When you don't have a plan on Route 66, you have to rely on persistence. This time it paid off with a tepee.

When you don’t have a plan on Route 66, you have to rely on persistence. This time it paid off with a tepee.

The Wigwam Motel on the iconic Route 66 in Holbrook, Ariz. Classic cars lend authenticity.

By Brady MacDonald

June 9, 2017 6 AM PT

Say “Route 66 trip” and the first (and sometimes the only) question you get is about whether you’ll be sleeping in the tepee motels.

The Wigwam Motel in Holbrook, Ariz., was certainly tops on my list. But there was one small problem: Having promised I wouldn’t plan my vacation to death, I wasn’t booking my next hotel room until I’d checked out of my last one.

Not a good plan if the place is popular

I called the Wigwam from the road about two dozen times trying to score a room. No progress.

I stopped by the motel on my way through town. No rooms left. I was welcome to add my name to the waiting list behind 15 other desperate travelers.

Half a mile away, the Rainbow Rock Shop lifted my spirits. A towering herd of colorful plaster dinosaurs stood guard over the small shop, which was surrounded by piles of petrified rocks.

Adam Luna sells the dinosaurs to roadside attractions that are hoping to catch the eye of passing motorists.

Luna, a welder, builds sections of the beasts out of rebar, plasters them and paints them in eye-catching colors. Prices start in the hundreds and climb to the thousands.

With no tepee in my future, I settled on the Heritage Inn Bed and Breakfast in Snowflake, Ariz. The restored 1890 Victorian was beautiful, but it wasn’t a tepee.

Over the next few days my journey took me to Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Taos in New Mexico before I turned around and headed home to Southern California.

In Holbrook, I stopped for lunch at Joe & Aggie’s Cafe.

Pixar artists spent a lot of time in Holbrook when they were researching “Cars,” said Steve Gallegos, who runs the restaurant.

From the wall, he pulled down a hand-drawn picture of Lightning McQueen (the stock car protagonist of the animated movie). The pictures bears the autograph of Pixar’s John Lasseter.

“They ate three meals a day here for five days,” Gallegos said of the Pixar people. “John Lasseter talked to my mom for hours.”

Stanley, the departed patriarch of the movie’s fictional Route 66 town of Radiator Springs, was named for Gallegos’ dad.

Thanks in part to the Pixar film, the cafe gets weekly bus tours from Ireland, Norway, Germany and Australia, Gallegos said.

“It’s their American dream to do Route 66,” he said.

It was my dream to stay at the Wigwam.

I dropped one more time to see whether anything was available.

“All booked,” said Lelia Demuth from behind the lobby counter.

Dejected, I headed for my car when suddenly Demuth called after me: “We had a cancellation!”

Fate and persistence had paid off.

Staying in a wigwam turned out to be as much fun as I expected. There was plenty of room, and the bathroom was bigger than others I’d encountered on my trip.

I had hoped to see a high school football game on my trip, but all the local teams were playing away that Friday night.

But two games were being rebroadcast on local cable access TV. I flipped between them both over a Flagstaff IPA as I lounged in my tepee.

In the better game, the undefeated Show Low Cougars held on to defeat the Payson Longhorns, 43-34, with some last-minute heroics.

Sometimes, you just get lucky.

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