Road Trip! Gettin' My Kicks On Route 66

I love road trips!  My father was a long distance trucker and I loved listening to his road stories. He even took my sister and brother and me with him on a couple of road trips with him when we were little.  And some of my best childhood memories are connected to road trips. Every summer as soon as school was out we'd pile into the car for the long drive south. Some years Mom would put us in the care of an aunt and we'd board the Greyhound Bus, then transfer to the Trailways Bus in Memphis on the last leg of the journey (if you remember Trailways Bus lines holla! LOL). 

I didn't much care what mode of transportation we took; it wasn't about comfort or speed for us kids. We looked forward to the box lunches filled with homemade goodies like fried chicken, biscuits, potato salad, bologna sandwiches on white bread with mayonnaise, tuna salad, salmon croquettes, thick slices of ham, boiled eggs, apples, bananas, and grapes. Yes, my Mom packed a weeks worth of food for a 14 hour journey. Once on the road, my brothers and sisters and I would count and compile license plates from each state and every color car on the road. And  when we tired of counting cars, each of us would claim a particular make and model of car and build our collection of Cadillacs, Buicks, Pontiacs and Oldsmobiles. And when we tired of that, we would eat! 

Yesterday I embarked on the longest cross country road trip I've taken in a long while. I'm doing a wedding photography workshop in Phoenix, Arizona and I decided to drive Route 66 from Chicago to Phoenix. Ever since I was a child watching the old Route 66 TV series, I've wanted to drive "The Mother Road" in a red convertible. Guess the red jeep will have to do. If it's at least 70 degrees in Phoenix, the T-Top is coming off!