A Beautiful Day in Santa Fe

Sparky and I have got this down to a fine art. When we arrive at the hotel each evening, he unloads the trunk while I unload things from inside the car. We get in the room, he plugs up the strip and plug in everything that has to be charged; phones, laptop, camera battery, etc. I then get on the computer to update the blog.

In the mornings, we load the car in the same fashion. He does the trunk, I do the inside of the car, making sure there is ice in the cooler for water bottles. He does the driving. I navigate with the guide book and Sparky's iPhone 4G (We would have been lost without that phone, literally. Who needs gps?). I take the pictures while he is driving. It's working great. A well oiled team.

I have so many beautiful pictures of the rocks and scenes but I do not want to bore you with lots of scenery pictures so I'm trying to limit how many I upload.

We decided to leave the Route 66 road today and take a side trip up to Santa Fe. Santa Fe is about 60 miles due north of Albuquerque. It is a beautiful city and we could not have ordered a more perfect day. Absolutely gorgeous. We only spent a couple hours there. I would love to go back sometime. There's so much to see and do in the Santa Fe/Albuquerque area. But not for this trip.



This is the view of Santa Fe as we approached on the interstate.

Love the adobe style houses. That's pretty much all we saw there.

Guess what? We thought we were veering off the mother road but here it is. We knew that there was a Santa Fe road option that went up there but we did not expect to find it. We shopped for a couple of hours and then headed back to Route 66 via Albuquerque (I"m getting tired of typing that word. It doesn't flow very well. ;-))

As we left Albuquerque, this is the view that we saw. There's no way that these pictures can do it justice. It was like being in the bottom of a huge bowl. Unbelievable.

Sparky said this looked like a Mini-me version of the Grand Canyon. (Please excuse my reflection in the window of the car. It was too hot to roll down the window when taking these pictures)

We were driving the road and I saw this really cool rock so I took a picture of it. As we went on down the road, I read in the guide book that we would pass the "Owl Rock" and then the "Dead Man's Curve". I knew when we reached Dead Man's Curve but was sad that I missed the Owl Rock. Imagine my surprise when I looked at my pictures tonight and there was a picture of Owl Rock. Very cool.

Route 66 runs right next to a couple of pueblos. The book said that we should be very careful about not going onto pueblo land, and that we were to treat the land with respect. This was the first one we passed, the Laguna Pueblo.

You can't see the houses very well in this picture but it is some of the houses that the people live in on the pueblo.

This is what I supposed to be a water tower from for the pueblo.

These two pictures fascinated me. They were on opposite sides of the road but well off the road. If you will notice the ridge of rocks that make up the edge on both sides. The rocks are lined up like building blocks. They are almost perfectly even and aligned. I commented to Sparky about this. I assumed that they had been cut and stacked that way by man to form a ridge. He said that is the way they were naturally. The perfectness and straightness of the "building blocks" was no accident. It was an intelligent design.

I don't know about you but I think I'd like to visit that church.

I took this picture because of the little house that is in ruins in the left center of the picture. It made me wonder how long it had been there, who once lived in it and what kind of life they had.

These two pictures are of some lava fields that we passed. Question: if these are lava fields, where did the lava come from? Doesn't lava have to come from volcanoes? I don't recall hearing anything about volcanoes in New Mexico.

Grants, New Mexico: where we ended up tonight. Tomorrow we cross the Continental Divide and we will sleep in a wigwam. More to come.

On the road again - to Albequerque

We got a bit of a late start today but it was ok. We are, in fact, on vacation and on no timetable. We travel a good many mile every day but at our own leisure. We actually spent most of the day driving on the interstate, not because we were tired of being on Route 66 but because much of Route 66 no longer exists on this stretch of road and the guide book said "join I-40". So we did. Still many beautiful sites to see.

We went to see the "Cadillac Ranch" right outside of Amarillo. I was surprised that it was just right on the side of the road. I guess I thought it was way off somewhere but you could see it from the interstate. I didn't really like all the graffiti but since it is legal, everybody does it.

I just thought this was funny.

This is just one picture out of several of this site. When we were approaching it, I thought it was bushes but David said he thought it was cows. He was right. There were thousands of them. It looked so strange to see all those cows together. And yes, I know what was about to happen to them.

This was a picnic area . I felt so sorry for these sad Texans who have a picnic area like this. Where are the beautiful trees and a lovely creek? No self-respecting picnic area in Alabama would be without one.

Just look at that road. It goes on forever, as far as you can see. No hills. Hardly any trees. I've never see terrain like that before.

Right before the Texas/New Mexico border, was a little ghost town called Glenrio. We were following the road just past Glenrio when Route 66 turned into Dirt 66. We turned around and hightailed it to the interstate. Not doing that again.

I know that you are probably getting tired of me saying "I've never seen this before." or "This is my first time to ..." but I keep saying that because it is my first time to ... Well this is my first time to go to New Mexico. All of this type of land is new to me. I was like a small child with my mouth open. "Look at that, Sparky." "Wow, what is that?" He was very patient with me and told me all about what I was seeing.

If you look closely in this picture, you can see how the trees are laying over. Many years of much wind and wide open spaces takes it's toll.

There is a small town in New Mexico called Tucumcari. It comes after a very long patch of long straight road. In this small town, I took pictures of over 20 different motels, most of them abandoned. Some of them are still in operation. I have put up some of the pictures of a few of the motel signs. Sparky said that there were so many here because it was the first place since Amarillo that had anyplace to stay. I think he's right. When traveling Route 66 back in the day, people had probably travelled all day and were ready for a place to stop. Tucumcari was a popular place.

This is a very famous Route 66 landmark. Their sign is still operational in neon while most of the signs in Tucumcari no longer work. Neon was a big thing on Route 66.

Long stretch of Route 66.

These rock formations along side the road were fascinating to me. Sorry, but I've never seen anything like that before.

This one fascinated me because the rock was red, while all the ground around it was white sand. Sparky said it had to do with the amount of iron in the dirt. Once again, I think he's right.

The two things in this picture intrigued me. The little hill jutting up out of the ground and the farm house in the foreground. The house was truly "out in the middle of nowhere".

The Pecos River

I have seen horizons on the ocean before but I don't think I've ever seen a horizon on land before. In Alabama, there's always trees or hills or something to block the horizon. I found this fascinating.

An homage to my friends, Kim and Greg Cline.

Old diner.

This is the road leading into Albuquerque. It was completely awesome.

The Rio Grande. Not so grand.

The view from Route 66 in Albuquerque.

Underneath the Amarillo sky

Today was filled with lots of very small, almost ghost-like towns. We went through so many little towns that were probably thriving at one time but now, probably with the building of the interstates that took visitors our of the towns, they are almost abandoned. I have tons of pictures of motels which are in ruins. It's hard to believe that they were busy with customers at one time but I'm sure they were.

So much for waxing philosophical. Beautiful weather, albeit a little chilly this morning. This afternoon brought sun and the top down.


This is a famous Route 66 landmark. The Round Barn in Arcadia, OK. There is a Route 66 exhibit in the basement and the main part of the barn is rented out for dances and parties.

There are really cool murals painted on the sides of buildings everywhere. I love it.

This bridge is between Bridgeport and Hydro. It is called "The Pony Bridge" because it uses 38 "pony" trusses to cross the river.

This was a cool shop where we stopped. We don't usually stop at these places because they are usually just cheap trinkets but this place looked legit. David bought a really nice hat.

For miles and miles, there were signs about "The National Route 66 Museum", so we felt obligated to visit the "National" museum. It was pretty cheesy, I'll have to say. There were some really cool cars there but other than that, not great. At least it didn't cost a lot. :-)

This is what the road looks like most of the way through Texas. It was better in some places, worse in others. We were at times almost lulled to sleep by the "thump-de-thump-de-thump" of the road. David said he felt he was galloping.

There's one section of the road that I cannot show you because we opted to avoid it. Between McLean and Alanreed, OK is a section called Dirt 66. Yes, 8 miles of road with dirt, sand and gravel. After having travelled the 9-foot Hwy, we decided it was ok to hit the interstate.

The last town, if you can call it that, before you hit Texas is Texola. I just thought that was funny.

Not sure where this road was supposed to be going but travelling it must have been an adventure.

This sign was on the side of the road as we entered Shamrock, Tx. I was not sure if it was a warning or a celebration.

You gotta love a land that can give a tribute to Barbed Wire. This was in McLean, TX.

After we passed McLean, the terrain became considerably more arid and flat. "Spiky plants and prairie grass cover rolling hills cut by eroded gullies." I've never seen land like that.

A famous Route 66 landmark. I know it's for the tourist but I still took pictures.

This "Bug Ranch" is a take off on the "Cadillac Ranch" that we will see today. This thing was so small, we drove by it twice before we saw it. It's just on the side of the road in front of an old gas station. Funny though.

When in Amarillo, it is a requirement to eat at The Big Texan. They have a 72 oz. steak dinner that if you can eat the whole thing in 60 minutes, you get it free. If you can't do it, it costs $72.00. Beleive it or not people do it all the time. Someone did it this past Saturday. WOW! That's not a steak. That's a roast.

It's Albuqurque next. Have a great day. We plan to