RATTLESNAKES -- EXIT NOW!

Decaying old gas stations and motels fascinate me. It's a great thing to be a grown-up with the ability to pull over and take a closer look -- or to be the adult in the passenger seat with the map and Route 66 Adventure Handbook. "You've got to exit here, because it says there's a grotto that was built in the 30s by the WPA and it's not even dark yet and the motel is only another twenty miles..."

My husband is not a big fan of man-made grottoes, especially ones that require traipsing through a cemetery to find them. This is the same guy who drove me way out into the middle of nowhere to look for Sacajawea's grave years ago, but now that we've got kids I guess we're supposed to worry about whether or not it's appropriate to gawk at people's graves. The grotto, by the way, was breathtaking. I didn't take any pictures of my own, but did manage to find an old black and white postcard online that doesn't capture the beauty of the place at all.

Bill will exit for rattlesnakes. While we were heading east, we passed a ruined place with billboards encouraging us to stretch out legs while we saw the snake pits, but on the way back we couldn't find it again. And I missed the exit number on the sign for the place advertising live rattlesnakes and fried rattlesnakes. Wonder if that's like the lobster tanks where you get to pick out your dinner....



I love the old neon motel signs, especially the ones with sweeping arrows and tall spires that promise television and phones in every room like they're something special.

I've got a plan for all of that pretty neon we saw, if I can pull if off. And I'm still excited about the projects I was planning before the trip. After six thousand miles in ten days with four kids in the back of the mini-van, I'm dying to get everyone tucked into bed and curl up in the corner of the couch with my knitting.

Instead, I get to load the kids into the van and run errands all day. Yuck.