Day 5: December 25, 2022
This Christmas Is White

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These are the only places in Carthage I initially found open on Christmas morning. Discount Smokes & Liquor seems to have all the important stuff covered so maybe I could have scored a cup of coffee there but I got mine at Pete's.

I drove through Red Oak II twice and got out of my car once. That was to take a picture of the white gas station and I didn't spend a whole lot of time on it. All other photos were taken by rolling a window down and back up as quickly as possible. This was definitely the whitest -- and coldest -- that I've ever seen the village that Lowell Davis created.

I paused on the drive back to town to snap pictures of two other Lowell Davis creations. The first time I ever encountered the name Lowell Davis was when I spotted "The Crapduster" on my second Route 66 run in 2003. I also spotted and photographed the Tire Changing Woman on that trip.

As I hurried to catch the end of yesterday's Bengals game, I had driven by the Route 66 Drive-In without stopping. I now headed back there to get a picture of all that white.

I was surprised to find a third Carthage business open as I drove to the drive-in. On my return, I stepped into the Donut Palace and grabbed another cup of coffee along with a banana nut muffin which I downed in my warm room.

I knew there were casinos in the area and from the time I first considered staying in Carthage over Christmas has sort of planned on dining at one of them on Christmas. Casinos tend to operate with little regard to holidays. I made some calls around noon and learned that the closest casino only had a Christmas brunch which would end at 2:30. Other casinos had food operations running much later but they were a few miles farther away. As the day wore on, driving 30+ miles for dinner became lass and less appealing. I ultimately decided to drive just ten miles to Joplin where I knew there would be a Waffle House open and maybe a Buffalo Wild Wings. I got lucky and was able to have boneless wings for Christmas. I added Breckenridge Christmas Ale to make it truly festive.

With the temperature about twenty degrees higher than yesterday (i.e., 29F) I talked myself into checking out "Sparkle in the Park" just down the street in Central Park. Pretty impressive.

Today's background is the Blue Whale of Catoosa wearing a Santa Claus hat.

I found no new Christmas music that I felt like sharing so I'm sharing a forty-five year old Kinks performance. Yes, Virginia, there is a Ray Davies.


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