Day 7--Upland--San Bernardino--Victorville--Barstow--Las Vegas?!

After a full morning of finishing up laundry, packing, and loading up the car, we finally made it out the door and on our way. But first we had to have some food in our bellies, so we went to lunch, along with my parents, to one of our other favorite places to eat when we are down in California--the Buffalo Inn, located conveniently enough in Upland right on Route 66, and very yummy food. It wasn't until we were walking out that I noticed on the sign it said, Buffalo Inn, est. 1929, so it too was also around to see the establishment of Route 66.

For anyone who may not know, I graduated from the U of U with a degree in history, but that just means that I like it, not that I can remember anything about it. I really like reading and learning new things about history, but my retention is terrible. That being said, the pictures I'm including today are fun ones I took of some of the different places we saw along our way, with a little bit of history to go with them. It's not like we got the whole family out for each picture, ok--not for any picture today, but we will get them in there.

We began where we left off at Foothill and Euclid Ave. in Upland and headed east. In Fontana we found this Orange Juice Stand, which I think is the last remaining one. Apparently orange juice stands used to be a common site along this stretch of Route 66. The oranges from around there are so amazingly good, unlike anything else you have ever eaten in your life!! We make a trip to California every spring just to load up on the fresh picked oranges (which we pick)...and to see the fam!

Can you say "Welcome to the Cozy Cone" anyone?!! We laughed hard when we saw this, and I'm pretty sure this place had to be the inspiration for that part of the "Cars" movie. We continued on through San Bernardino, and then had to get on the freeway, but just for a minute.

We got off the freeway to continue on old Route 66 at the bottom of Cajon Pass, and this is what we saw looking one way--the remains of the old road once traveled, but closed to vehicles now. I read that this was one of the nations first divided highways. Looking the other way we got to drive on the old road, complete with the route sign painted on it. Once again, how many times have I driven on this freeway and not even noticed the old highway below? It was a beautiful drive through the mountains, complete with many trains passing close by--our boys hated that, as you can imagine!

We made it in time to Victorville, Ca. to visit the California Route 66 Museum before they closed. We didn't have a lot of time to browse because that's just not possible with three young boys, but we stayed long enough to find and buy an authentic brown Historic California Route 66 Route sign, just like this one. If you have ever seen our garage you know we like to hang pictures and signs in it, so we couldn't resist this purchase. It will go perfectly in there and be a great reminder of our trip.

One thing I have come to realize about this trip is that there is no way to get all the pictures I would really like to--it's just not possible to stop and photograph every old building, motel, gas station, etc. I'm good with it though, and will just try to do the best I can. Daren was the one who spotted this jewel of a place. It was just on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, and it was a whole lot full of these...um.....bottle trees?? I have no idea what they are, but it was fun to see and get a picture of.

We ended our Route 66 trip today at Barstow, and are on our way back to Vegas to stay a couple of days with our friends, the Knights, and then it's back on the road.

Total mileage to date:1,458.5

Weather: 92 degrees at 1:00pm when we left Upland, up to 104 degrees just past Barstow!!

Premium gas price for the day (cuz that's what my car takes and what I'm going to keep track of): $4.89 at the top of Cajon Pass