2For66

April 27, 2015

After having a cup of coffee with Carolyn and Glenn they had to go to work (we tried hard not to gloat too much about being retired). We had a leisurely breakfast, liberating them from some of their granola stash. Then we packed up and headed up “The 15” back toward Rancho Cucamonga where we would rejoin Route 66 where we left it yesterday.

Southern California driving tip: when referring to the freeways don’t say “I15”, instead always say “the” followed by the number. A few years ago my little sister came to visit and referred to Highway 217 and she called it “The 217”; it took me a minute to figure out what she meant. But then I remembered by SoCal days and understood. Now I notice everyone refers to the highways that way. It’s nice and succinct; I’m going to try to spread the system back home.

The San Bernadino area (Rancho Cucamonga, Rialto, Fontana, etc) are referred to as The Inland Empire. A few weeks ago I saw on a Route 66 web site that a Richfield Station in Rancho Cucamonga (I love saying that – I say it out loud as I type) is being restored. They’ve repainted it and restored the sign. As we pulled up to it we saw it was behind a locked chain link fence. But we were in luck as a workman pulled up and said we were welcome to come in and take some pictures.

They are restoring it so completely they even have the old push-button style electric light switches. Too bad we won’t be here for the gala opening in July.

A little farther on we came across the Magic Lamp Inn that features a giant Aladdin’s lamp on the sign

People have been coming to California for hundreds of years. Before there was Route 66 the pioneers came out west on wagon trains. Upland California has a Madonna of the Trail statue to commemorate the pioneer mothers and their children who made the arduous trip.

Behind the statue was a long park that heads up to the mountains behind (north) of Upland.

Then it was time for lunch as we hit Glendora; we bypassed a Foster’s Freeze – Southern California’s answer to Dairy Queen in favor of Tommy’s Burgers. My college buddies Tim, Butch, Dudley, and Brad tell stories of hitting the downtown Tommy’s back in the high school days. According to Butch the smell of the chili would stay with you for a few days. We opted for a tuna melt, a BLT and some of their french fries. It was okay but definitely not the same Tommy’s as back in 60’s.

As we continued into Monrovia along Foothill Blvd we came across Dale’s Garage – an unused gas station / repair shop that still has some of the old style gas pumps out front.

That’s our car in the background.

We continued into Pasadena along Colorado Blvd – the route of the Rose Parade each New Year’s Day. We did okay with the directions into town along the Pasadena freeway but got totally lost in downtown Los Angeles. After a few attempt to right ourselves we took the easy way out by hopping on the Santa Monica freeway west to the beach. We’ll explore from here. We drove this bit on our last trip which you can read about here.

Carla says that as soon as I finish typing we’ll head down for a walk along the beach. Okay I’m done typing.