Oklahoma's Route 66 Waterpark

In the interest of touting my home state (not always easy to do), here's a little tourist attraction entry. The girls and I traveled up Route 66 towards Claremore to hunt down the "big blue whale." The whale sits at the entrance of a giant pond that used to be a water park right off the old highway. It doesn't have a name, not sure if it ever did, but at one time it was a hot spot on Rt. 66. It sits abandoned, opened in the early 1970s and closed in 1988. The big blue whale has been featured in several books about Rt. 66, and so the girls and I headed up the Route with our cameras to get some photos. We were able to walk out into the mouth of the whale and see the ladder to the second level, and the slides coming out of each side of the whale. We imagined it as it used to be, although the other equipment that was part of the park is rotting, rusting and sinking into the water. Not much else to see but the whale and a gathering of colorful tables gathered at the water's edge. The old ticket building is padlocked and the ticket counter windows are boarded up. I agreed with one of the girls that it was a little creepy, but in a good way!
On up the Route we saw an old motel still in business. There are fewer and fewer of those along Rt. 66, so we took photos and will keep them. Someday the old motels will be gone, boarded up and abandoned like the old water park. Here's to Route 66 - still the Mother Road.