I’ve always wanted to see the USA in a Chevrolet while driving down Route 66.  I came pretty close.  This week I saw Arkansas hill country in a Toyota on Route 66.

The celebrated route which bisected our country was immortalized in a 1946 Nat King Cole song and a 1960s TV show by the same name.  That show is one of my earliest TV memories and George Maharis became my heart throb for the next 10 years.

Low and behold, when my traveling companions arrived in Arkansas for a weekend getaway, I was delighted to learn that our hotel was located on Route 66.  (Well, okay, so we later learned that the infamous Route 66 doesn’t even run through Arkansas, but hey, we spent a lot of hours on Arkansas State Highway 66 this weekend. I’m pretty sure it offers as much excitement and maybe more than its more well known cousin.)

It led us to a wonderful place called Mountain View where we sang with a blue grass band named “Whoa Mule” (pictured above) and spent the day at the The Ozark Folk Center which gave us a peek back in time when pioneers made their own textiles, grew their own food, crafted their own weapons…and Walmart was more than a half a century away.

It was simple easy time and we fell in love with the music which was somewhere between Celtic and bluegrass. It satisfied our Scotch-Irish sensibilities and put a lilt in our steps and a song in our hearts.

Check out these limes at left.  They were the size of Grapefruits!

The best was yet to come as we traveled deeper into the backwoods of Arkansas and learned some of the mysteries of the Ozark culture.  Stay tuned, I need to check some things out with my attorney before I publish the results of our “research.”