I had another thought about Las Vegas. It happened when I saw the sign that said Salt Lake City 465 miles. When my friend Phil McFall and I came out West in 1968 he was 20 and I was 21. I thought Las Vegas was fabulous but he soon tired of sitting at a table watching me drink and play the slots so we managed only about 2 hours there. We then made a crucial decision that we would never be this close to Yellowstone or Mount Rushmore, so rather than heading east we headed north. We got in to Salt Lake some long time later and paid $1 apiece to get in to an all night drive-in where we slept in the car until sometime in the wee hours of the morning. We woke, used the bathroom, and kept on driving toward Wyoming. I remember distinctly that The Sand Pebbles was playing when I conked out.
Today we did another massive drive all the way to Oklahoma City. Like an old friend that passes in out of your life Route 66 meandered beside us first on one side of the interstate and then the other. It would then take off away from us across a distant field or over and around an unnamed butte disappearing for hours at a time only to reappear by our side for some miles. Tomorrow morning we will tell her goodbye for the last time as we head East toward Little Rock and she turns North to Tulsa, Kansas and Saint Louis. She has been our friend and guide and teacher for almost three weeks and like that old friend who moves away we will miss her and look forward to her stories of the road when next we meet.
And with that, two days from home I will end this tale and say yet again,
Life is Good.
See You Soon, old friends.
