Family Travel Must Haves: #4 "Appy" to See You!

Back in 2000 I took a long cross country trip. I thought at that time that I was on the edge of technology, I had a laptop with a GPS adaptor, a Palm VII with wireless Internet, my 12 CD changer in back of my car, and my Motorola flip phone. But having to use a laptop to get GPS is not exactly convenient or easy to use, Palm VII's only had coverage around larger cities, a 12 CD changer can only play 12 CD's and you have to carry your CD's with you and have to change them out in the cassette, and the Motorola flip phone was only a phone. 

8 years later I would get an iPod Touch, which absolutely blew me away with it capabilities. Hot on its heels I bought my first iPhone a year later. I wish I had an iPhone nine years earlier on that trip. GPS, Internet, telephone, 1000's of songs, and  hundreds of other benefits including apps. When I got my first iPhone four years ago the only Route 66 based apps out there where picture and game apps, now there are real Route 66 apps out there, and lots of others worth mentioning. 

Lets start with the Route 66 apps. Yes they do exist and there not bad.

 

Road Trip 66 is a great app for showing you what's along the way. It also gives you a pretty decent road map, which you can pinpoint yourself on. It doesn't exactly have a GPS feature to help you navigate the route, but it still is worth having

The Route 66 Mobile Guide can help you find features along the route. It's a great planning tool to find sites, restaurants, and lodging along the way on a state by state basis. 

Roadtrippers is not specifically a Route 66 app, but does have Route 66 sites on it. This app also connects into social websites like Facebook allowing you to share your travels with friends. 

Other Apps for Family Travel 

Sit or Squat is a great app for finding bathrooms in a hurry. Not only can you find bathrooms but some of them are rated for cleanliness, plus you can rate bathrooms as well for other families to know about.

Yelp is a must have for any traveler, or just to have around your own hometown. It can help you find just about anything near you. 

Other worthwhile apps:

Best Western and most other chain motels have apps including Holiday Inn, Choice Motels, Marriott and others. These can help you find motels and reserve them on the go.

Gas Buddy is a great app at home or on the road. Find gas stations or compare prices to get the best per gallon price.

Trapster is a great road trip app, it lets you know about speed traps, traffic accidents, and construction along your way. 

•One app I mentioned in a previous post was the Pet Friendly app. Check out my posting "Family Travel Must Haves: #3 Traveling with Families Best Friend", to find out about this app. 

Finding the Descendent's of the Super Chief, under Route 66

The time is 8:06 AM on a balmy late August day in Chicago's West Loop. The sun is out and the sky's are blue, but the humid overnight heat bought Lake Michigan inland in the form of fog, enshrouding anything above the 35th floor of the Willis Tower. Looking down on Jackson Blvd one can see hundreds of people moving like ants over the bridge rushing to get to work by 8:30. 

Odds are that most of those rushing down Jackson and over the bridge have no concept of the historical significance of the street they are walking down let alone, what lies below street level on the West Loop side of the bridge. In 1926 Jackson Blvd was Route 66, both eastbound and westbound until 1955 when it became one way from Michigan Ave to Ogden Ave. The foot bound commuters are traveling on the first few miles of the the famous route, with no realization that that it had westbound lanes leading all the way to Santa Monica, CA. 

Eastbound Jackson Blvd (left), and Union Station southbound train sheds (right).

Below this portion of Jackson Blvd from Canal to the river bank lay the tracks of Metra and Amtrak feeding into Union Station. The only parts that are visible to street bound travelers are the train sheds, large greenhouse looking corridors, that cover the southbound track. Historic survivors in themselves witnesses to the Alton Limited, and Pennsylvania's T-1, somehow spared the air rights glut of the 70's and 80's. Under these sheds Metra operates two lines with significant connection to the Santa Fe passenger operations that once where. 

The most important of these is a line that runs from Union Station to Aurora. For you see this mere 40+ miles of track is the home to Santa Fe's now BNSF's last surviving passenger trains. 

View from inside the locomotive, notice the BNSF lettering above the passenger car door, reminiscent of the Santa Fe lettering on silver cars indicative of Santa Fe's Super Chief, and other passenger trains. 

BNSF operates these passenger trains for Metra, meaning you won't see any Warbonnet F40PHM's pulling these trains. Instead you will see Metra locomotives pulling them.

I had the privilege of riding in the cab of this locomotive from Chicago to Aurora and back. Metra F40PHM-2. 

These passenger trains are the last operating with any direct connection and lineage to Santa Fe. BNSF takes pride in this as you can see since the lettering on the passenger cars gives a close resemblance to what we would have been seen on both Santa Fe and CB&Q passenger cars of the past. Looking at these passenger cars one is reminded of the high-liners Santa Fe operated on such trains as the El Capitan, but inside they are standard commuter cars like those on the rest of the Metra system. 

Metra also operates one other line of significant lineage as well, that is its Heritage Corridor. This line is entirely operated by Metra but leaves from the same southbound tracks as the BNSF operated trains. The Heritage Corridor is aptly named and travels down the same tracks as the famous Santa Fe streamlines did, and also crosses paths with Route 66 a few times. The line runs to the Route 66 town of Joliet. 

Historically speaking Santa Fe's trains would leave southbound out of Dearborn Station, which is actually across the Chicago River a mile to the southwest of Union Station, there are no tracks going to Dearborn Station now. Riding on and experiencing these trains is something any fan of Santa Fe's trains need to do, to have some final connection the past. 

Boron a Town of Ghosts & Legacy's: Part 3 - Sky-borne Odyssey

Part 3 of a series on a small Mojave Desert town that witnessed American transportation history in motion.

Authors Note: Boron's involvement in military and space avaition history is extensive. My summary here does no justice to its level of involvement, and I must keep my summery concise to stay within the content and theme of my blog. For more in depth subject matter please visit the Boron Sun blog @  http://theboronsun.blogspot.com/ .

The day was October 14th, 1947 and the long slender silver shape of a B-29 took to the clear blue sky's over Rogers Dry Lake. Today though the bottom of the Boeing masterpiece would be disrupted by the shape of an odd orange missile protruding from its bomb bay.  The B-29 climbed to 45,000 feet, and once level the orange missile known as the Bell X-1 suddenly dropped from the bottom of the B-29 at 1019 hours military local, igniting its four rocket engines. 

The rocket plane shot past its escorting P-80 Shooting Stars sent to chase and observe it. At 1024 hours military local, 10:24 AM Pacific to the rest of us, a huge boom shook the land, rattling in some accounts shattering glass in the town of Amargo, CA now known as Boron. The orange missile, or the .50 caliber bullet with wings, known as the Bell X-1 piloted by the legendary ace Chuck Yeager had broken the sound barrier in straight and level flight. 

Amargo then, known as Boron today was a hotbed of activity in the world of aviation even before Yeager's historic 1947 flight. Not far from the town was the ranch, turned bar and hotel of avaition legend Poncho Barnes. Poncho's "Happy Bottom Riding Club", had become a major destination in the world of early avaition. Aviation pioneers and celebrities alike would fly into the ranch’s private airstrip also known as the Rancho Oro Verde Fly-Inn Dude Ranch, to mingle and drink, and swim in the ranch’s unusual swimming pools. It wouldn’t have been unusual to see Howard Hughes here rubbing elbows with the likes of Randolph Scott, Myrna Loy, and other notables of the time in those days before the war. Even after the war started the celebrities still stopped in but the bar had also become a destination for pilots in training from Muroc Army Air Base (as Edwards AFB was known at the time) or one of the many other military and private aviation schools in the Antelope Valley at the time.

  

The link below is a great website known as Abandoned & Little-Known Airfields that can show you the location of many lost WW II training fields, and reserve bases in the Antelope Valley.

http://www.airfields-freeman.com/CA/Airfields_CA.htm

 

The bar was known for its pictures of aviators that served as a memorial for many of those killed while trying to tame the sky’s, above the Antelope Valley, most of them test pilots. One of the pictures of recollection was of America’s highest scoring ace of all time Richard Bong, a P-38 pilot with 40 kills in the Pacific, killed while test piloting early versions of Lockheed’s P-80.

 

Ruins of Ponchos today. 

Eventually controversy would catch up with the club, and the “Happy Bottom” would be closed after a mysterious fire destroyed the bar in 1953. But the bar would become the stuff of legend, especially after Tom Wolfe’s 1979 novel, and 1983 film adaptation of “The Right Stuff” in which Wolfe captured Barnes personality, and the bar. Wolfe also gave notoriety to Poncho’s famous steak dinner the prize to the first man to break the sound barrier, something that dispite much of the book and films mythos actually was true and was awarded to Chuck Yeager, plus I’m sure he was bought plenty of drinks from that time on as well. Sadly though, not much remains of the bar and hotel today, and it takes special permission from Edwards AFB to access the area.

 

 

Poncho would live out the rest of life in Boron, finally passing on in 1975 from Breast Cancer. Although there are several rumors that the death had some usual and even mysterious circumstances to it, one could say Poncho even in death, was larger than life.

 

 

Today in Boron, Domingo’s Mexican Restaurant is the modern day equivalent to Poncho’s, but a little more refined and family friendly. Test pilots old and new dine here after a big flight, and shuttle Astronauts would dine here after landing at Edwards. Meaning Boron is keeping the spirit of aviation alive, even if its foremost ambassador Poncho Barnes is long gone. Once again Boron legacy’s comes to light, too bad the free steak dinner tradition isn't part of that though.

 

The Saxon Aerospace Museum in Boron is open to the public and is wonderfully family friendly. If you want to spend some time investigating Boron’s rich aviation history this is the place to do it.  The museum gives you a great look at Muroc and Edwards operations, and unlike the museum on Edwards you don’t need to request special access to visit.

Here is their website: http://www.saxonaerospacemuseum.com/Saxon/home

 

There are even more stories to tell about the sky’s above Boron, like the story of the XB-35 and XB-49 grandparents of today's B-2 Spirit bomber. The XB-49 would crash under dubious circumstances on June 5, 1948 killing test pilots Major Daniel Forbes, and Captain Glen Edwards, Muroc Air Force base would have its name changed to Edwards Air Force Base in honor of Capt. Edwards, and Forbes too would have an airbase named after him in Kansas.

 

 

There are stories here about astronauts from Mercury program all the way to the ISS. Stories of X-planes such as the fastest manned aircraft ever the X-15 blazing through the sky’s above the town. Stories of Neil Armstrong piloting the “Flying Bedstand” a terrestrial simulator for the Luner Excursion Module, that Armstrong ejected from moments before it crashed. Even now the stories still come as new and fantastic aircraft race above Boron’s sky’s, like Spaceship One, the X-43, X-48, and a wide range of UAV’s.

 

Visiting the town, all one needs to do is look around to get the feel and sense of history this town has, especially its place in aviation and the space race. On a nearby mountain southwest of the town there is “Rocket Site” a NASA rocket test stand that you can see from Boron, and occasionally you can see rockets being tested up there. To the northeast of the town on another hill is former radar facility used to track X-planes, and other experimental aircraft in the past, it was known as Boron Air Force Station. West of town you will find Desert Lake Apartments, this structure was originally built to accommodate members of the 750th Aircraft Control Squadron, but after housing was built near the radar dome the apartment complex was sold to private owners who turned it into a motel and apartment complex.

Boron has a very unique feel to it, but as the article title indicates it’s a place of ghosts and legacies. When it comes to aviation you can still sense that 1950’s and 1960’s ideal of the future to come, the optimism of the “Space Age”, this is a ghost that lingers, sometimes hit home by both relics and active aviation sites nearby. But its legacy continues on above in its sky’s.

The Santa Fe Railway at Edwards Air Force Base

 

As we now combine Route 466, Santa Fe streamliners such as the San Francisco Chief, and this deep connection to aviation history, and compare it to California 58, BNSF's Bakersfield District operations, and the X-43 zooming above it all we see Boron’s legacy and life that still streams from it. The very fact that a small relatively obscure town could become so intricately involved in key transportation routes past, present and very possibly future is almost mind boggling, and yet it happened.

 

If you are a rail fan (or Foamers in rail speak) of the Santa Fe, a Route 66 aficionado, or a military aviation buff I would definitely suggest visiting Boron for a day. For those of you chasing the Santa Fe or Route 66 Boron is only 40 miles west of Barstow a town any Santa Fe rail fan, or Route 66er will be in anyway just follow California Route 58 west out of Barstow, and  be sure to stop and see one of the last signed portions of Route 466 north of Barstow. If you’re a military aviation buff Boron can be found on the map near California Highway 58 directly northeast of Edwards AFB.

Defending the Interstates in Route 66 Culture

If you where to have a transparent overlay of the modern interstates, and laid it over an old map of Route 66 you could see what replaced what quickly. If you could get a more in depth view, you could also see what sections of 66 are now interstate. You'd see I-40, 55, 44, and 15 all take a cut, and there is a really great reason. 

You see study Route 66 long enough and immerse yourself in the culture and you will eventually begin to hear about the "evil interstates". You'll here the old adage about "driving from one end of the country to the other on the interstate and never seeing a thing", that's one the old timers like to tell. Or the accusations that "the homogeny of the interstate begat homogenous fast food, hotels, and gas stations so no matter where your at your always in the same place !". Trust me the list goes on, and I do see what they are getting at. The flat four lanes, and lots of McDonalds, BPs, and Comfort Inn's do add some homogeny, but to me not enough to get where there at. There are also those little intimations that that the interstates killed Route 66, and the death of Route 66 meant the death of a kinder gentler America. All I have to say is really?

 You see it in the magazines, and you'll read it in books, on the subject. Some of the best authors will mention it either directly or in passing. But what I think they forget is this one simple fact "Route 66 killed Route 66". The road had just carried to much of a burden on it, and may of its sister routes did, and many still do. Sure the road went from town to town, and flowed with the land, but that was also its undoing. As I mentioned in a previous article "Bloody 66 - A Harsh Reality" the Route 66 had become a route noted for terrible car accidents, due to its flowing roads, and town to town hoping. 

The interstates love them or hate them where needed. Sure they are flat, and the bypassed towns, but they where safer and unencumbered by side roads, stop lights, and two lane hilly, curvy stretches. They had in fact become an absolute necessity, in a two lane world. 

Besides the aspect of safety which to me seems to be the number one benefit, there of course is commerce. Trucks where able to become bigger and carry more, and without stopping at every dot on the map for a stop sign or light, could in fact deliver goods faster and with greater fuel efficiency, not to mention cheaper. Which also must make you ask, if the interstates had not existed widely by the 1970's, specifically 1973 and 1974 during the oil crisis could things have been far worse. 

Now as a proponent of Route 66, and a firm green believer in interstate rail transport over truck, its hard for me to stand by the Interstates. Yet at the same time we must admit that they have made life safer, and have helped to keep the costs of products down. Even if your not a fan of the marginal economic gain, you have to ask yourself about the value in human life of the highway. 

So as you read on and the interstate's become evil, stop and ask yourself about their true value. 

Great Stays: #2 La Posada - Winslow, AZ

If you follow this blog you know I talk about Winslow, AZ a lot. I'm not from there, and I don't even know anybody from there either. But, Winslow makes an impression on you especially as a Route 66 traveler. There is a lot going on

in this little town that not only touches on Route 66 but a lot of other areas in history. See my previous article "Winslow, Arizona - Transportation Hub of the Western U.S." about some of that history. 

The La Posada Hotel is a former Harvey House in Winslow that has had several different lives in the past. It's current life is as a resort and luxury hotel, that also functions as a meeting place for many Winslow events. But the hotel was originally built as a Harvey House under the design and direction of famed architect Mary Colter.

Mary Colter was a legend in Southwestern architecture, and a favorite architect of the Fred Harvey Company. Colter was in tune with the Southwestern  landscape and culture and was able to design hotels that captured that spirit. Stucco, bare timbers, Navajo rugs, as well as Hopi and Mexican decor all tastefully placed where the signatures of her hotels. The La Posada was a true showpiece of her telents when it was competed in 1929. 

The La Posada was open as a hotel and dining room to accommodate cross country Santa Fe Railway travelers. These travelers would either stay for meal service while the train underwent watering and/or refueling, or would choose to stay at the La Posada as a resort with The Painted Desert, Petrified Forrest, and Navajo and Hopi lands nearby. 

The La Posada would remain a jewel in the crown of the Fred Harvey Company, and Santa Fe's crown. The Hotel would attract a wide range of travelers including a huge list of celebrity's, many of which also have rooms named after them in the hotel, some of the rooms are those they actually stayed in.

The hotel would see hard times as the Stock Market Crash of 1929, and Great Depression would start after its opening. The Hotel would stay open until 1957, when it was fully purchased by Santa Fe to become the headquarters of there sub district. Santa Fe needing the space for offices would sell most of the La Posada's art and furniture, keeping only a few of the old hotel rooms in place to serve as VIP quarters, and a dormitory for on call train crew. With its merger with Burlington Northern imminent Santa Fe would move their HQ elsewhere in Winslow in 1994. The building would sit vacant until 1997 when its was finally taken over by its new owners and sent on the path to restoration. 

Today the La Posada is fully restored and worth a visit, and if you can a stay. The dinning room called the "Turquoise Room" serves phonominal food, and is named after the top notch dining service that Santa Fe use to offer in special dining cars. With a gourmet menu that serves a lot of unique options, that are based on gourmet Southwestern, original faire served by the Harvey House, and other original options. All served with fresh ingredients from many local growers. 

The hotel itself is fully restored with beautiful grounds, lobby, artistically decorated corridors, and meeting rooms in essence the hotel is a beautiful Southwestern resort, as Mary Colter originally designed it. The hotel rooms are beautifully decorated, and immerse you in both the Southwest, and the mind of Mary Colter. The La Posada prides itself on the fact that no two rooms are alike. 

The rooms are as romantic as they are breathtaking, and come in standard, deluxe, whirlpool, and balcony room. You can look the photos up online at La Posada's website. Like most really great stays, accommodations will cost you a little more then usual ranging from $119 to $169 a night depending on the type of room.

http://laposada.org/hotel_rooms.html

For families there are rooms with two beds available, and Winslow is a family friendly town. A stay here would be great for kids, especially those who like trains since many BNSF trains travel through here. The Painted Desert and Petrified Forrest National Parks are also nearby, as is the very cool Old Trails Museum. 

Overall the La Posada is a great stay and worth a visit to. If you can't stay the night try to stop by the Turquoise Room for a meal and to stroll around the hotel and its  grounds.  

The Mausoleum of Luxury and Glamour

The 1970's where a hard time in Chicago. The railways that once populated the city, and made it the nations hub where vanishing and assumed to be near extinction. Land developers looking to make a grab for the valuable downtown property occupied by tracks grabbed whatever they could. Many made a grab for the air rights over the rails, too anxious to wait and see if the railways would meet their demise. The terminal building across Canal from Union Stations Great Hall would be ripped from the Earth, and a massive office building constructed above the tracks, a story that would happen all above the Northbound tracks of the old Milwaukee Road. 

In to the 1980's such practices where common but the results always the same, air rights granted and bought but the tracks remained. But their where a few exceptions, one of which was Dearborn Station. Dearborn Station itself still stands and is currently in use, but its tracks where taken out and land used for residential property quickly.

The yards that connected to the stations South end. These are long gone replaced with residential properties. 

Amtrak had possession on Santa Fe's rights to Dearborn station only two days before they would close its doors. At that point it's fate seemed to be sealed. Other stations in Chicago no longer serving trains like Central, and Grand Central stations where ripped down almost immediately after train service stopped. 

Somehow though through a twist of fate and a need to save such historic building Dearborn station itself managed to be spared the wrecking ball, its train shed and tracks wouldn't be that lucky. In 1976 an urban renewal project spearheaded by the City of Chicago would take place and the track and train shed would be removed to make way for housing in a new neighborhood aptly named Dearborn Park. 

The station itself would sit almost abandoned all the way through the 1980's with rumors still abounding that the building would meet its fate by the wrecking ball. Finally in 1986 with an 11th hour decision was made to save the station as a historical landmark. But the station facility was to large to maintain in its original form. Sadly although the building would be saved the station interior would be almost completely remodeled to for use as professional offices and retail space. 

Entering Dearborn Station today reminds me of entering a lot of other historic train stations around the country long abandoned by train service. There is little sign trains ever came here as dentist offices and jewelry stores now occupy spaces where passenger waiting rooms, newspaper stands, and ticket booths once use to sit. You can no longer feel the excitement a train travel, or the sense of poshness that once was felt here in the days of the Super Chief. 

So in 2013 Dearborn Station stands like any other mausoleum, with only a few to 

remember what once use to occupy the 

inside.

Boron a Town of Ghosts & Legacy's: Part 2 - Legacy of The Mother Road

Part 2 of a series on a small Mojave Desert town that witnessed American transportation history in motion.

Coming from Barstow you take a fork in the road on Highway 58 and brake left onto 20 Mule Team Road. It's strange for there to be a fork in the road like that on such a busy highway, but 20 Mule Team Road sees very little traffic on this part of it, and its still a ways out of town. 

The "Welcome to Boron" sign is an icon of Southern California and the Mojave Desert

20 Mule Team Road leads into the town of Boron, and as a matter of fact the East-West road is the towns main drag. But why name a road 20 Mule Team, or a town Boron. If you lived in the 50's and early 60's in the era of television westerns you would get it instantly. 

The show Death Valley Days, and sponsor Boraxo with its slogan "20 Mule Team Boraxo" and image of the silhouette of 20 mules with two wagons and a tanker on its packages, gave this road it's name. The town itself is named in honor of US Borax the towns chief employer, and the element Boron that is mined here. 

If you follow 20 Mule Team Road from end to end you will notice its totally straight, no curves, no bends, no breaking off here and rejoining there. It parallels California 58 through the town of Boron, and only curves for the first time way west of town as the road dead ends and forces you back on to 58. But even at this Western dead end beyond the markers you can see it once continued straight intersecting what are now the East bound lanes of California 58. 

You see besides its interesting name 20 Mule Team Road, has some unique history to it. Remember I mentioned in part 1 that even the road had a story to tell in Boron, and here it is. Up until 1964 this road was US Route 466, the designation tells us that this route was the 4th spur of Route 66, yes "The Route 66", US Route 66. There was a period briefly when portions of 466, where originally going to be actual Route 66, but when planning was complete sections such as this one through Boron or at that time Amargo, where designated as a spur route, and by 1935 the route would receive its 466 shield. 466 itself would extend from Las Vegas, NV to Morro Bay, CA via Barstow, and Bakersfield on what are now sections of I-15 and California 58. 

466 was,  in its heyday a busy route much as its replacement CA 58 is today. Meaning that the town of Boron saw hundreds of vehicles a day travel down this spur of The Mother Road, between Barstow and Bakersfield. One can only imagine seeing Boron in about 1958 as a steady stream of cars rolled through the town, and Santa Fe Streamliners flew down its tracks. 

Route 466 would also help contribute to the world of aviation and music as well. The route would have bought stars of early country and rock music from the East to Bakersfield to produce what would be called the "Bakersfield Sound". This new type of country sound would influence country music to this day, and even contribute to the era of Classic Rock as The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Eagles and other bands overtly included the sound in their music. One could only read Merle Haggards hit song "Okie from Muskogee" as a country story of someone who left Oklahoma down the Mother Road, and 466 to come to Bakersfield, and keep their Oklahoman values. 

US Route 466 also influenced aviation as flyers, engineers and dreamers found their way down the route to Rogers Dry Lake Bed, later named Muroc, and then finally Edwards Air Force Base. One could only think that Chuck Yeager, Gus Grissom, and many other aviation and space pioneers must have traveled this route in those early days of the Jet and Space Age. But that is all a posting for later. 

One could easily argue that this little known town, with its little spur of the famous Route 66 may have played a far larger role in history then we think. You have seen its rail history and now it's road history, and I feel I have barely scratched the surface on both. But it's easy to see that this little town began to form a kind of nexus in transportation history as rail, road, and air would converge on it. 

US Route 466 would be replaced by California 58 in 1964. California 58 would bypass Boron as a freeway. California initially began to build 58 to be part of I-40 that would run between Barstow and Bakersfield using US Route 466 as a roadbed for the super highway, but the federal government later rejected the idea. This left only some portions finished with Boron being one of the few towns bypassed. Luckily for us though Boron, and 20 Mule Team Road remain as a living monument to what Route 466 was.