to Missouri and crossed the state border into Kansas, I jotted a note in my little traveling spiral notebook that read, “Phew… Kansas!”