Cars and Route 66

I wish I had seen this guide to Route 66 and the Cars movie before our trip so I could make more connections between Cars and the real Route 66. Some of the fun things I didn't know were that the tractors were probably representative of the burros we saw wandering around Oatman and the "RS" that I never noticed on the rocks in Radiator Springs was a tipoff to the "T" that I DID see on the mountain in Tucumcari in real life. Well, but even so, we did make a lot of movie to real life connections and we watched the DVD extra where John Lasseter talks about the inspiration to Cars. It's nice to see someone who knows the Mother Road to put in the work into deciphering the movie to the rest of us. It makes me fall in love with the movie all over again.

So while we were driving through Shamrock, TX -- actually, we were just there to eat at the Pizza Hut but we drove through "town" since it was right off the highway. We found the tall Conoco spire that I wanted to see because our Route 66 guidebook author said it was great neon. While we passed it, Tobey says...

Tobey: "I want to see that! That!" (pointing)
Us: "What do you want to see?"
Tobey: "The thing that looks like Radiator Springs!"

And so I feel like all of our effort to choose Route 66 over the shorter northern route was all worth it. I was waiting for something to "click" for Tobey, that he recognizes Route 66 as being from the Cars movie that he knows so well. And to hear him mention Radiator Springs unprompted just makes it all worth it.