At least the Donner party didn't have computer problems.

With every adventure comes some challenges. The pioneers had wagon wheels that broke, babies being born, and occassionally, the Donner party got hungry. For us, it's the hard drives I'm using to store the video I shoot each day. After the third day they started to act up. I'm not sure what the problem was, but they are working again now. The worse thing about this was I had to back up all of my footage again. All 5 hours of video. (I'm up to around 10 hours now, and am averaging about an hour a day.) Luckily, I didn't lose any of the amazing stories I already shot. But it did keep me from blogging until now.

Well, it's now day 10. We are meeting so many people who are welcoming us with open arms, and who are more than willing to share their stories of life in small town America along Route 66 with us. They either live and work or own a business along the road. For the most part, even the small towns are doing ok in this economy, but the recession is taking it's toll. Either by affecting the number of tourist coming though and the amount of money they spend, or limiting the number of local jobs available to those who live in town.

It has taken us 6-days to travel the 301 miles of Route 66 through Illinois. As of today, we are more than 3/4 of the way through Missouri's 317 miles of the road. We will arrive in Oklahoma tomorrow for the Route 66 convention this weekend. Tonight we are stopping in Joplin, Missouri, the last major town before we cross over to Kansas(which only has 13 miles of the road running through it). So, for those counting, by Sunday we will have traveled over 630 miles so far. We'll pickup the pace after Fathers Day so we can get to Santa Monica by June 28th.

The day we shot at the Litchfield drive-in movie theater was fun (day 6). Iron Man 2 and Percy Jackson and The Olympians were playing, but the show almost didn't go on. There were severe thunderstorms rolling through. The theater flooded, and lost power for a while. When the rain stopped the humidity started, but nothing kept the families, and the teenagers from coming out. It looked like it was right out of the movies. Small town America at it's best. Small kids playing, teenagers throwing a football.

All along the way, the people have been great. We've met police officers who were riding for the Special Olympics, a son who lost his father to cancer a few months ago and is in the process of selling the vintage cars his dad loved some much(check out the auction website http://www.lukeleegaule.com/auc-06-26-2010.htm), and even a 100 year old women whose husband built one of the iconic restaurants on Route 66, The Ariston Cafe.

We've visited places like Devil's Elbow, and the Ghosttowns of Arlington, and Hooker Missouri. Today we met a man whose wife was born in 1926, the day Route 66 was formed. Before she past away, they use to celebrate the birth of the road and of his wife at the same time.

Well, I hope you are having a great June, and thank you again for reading about our trip.