The Route 66 Transportation Museum in Elk City, Okla., will have its grand opening Aug. 5 from 7 to 9 p.m.

It’s reportedly going to be a casual event, and Borden’s ice cream will be served. The Transportation Museum is next-door to the town’s National Route 66 Museum.

Kathy Anderson, former president of the Oklahoma Route 66 Association, reports:

They’ve now made the Transportation Museum the official entry point for the two 66 museums. They moved the gift shop to the new building so this puts the shopping right at the entrance, as well as making it easy to usher people into the new theater that shows the video (”The American Dream and the American Drive”) Thomas Repp and I co-produced for the Museum.

I haven’t been to the new part of the museum yet. But it opened May 1, and apparently was a big hit with kids, reports the city’s Web site:

The students filled the museum with sounds of laughter while “driving” a 1955 Pink Cadillac down Route 66 or sitting in the back seat of a 1959 Red Impala watching the “Creature from the Black Lagoon” in a Drive-In Theatre. Everyone has enjoyed hopping on the 1917 RIO Fire Truck, the first motor driven truck in Elk City, and sliding down the fire pole. In addition, there is a chance to climb in a 1930s Teardrop trailer and take a nap on a thin mattress and check out the cooking facilities!

The major attraction with the Transportation Museum is that it is filled with interactve things for kids of all ages! Children love the HANDS-ON participation.

For a panoramic view of the museum grounds, click here.

C. Beck has a relatively new blog called Life on the Access Road … that may eventually hold a lot of delights for armchair (and real) travelers.

The text shows that he understands the innate appeal of the Mother Road. But the next few sentences show why this blog could be a treasure trove:

Traveling Route 66 is about getting off the interstate whenever and wherever possible. Sometimes that means driving down stretches of unpaved road or driving for long stretches with no food or restrooms in sight. That is the reasoning behind the name of my blog. Because of that and the approximately 25,000 pictures we have of Route 66 [my emphasis -- Ed.], I thought I would post a series of pictures and comments about some of the things we have seen along the highway.

The post shows one photo of the start of Route 66 in Chicago.

One down, many more thousands to go.

Ninety-year-old Gene Hodkin has lived on Route 66 virtually his entire life — first in southwest Missouri, then in the high desert of California. The Barstow Desert Dispatch mined some of Hodkin’s memories.

Hodkin, by the way, is the father-in-law of Deb Hodkin, who is manager/curator of the Barstow Route 66 Mother Road Museum.

I found a fun blog with the lengthy title, Bearnard B. Behr on Route 66 … An Adventure Across the Nation! Mr. Behr is the mascot of Gary Fleshman, who’s guiding a motorcycle group down the Mother Road.

Gary’s also a professional photographer, so there are plenty of images to go with the text that describes his travels.

The latest post has Gary, the group and the bear in Santa Fe, N.M. If you go surfing on that site, make you have plenty of time set aside.