Day 17 - Sunday, June 28 - And... were' home!
So here we are, the last day of the trip... One final day of driving!
This one was also going to be a very long drive, so we had even less time for site seeing. However, there was one last major site that I "had" to stop at, and that was the U-Drop Inn in Shamrock, TX.
This is one of the classic and most famous gas stations and cafe's along the old Route 66. It was restored in the last couple of years, and we had to stop for it. Here's a summary of it, that's better than I could write up:
https://roadtrippers.com/stories/u-drop-inn?lat=40.80972&lng=-96.67528&z=5
Anyway, we had to stop here for two reasons. #1. This is one of the great sites along Route 66. Some good history here. #2. Ramone's Body Shop from the Cars movie (and corresponding attraction in California Adventure) are totally inspired by this.
So yeah, we couldn't
not stop, right?
We arrived around 7:15AM and it was deserted. They have a little tourist/info shop, but it was closed on Sundays... and we were there too early anyway. No worries, we didn't have a lot of time to spare.
We walked around and explored for maybe 15 to 20 minutes and then we were back on the road. I'm glad we stopped, because this place was really cool! I love the green paint/tiles too!
And then we were back on the road. Pretty boring drive back to Missouri (relative to the rest of the trip.)
I don't really have many more photos or stories to tell about the day. I guess, after U-Drop Inn, the highlight was Oklahoma City. We stopped there for lunch.
We'd always heard about the Whataburger chain. It's supposed to be a TX and Oklahoma competitor to Inn-n-Out.
People seem to really love this place! Except for we found it to be fairly disappointing. Whataburger? Whatadissapointment. Except for I had a root beer milkshake. That was fantastic.
The burgers and fries were "meh" at best. I expected to like this place more... especially because the colors and retro themeing are so
awesome. Oh well, they can't all be as good as In-n-Out!
We noticed an outlet mall across the way as we drove in. We spotted signs for another Vans outlet and a
Disney Store Outlet. We
had run over there before we get back on the road, right?!?! Because, you can never have too much Disney on a vacation, right?!?!
So, Vans was mostly a bust. Not unexpected, as we had already purchased 5 or 6 pairs total on this trip and I was only going to get anything that was truly an exceptional deal. That being said, we did pick up a couple pair of Star Wars shoes for cousin Luke, as he was pretty envious of the pair that I got towards the beginning of the trip
The Disney Store had some pretty good deals going, something like 50% off the already sale priced "Theme Parks" items. Needless to say, we walked out with a decent sized shopping bag.
So yeah, a couple more hours, we were in good ole Missouri.
And then after a few more hours, we had made it home.
I don't recall the exact time we arrived, but it was probably around 8 or 9 pm. Just enough time to unload the car, check around the house, and hit the hay!