Yes, I got a few ideas from there already!
Andersonville sounds very intriguing, but the only chance I’d have to go there is when I drive to Atlanta on my flight home. That would be a bit out-of-the-way (120 miles) but depending on when my flight is that night, possibly doable.
The Oklahoma City Bombing museum is pretty interesting.
If you have time when you’re in Taos, stop at Michael’s Kitchen & Bakery. They serve great food and make the best bread (try a loaf of the chile cheese bread).
Besides the nuclear museum (highly recommended) Albuquerque has the International Rattlesnake Museum in Old Town. East of ABQ, in Cedar Crest, is the Tinkertown Museum which I enjoyed more than I thought I would.
The Artillery Museum is at Ft. Sill - Lawton, OK. (In SW OK - it’s where Field Artillerians are trained.) My SO works at Ft. Sill at times and was inducted into The Honorable Order of Saint Barbara - the patron saint of artillerymen.
ETA: Geronimo’s grave is at Ft. Sill as well. It’s kinda cool.
Good catch. You are, of course, 100% right. “Sill” & “Stillwater” got stuck together in my head. I even went to the website to check that it was still available to civilians, but somehow skipped looking at the street address.
They’re roughly the same distance from I-40 so from a timing perspective, it wouldn’t matter much. It is a pretty big detour tho.
If you’re in ABQ and going east, take Rte 66 out of town instead of I-40, at least initially.
Rte 66 has a section of “musical road”:
I think it’s only one of two in the country (or was at the time it was done).
If you change your route to go a bit more southerly through Texas, the Spanish Inn in Snyder, Texas has fantastic Mexican food.
Also Fiesta Mexicana in Page, AZ
The last time I was in Holbrook I had the best fried chicken in all my life at Tom & Suzie’s diner by America’s Best Value Inn (I wouldn’t recommend staying there) on the main drag. Now, the building is fairly run down, and the neighborhood is really run down, and Holbrook in general is run down, but the fried chicken was nothing short of amazing.
Without reading rest of thread just yet, I have to correct location of the US Artillery Museum. It is at Ft Sill/Lawton, OK, fwiw. Quite a distance south from Stillwater 
I served three years at Ft Sill and have been to that museum a number of times. LOTS of history to be learned/found there, fwiw. Made me feel rather old to see the Battery Computer System (BCS) I was trained on to repair (as well as Firefinder-related radar system(s). Brought back lots of fond memories. It still chills me to see the ol’ Pershing missile(s) display as there were LOTS of those there when I served, and I feared that one day they would be used somewhere. Most are destroyed now due to a treaty, IIRC.
Anyways, its set up in a ‘timeline-like’ display from oldest types of cannon to current stuff. There is also ‘Atomic Annie’ just around the bend which was designed to fire atomic warheads - BIG gun, that one…
There is also Medicine Bluffs there, which is where the traditional yell of “Geronimo” came from as he was pursued over the cliffs, IIRC (so we were told during boot camp and many times afterwards. Site is/was used for rappeling during my Basic and whenever a day of training was called for. The jailhouse and hospital where Geronimo died is also right there by Atomic Annie, fwiw. I actually did quite a bit of repair stuff in the same room Geronimo died in according to many who worked there. Building is across from Knox Hall right by Fort Headquarters, fwiw. There is another museum dedicated to Ft Sill-area history with all sorts of displays, etc. Also on the Fort is a cemetery of Native Americans who are notable, so if ‘the Old West’ is your thing, lots to be learned/seen there as well.
About 30 minutes away (but bordering Ft Sill to North-side is the Wichita Mountains National Reserve with wild roaming bison,longhorns, prairie dogs, etc and and a great museum there as well, fwiw. You can drive to top of Mt Scott (near entrance to Reserve (free) and view artillery shelling impacts from on-high whenever troops are training (which is very common, IME). I have seen a number of tornado funnels from up there, such is the view! My buddy and I would go up there whenever tornadoes were imminent just to watch 'em. Planty of hidey holes amidst all the big granite boulders that form the ‘mountain’.
IF Ft Sill/Lawton is too far, make sure to go to Sulphur Springs park (in Sulphur of course), kinda middle of townish, hard to miss actually. You can smell the natural springs for miles some days, and lots of folks go to a fountain to collect the water for drinking, etc. Nice park to walk in and/or relax awhile anyways, if that helps, and you can stand the mildish odor of rotten eggs, LOL.
I will remind OP that they will be going through a number of small towns getting to Sulphur that LEO’s are well known to pull over folks for going 27 in a 25mph zone or similar, so make sure to drive through them at posted speed or less, especially if non-Okie plates! Be ready to see LOTS of oil-drilling haulers on road as Central OK is full of heavy trucks that give little room for others on the ‘backroad’ small two-lane highways around Sulphur. Just sayiin’. Enjoy your trip!
Noted!
Yes, I was considering just that (re: SS). And thanks for the additional heads-up.
Very cool! Since Taos is north, I’ll definitely have to look into whether I might do it and then cross over. Thanks!
Those both sound good, too. Much obliged! I’ll have to ask the friend I’m visiting about Michael’s, too.
I’m sure it’s an interesting and tastefully curated presentation there, but I think that would still be a little too ghoulish for me (why I’ll also never visit Ground Zero). I guess there’s not much difference between that and visiting a Civil War battlefield or a Nazi death camp, but at least those didn’t occur in my lifetime. Thanks for the rec, though.
Oatman, AZ. Take I40 to Needles and get off on the Oatman-Topack Highway (Old Rte 66). It’s a two lane highway that can get a little curvy as it climbs through the hills. Walk the street in Oatman, feed the donkeys and visit the hotel where Clark Gable and Carole Lombard spent their honeymoon. Take the highway east out of town to Kingman where you can pickup I40 again.
I still recommend the Cowboy Hall of Fame and Museum of Western culture in Oklahoma. They added a cool wing about western tv shows. But be prepared to spend many and hour there.
As a road-trip veteran, this.
Sadly this doesn’t seem to be possible given the time constraints given by the OP.
All good suggestions however.
Yes to this, small town “sheriff” pulled me over, cash only, see the “judge” who was pumping gas at his station up the road when I pulled up, I explained I had only enough cash to get home, he didn’t care at all, and surprisingly, that “ticket” never showed up on my license.
This may seem strange, but in Tennessee you have the Jack Daniels and George Dickel distilleries. JD is in Lynchburg, GD is in Cascade Hollow near Tullahoma; they’re roughly 20 minutes apart (in case you can’t do one, the other is close by). I crunched some Google Map numbers, they add only 3 hrs extra driving time as opposed to Memphis to Montgomery direct. From the distilleries, backtrack to I-65 and it’s a straight shot thru Birmingham to Montgomery. Both tours were super nifty–Dickel was kinda laid back, JD was much more colorful.
The major drawback: they’re both in dry counties. :eek: