Day 20 - The 18 Hour Drive...

We hit the road at 6am the next morning, because we were detouring off of Route 66 we weren't going to be stopping for any road side attractions, so we decided that this would be the best time to try and make up that day we had lost earlier in our trip... We drove roughly 800 miles from Santa Rosa in New Mexico all the way to Hot Springs in South Dakota!

The only stopping points along this leg of our trip was for petrol and lunch... We stopped at a takeaway joint called Arby's, which suprisingly, wasn't too bad... They even had curly fries like they do in Hog's Breath back home, so that was a definite plus haha! Even though we didn't really stop at any places to take a look around, didn't mean that we didn't have fun haha! We pretty much turned the lounge area of the RV into a batchelor pad and were watching movies, playing gameboys, stirring each other and and cranking some beats on the RV sound system. Not to mention the scenery was pretty amazing, we had just started our trip up into the rockies, so there was a lot of hills!

Craig was driving was experiencing his first drive for the trip, however, he must have drawn the short straw because it looked like all the rain in New Mexico followed us up into Denver haha! There was one point where you couldn't see more then 15 metres in front of you, and that was while we were on the freeway! But, Craig did a good job and made it safely to the next service station, where Matt took over for his first drive! We all thought we were going to die, but, he managed to drive us to our RV site and all keep us in one piece...

Next stop... Mt Rushmore and Sturgis!

Mark

Day 19 - Texas and New Mexico

As per usual we were up early the next morning trying to catch up on the day we were behind, and we still had a long way to drive before we were at the starting point of our second detour off Route 66.. We performed the usual morning ritual by stopping in at McDonalds and grabbing a feed before out long drive into Texas. We had planned to make it to a restaurant in Texas called "The Big Texan", the home of the man vs. food 72 oz. steak! It doesn't sound that big, but once you see it, it looks like they have put half a cow on your plate!! We decided that the challenge was a little too ambitious for us all haha (you had to eat a 72 oz steak, baked potato, steak fries, salad and a prawn cocktail all in under 60 minutes!) so we just ordered a slightly smaller steak each haha! The also had something called a beer tower, it contained 116 oz of beer, or about 8 or 9 pints of beer! So being the only Aussies in the big Texan, we thought why the hell not! Yes, we did manage to finish it, but it was an effort and a half after the meal we had!

After everyone finishing their meals, there was only one thing left on our plates... A giant chilli! So using our superior logic and common sense, Danny, Adam and myself decided that it would be a good idea to see who could eat the most... BAD IDEA! I ended up having to scull almost a litre of milk just to make breathing bearable! It did provide good entertainment though haha! We then left The Big Texan, and proceeded to quickly get into our morph suits and show all our avid readers that we really did go there haha! We then continued along the road towards the next attraction, the ten Cadillacs. The story behind the ten Cadillacs is, a Texan land owner decided to half bury ten Cadillacs to create a sort of modern age stone henge, and then provides spray cans for visitors to put their "tag" on the cars and every couple of years he comes and gives them a fresh coat of paint and starts all over again. We spent nearly thirty minutes playing around on the cars, spraying everywhere and Craig even left behind an NT number plate on one of the cadillacs but it wasn't visible unless you climbed to the top...

After enjoying ourselves a little too much, we moved on to our next destination, the halfway point of Route 66! We exactly 1139 miles from the start of Route 66 in Chicago and still had another 1139 miles before we reached the Santa Monica pier in Las Angeles. It was a little surreal to think we had travelled halfway across the US in what seemed like such a short amount of time, but we still had a long way to go yet..

We then continued on to our final resting stop, Santa Rosa, before our second detour of the journey. It was a nice little caravan site in New Mexico. We had a massive storm rolling in though which was pretty daunting, because the radio was broadcasting warnings for flash flooding... It turned out the storm was pretty harmless and we didn't get swept away by any flash flooding...

Next stop... The road to Mt. Rushmore!

Mark

Day 18 - July 4th = FIREWORKS!!

The next morning was spent driving around and visiting various historical locations along Route 66... The road being as run down as it is, it made for a very bumpy ride! So bumpy in fact that as we were driving, one of the shelves in the fridge broke! Don't worry all of the beer was saved, I know that is what everyone else was wondering too, wasn't it? haha.

We were supposed to stop in at another Route 66 diner, but when we got there, it was closed for some reason... It looked like they may have been doing renovations? Instead we drove for about another 30 minutes and gave up on trying to find a decent place to eat and settled for a nice, healthy serving of KFC... It was disgusting as expected, but did the job and stopped our stomachs from eating us from the inside out! After that we stopped of at a Route 66 museum just outside of Ohklahoma City.. It wasn't too bad but they didn't have much memorabilia as we had expected, but we learn't that the building itself was actually an old military garrison that had been used for storing weapons and artillery...

By that point of the day I think everyone had had enough of museums and wanted to hurry up and set up camp for the night, because everyone knew that after we had finished setting up for the night, we could finally let off the fireworks that had been sitting in the back of the RV for the better part of a week!! We ended up staying in a town about 100 miles or so out of Oklahoma City, called Elk City. We didn't get there until about 7:30 and then hung around the campsite for a little bit to recooperate from the long drive we'd had that day... Before we knew it, it was 9pm (sun was only just setting haha) and we decide that it was time to go and unleash mayhem on the citizens of Elk City!

We parked in an empty baseball field where multiple groups had set up and started to let their own fireworks off and proceeded to get stuck into our own pile! I will tell you this now, if you thought some of the firecrackers they allow in the N.T. were big, wait until you hear some of these ones! We had managed to survive the night and came out relatively unscathed (a few burns from adam throwing jumping jacks at us while we were trying to light some of the missiles) and there was one last firecracker that we wanted to try that night... THE BESERKER!! It shot single artillery rounds and they were as big as the government displays that they let off down at the waterfront!! Of course we decided we would save a few for when we were camping in the desert over the next few days so we could stay entertained haha!

We didn't get back to the RV until about 12 midnight and everyone  had a few nibbles of some food out of the fridge and crashed out for the night...

Next stop... Texas and New Mexico!

Mark

Day 17 - Meramac Caverns and the Road to Carthage

The next morning we all woke to a funny aroma... Danny 'Law-Breaker" Bacon himself had broken the cardinal rule of the Wannabango Express during the night... He had taken a great big dump in the RV's toilet! (At the start of the trip, we had set a rule that only "Number 1's" were allowed on the bus toilets due to the smell wafting through the bus...). We decided that there was no better place for an intervention then the Meramac Caverns! Straight away, as soon as we confronted him, he gave us his first guilty sign... DENIAL! Throughout the whole day he remained adamant that he didn't do it, but we all knew the truth (not to mention Adam heard him haha). A close eye was kept on him from that point on... The Meramac Caverns were amazing though! We learn't a bunch of new facts about it, including that the infamous outlaw gang, The James Gang used the caverns as their secret hideout and it was were they dumped all their loot after they commited all of their train robberies. Some of the stalactite and stalagmite formations were amazing as well, some of them are the biggest in the world (one is estimated to have started forming over 70 million years ago!). The caverns have also been used in numerous hollywood movies as well.

We hit the road after the caverns in search of a place to have lunch. We ended up coming across a sports bar and grill just outside of Wainsbridge called Peppers, they claimed to be famous for their "wings". They are right to promote their wings, they were awesome! So were their tacos and other foods on the menu.. Our waitress "Tina", was extremely friendly and we ended chatting up a storm, one thing led to another and we found ourselves putting on our favourite costume of the trip and getting multiple photo's both inside and outside the bar haha.

After lunch we stopped of at a few small places along Route 66 (Danny's favourite was "Danny's Gas Hole") and in the meantime Matt was searching the camping book for our next stop... We ended up deciding on a town called Carthage about 100 miles from Oklahoma City. We also stopped at our second Walmart for the trip, just as keen as before and this time hoping to grab a few snaps of some "Wal-martians"... It was a little disappointing compared to the last one, not only did they not have any motorized shopping carts that Adam and I could use, but we didn't see any outrageous "Wal-martians"... We did however feel like we had walked into an 80's country/rock music video... There were mullets everywhere!! Males, females, KIDS! We actually felt out of place for once haha! Not too mention we had that sneaking suspicion that we were being watched by everyone haha!

Next Stop... Ohklahoma City and the 4th of July!

Mark

Day 16 - Jack Daniel's Distillery and Beyond!!

We got another sleep in again this morning, but everyone was up fairly early as we were all quite excited! We were going to the Jack Daniel's Distillery in Lynchburg! We managed to get there before the opening time and get on the first tour of the day... Our tour guides name was Jesse James (same as the infamous thief and Sandra Bullock's ex husband...) But it wasn't either of those two haha! He was actually one of the master testers (what a job!). He took us through to a movie room to start us of with a bit of history behind the company before leading us onto the natural spring where they collect the water that the use in the process of making Jack's.

They then took us on a tour of the rest of the distillery, but we weren't allowed to take any photos because we might give away their secrets and how they make their wonderful drink! We went on up to the fermenting room which held millions of gallons of Jack Daniel's and that was only one warehouse... They had 80 more exactly the same!! There was a small gap in one of the fermenting vats that allowed us to take a quick whiff... If you ever have a blocked nose and want to get rid of it, this is the place to be! It literally burnt the back of my throat it was that bad! The head jerk reaction that everyone experienced whilst smelling was classic! No one was expecting it at all as Jesse didn't clue us in at all! We then moved on to the next room while everyone was having a good laugh about what had just happened...

The next room was the filtering room where they allowed the fermented alcohol to filter through maple charcoal to give it a little bit of flavour and rid it of all the impurities. This room smelt 100 times better haha! We then moved onto the bottling room and the storage barrel rooms. We were allowed to take a few photos in here as it was closed for the day due to some malfunctions. This was great because they had actually bottled and entire barrel of Jack Daniel's and stacked it up on a feature podium. For one single barrel, it made 240 bottles of Jack Daniel's! I think both Craig and I had at this point started to consider buying a barrel... We ended up settling for a holiday special edition they had for sale in the shop (Only 55,000 bottles were made and it can only be bought in the U.S.) and we got some engraving done on the bottles. Our last stop before we left the distillery was a special room known as the Squires Room. The only reason we had access to this was because Craig is a Jack Daniel's Squire, the room was pretty cool, it had a very "secret society" feel to it haha!

Against our will, it was time to leave as we needed to press forward in hopes to make it past St.Louis again by that night. We stopped off for a quick bite in town for lunch and hit the road. We ended up stopping at a caravan park just outside of St.Louis that night, which just so happened to be down the road from a White Castle food joint... For those who don't know what a White Castle is, I suggest you stop reading right now and go and watch the movie "Harold and Kumar go to White Castle"...

It was the most vile food I have ever tasted haha! I thought McDonald's was bad! I now know why the people who eat here are always high... You have to high to eat that junk haha!! We left in a fit of laughter about how bad it was and went to sleep.

Next stop... The road to Oklahoma City!

Mark

Day 15 - Graceland!

We didn't have to wake up to early the next morning as we were only a 20 minute drive out of Memphis and Graceland didn't open until about 9am... Once we had arrived we went into the shop to pick up our premium VIP tickets (Only the best, considering it was for the King!). These tickets took us for a tour around Elvis' home, his trophy room and grave site, through his car museum which had all off his favourite cars and toys in it, and then through his aircraft hangar, where we got to walk through the Lisa Marie Convair 880 Jet! That was pretty awesome, it was decked out to the max! As was everything else he owned haha..

We didn't finish up checking out Graceland until about 12, and just as we were about to leave, we decided that we would pay tribute to the King himself in the only way we know how... MORPH UP! We got some interesting looks (as usual) while we were walking up to the Graceland sign and the onlookers were only too keen to help us take photos haha! (We also happened to see a Memphis Police car that was unattended whilst we were in our Morphsuits... I'm sure you will be able to figure out the rest haha!)

It was back on the road again, as we had to drive all the way from Memphis to Nashville! (about 250 Miles!) We skipped lunch that day and survived of the leftovers that we had in the fridge (as well as a steady liquid diet) and ended up arriving at a little town just outside of Nashville called Manchester... Feeling too tired to cook and in need of some hearty red meat, we went down to a pub/restaurant called O'Charleys... It was most probably the best steak I have had since arriving in the US! We stayed back for a few beers and a friendly chat with some of the bartenders and decided it was time to call it a night when they started packing the chairs and tables up around us...

Next stop... Lynchburg, Tennessee

Mark

Day 14 - The Road to Memphis

After surviving our near death experience at Pontiac the night before, everyone was pretty keen to hit the road fairly early the next morning, escpecially because we were having our first 24 hour diner experience along Route 66 that morning! We stopped at a place called Cozy Dogs, apparently it is the place where the Dagwood Dog originated from (it is just a sausage on a stick covered in batter and then deep fried, for those who didn't know), so you can guess what we all had for breakfast... A nice, healthy serving of Cozy Dog and a Route 66 soda!

We stopped at another historic point along Route 66 for lunch called Weezy's, it was an original diner from 1930 that had been restored by the current owners. The food there was excellent, as well as the staff! All were extremely friendly and were chatting with us from the time we went in there, until the time we left (Even after Matt knocked over his Coke just after the lady had finished pouring it...). They also had tons of heaps of cool memorabilia, and had a world map and got us to stick pins in from where we were from (First people from the Northern Territory!).

We then continued on, hitting St. Louis just before lunch and decided to check out the Gateway Arch! That thing is huge! We had a quick look around but didn't stay for too long because it was soo hot! (40.5 Degrees Celcius!!) and because we still had a long way to go before we hit Memphis..

After crawling back into the RV in hopes to get some shade and AC... We were on the road again.. We went through our booklet in search for a place to set-up camp and ended up settling in a town called Sikeston just outside of Memphis... We decided that we were just going to have dinner in the RV that night so we went in search for a supermarket to get some supplies. To our surprise, WALMART was just around the corner from our campgrounds!! We pulled up in the carpark and Adam was literally wetting his pants with excitement haha! The very first thing Adam and I noticed when we walked in, was that they had motorized shopping carts... Of course we decided to grab one each and proceeded to race each other around the store for the next hour or so haha!

Just as we were about to leave Walmart, we noticed that there was a tent set-up across the road, with a large sign above it saying "FIREWORKS". How else were we supposed to celebrate 4th of July? Not to mention Territory Day that we were all missing out on... $300 and multiple large bags full of fireworks later, we were finally headed back to our campsite to settle in for the night...

Next stop.. Memphis, Tennessee!

Mark