Day 14 - In which we make discoveries about History that others have somehow missed

I had an amazing night's sleep last night in Gallup, New Mexico. Maybe the beds were good or maybe I was just really tired, it's hard to tell. Still, it means the El Rancho will get a good Tripadvisor review despite their apparently outdated definition of "Convenience of tomorrow" (the geeks do not overlook the lack of wifi in the rooms lightly). That aside (and overlooking the fact that it was our most expensive hotel on the route), the El Rancho is pretty much everything you want out of Route 66 accommodation: it's clean and comfortable, incredibly tacky, it has a fabulous neon sign, and it overplays the movie stars who stayed there back in the day almost as much as Roswell oversells the aliens. Each of the rooms and even the items on the restaurant's menu are named after actors. For dinner last night we both had the Ricardo Montalban, just because of the name. It was tasty too, which is fortunate as otherwise we may have had to yell "KHAAAAAAAAAAN!" and get kicked out of the hotel.

For breakfast this morning, we decided to venture outside the hotel and found a diner that, despite the sign bearing the ubiquitous Route 66 shield, appeared to be a local diner for local people. There was a lot of staring. But that's okay, because there were also very good pancakes. Not as good as Jessica's back in Tucumcari, perhaps, but still outranking IHOP. Incidentally, we are both thoroughly bemused by the American custom of serving meat with sweet pancakes, not to mention that what they call "sausage" is clearly some variety of hamburger. Weird.

Good breakfast, if you don't mind feeling as though you're an exhibit in a zoo

We moved slowly out of Gallup, stopping at regular intervals to shop for Navajo jewellery, which is about a quarter of the price there that it was in Santa Fe. In doing so, we met another real character at the Nizhoni Native American Jewellery Store, on whom I am convinced the character of Ol' Gil in The Simpsons was based. His sales pitch was obviously quite good, as he did manage to relieve us of a reasonable sum of money.

It was at this point that we encountered another peculiar American phenomenon. We were trying to get to an ATM that we had been told was inside the grocery store, but we accidentally tried to walk into the liquor store next door instead, upon which a path was blocked by a burly security guard in sunglasses who asked whether we had a vehicle. We pointed to it in the next car park, and were told that we couldn't be allowed in unless we drove up to the front door. At this point we realised our mistake and moved on to the security-less grocery store, but we were both thoroughly confused. Why do you have to drive up to the door to be served alcohol? Surely it's better if you're not driving at all? Answers on a postcard (or, y'know, a comment form) please.

Heading towards the New Mexico/ Arizona border, the scenery became absolutely spectacular. We actually felt that we were in Radiator Springs of the Pixar film Cars (incidentally, an awesome and horribly underrated movie). Right on top of the border, we came across another opportunity to be relieved of cash.

Another claim we didn't verify...

...but yes, it's rather large

The two rules of successful Route 66 business seem to be: 1) make something unnecessarily large, and 2) provide a good photo op. This place delivered on both fronts, with the bonus that their photo op was also quite useful if you're travelling without a map:

Here I am breathing a massive sigh of relief that we've somehow remained on the correct road

So here we are in state number 7 of 9! (Yes, there are only eight states on Route 66, but we're adding one just so that I could make that Star Trek reference.)

A state famous because it has holes in it

We didn't travel very far today, only a shade over 100 miles, mostly so that we could spend the day in the Petrified Forest National Park, and wow was it worth it.

The visitor centre makes this outlandish claim that the Painted Desert has something to do with different types of minerals being laid down over millions of years.

Colourful rocks

Clearly a spraypaint job

Of course, we are far too clever to fall for that ruse. It's blatantly obvious that what really happened is that a colleague of Slartibartfast grew envious of his fjords and decided to top them by spraypainting a desert in Arizona. The evidence even suggests the use of the cans of spraypaint we left with a kid back at the Cadillac Ranch.

Those colours look suspiciously familiar

See, Arizona, we're onto you.

The park isn't huge - the road runs for 28 miles - but with stopping at every single lookout and trail, we spent at least five hours there, and could probably have doubled that had time allowed. Without a doubt, the best drive of the trip so far.

The views from the old Painted Desert Inn probably didn't suck

The A1 is going to be a massive letdown after this

The lizard finds a perfect basking rock

Petrified wood: apparently trees get pretty when they're scared

Not wanting to be outdone by Meramec Caverns, Arizona proves it can do coloured lights too

Fortunately (for you) you can't hear me, but I'm singing about hills being alive

Apparently this area was settled as early as 1250 until about 600 years ago. There are still petroglyphs visible, with a particular concentration on what they call Newspaper Rock.

The only newspaper we've seen since we arrived in the States that doesn't mention Prince Harry

We met some Route 66 travellers from Manchester around here, who pointed out that the "human" figures on this rock are clearly alien. We later came across evidence to support this claim.

Blatantly the Starship Enterprise

Clearly there's some backstory here about how Kirk and Spock travelled back in time and visited the ancestors of the Navajo. Perhaps they even had something to do with painting the desert: we'll never know.

The old Route 66 used to pass directly through the Petrified Forest National Park, but the road is now a teensy bit overgrown.

Points for signage, Arizona, but not so much for maintenance

However, someone had left their car behind, and I decided that if we're going to travel an historic road we may as well do so in a fitting car, so I've traded in the SUV.

Fi keeps fixating on the lack of wheels, but she's clearly missing the big picture

I don't know what Fi's worrying about; I think the rest of the trip is going to be a blast in this thing. Who needs air con if the air's rushing straight in through the empty window frames?

We'll find out how she holds up tomorrow when we visit two of Arizona's famous holes in the ground.

Day 13 - A shocking lack of cactus

Before leaving Santa Rosa this morning we made a quick stop at the Blue Hole.  It's a circular pool that is 80 feet deep and is in popular use by divers.  Of course Rachael found another use for the rocks that surround one side of the pool and managed to startle a seriously cute grey squirrel in the process.  Since neither of us were in a swimming mood we just took some pictures and got on our way.

The lizard found a tasty rock to bask on and saw off the competition (a grey squirrel).

Todays route took us north off of main route 66 in search of pre-1937 Route 66 in search of the city of Santa Fe.  Now called the Santa Fe loop it's an alternate route that you can take from Santa Rosa to Albuquerque instead of the straighter road that now shadows Interstate-40.

A helpful sign - New Mexico is better than some states (looking at you Texas) but Illinois still rules on signage.

It was a lovely morning as we left Santa Rosa and having spent a very comfortable night at the Best Western Santa Rosa Inn, we were well on our way to Santa Fe by 10am.  The journey north also encompasses part of the Santa Fe trail as well as many roads that contain absolutely NOTHING at all.  Not kidding about this.  Rachael and I are loaded to the hilt with technology and 4 different devices that can communicate if we need them to.  However, in New Mexico there does seem to be an awful lot of NOTHING and not much data signal to speak of (voice/text coverage is very good).
Our trip yesterday down to Roswell had a great deal of open road and today was very similar.  During this stretch Rachael saw our first cactus - but it appears to have been the only visible one on the road to Santa Fe and we didn't get a picture.  There better be more tomorrow or there will be trouble.

A road completely devoid of cars. And cactus. And tumbleweeds. Fail.

This one has a car! Oh wait... it's ours. Probably doesn't count. And still no cactus or tumbleweeds.

We arrived in Santa Fe just before lunchtime and after figuring out where to park we took a stroll around the historic square, multitude of gift shops and got some advice about where to eat from the visitors centre.  We bought a few souvenirs but most of the shops were full of super expensive turquoise jewellery so we didn't buy much.  We did see a counting book for children - Pride and Prejudice version which I regret not buying even though all the kids I know can count already.  It was batshit and appealed to my sense of the ridiculous. (2 wealthy gentlemen, 5 Bennett sisters, etc) A lovely chap at the visitors centre recommended a restaurant called Pasqual's which turned out to be an organic haven of good cooking where we enjoyed Bison burgers.  The Bison burgers were really tasty even if they did screw up giving them to us so I got Rachael's medium and she got my medium well and we were more than half into eating them before we realised what they'd done. Medium well is such a subjective order it would seem - so many places I've been to I get steaks / burgers anything from light brown to a bit bloody.  I should probably just order medium and have done.

Santa Fe itself is adorable. It's very low-rise and most of the buildings are adobe structures and are very old.  It looks fantastic in the sunshine but it got a bit overcast when we were there and it was equally heartening to see otherwise lovely places also look depressing when its dark and raining!

Leaving Santa Fe mid-afternoon we had a reasonable run back down to Albuquerque when we hit rush hour traffic and things got boring very fast.  Rachael did snap a few good pics of roadside sights in ABQ but we were in a hurry by then because our hotel reservation in Gallup was still about 100 miles away. We were quite amused by some of the place names we went through - especially Los Lunas - the moons. We also liked this little town because of their cool banners.  It was somewhere on this stretch that we saw our first tumbleweed.  Admittedly it was stuck under the back of someone's truck but it totally counts! Especially as it fell off and tumbled towards us - looking forward to seeing them loose by the road.

Lovely banners in Los Lunas - not strictly signage but they really made an effort.

The skies were interesting as we left Albuquerque for our drive to Gallup.

Another interesting sky - the light was amazing but sadly we also had quite a bit of rain in this stretch.

We did decide to bin a little bit of the route between Albuquerque and Gallup.  There wasn't much on the road that would have been open and it was getting dark plus there was "weather" threatening - so we took I-40 for most of it in order to get to our hotel in Gallup at a reasonable hour.  This proved to be a good decision because we got here before the restaurant closed and if we'd stuck to the 100% route we'd probably have gotten here 2 hours later.

Our Gallup hotel is El Rancho.  It's another Route 66 legend.  It was built to house the hollywood stars who came to shoot westerns etc. near Gallup so it's a level of luxury that Route 66 is not usually known for.  It's been restored and has almost a hunting lodge type atmosphere inside. Outside it has some of the tackiest neon we've seen on the whole journey.  Which made us smile quite a bit!

Charm of yesterday - convenience of tomorrow. Oh really?

The slogan written in bold neon on the front of the hotel is a bit misleading.  The rooms are lovely and have flat panel TVs with lots of channels but the only wifi available is in the lobby.  This is hardly convenient.  And for double the price of the Best Westerns (which all have fantastic in room wifi) it's a bit of a cheek to be honest.  But our room is named after Tyrone Power and we have Mae West next door so we really shouldn't complain I suppose.

The beautiful lobby at El Rancho where I am currently sitting as it's the only place in the hotel that has wifi.

Tomorrow we head into Arizona and part of the trip Rachael and I have been waiting for - the DESERT!

Day 12 - The Truth is Out There

100% refrigerated air: because 98% just won't do.

I really did not want to emerge from the bed this morning. I'll say one thing for the Blue Swallow: their mattresses are amazing. Chatting to one of the owners, Kevin, this morning, we learned that they buy home mattresses as opposed to commercial hotel ones, and it makes all the difference.

They also - and this was a huge deal to me - have PG Tips (and also Twinings if you're not into builder tea). Even better, Kevin knew without being prompted that the hot water in the coffee maker is not suitable for tea, and went out back to boil a kettle, and even brought me real milk. After a week and a half of being deprived of tea, this was bliss. Massive gold star for the Blue Swallow.

That said, we both felt that there's a nostalgic fan culture about this place that's led to a bit of an Emperor's New Clothes situation. It has 5 stars on Tripadvisor and I've seen someone describe it as the best place they've ever stayed. Well. It is a Route 66 icon, and I certainly enjoyed staying there, and of course Kevin was lovely, but come on. It's nice that it has a quaint old-fashioned feel, but things have changed since this place opened in 1939. The rooms don't have microwaves or fridges (everywhere else we've stayed since leaving Chicago has had both), the air con is too loud to leave on overnight, the bathroom door requires brute force to close (and has no lock), there are no laundry facilities, no breakfast, there is excessive street noise (perhaps not double glazed? I didn't check), and the room we were in had a bit of an ant infestation. And we paid $80, which is at the upper end of our accommodation costs (excluding Chicago and LA). So, it's nice and I would absolutely stay there again, but don't be fooled by the Tripadvisor reviews into expecting luxury.

Since we couldn't get breakfast at the motel, we went to Kix on 66 in Tucumcari, which was amazing. I'm a hopeless devotee of American carb-laden breakfasts so I've sampled a lot of pancakes over the years, and I can honestly say that these were the best I've ever had. "Jessica's secret recipe," according to the menu, so I may need to find out who Jessica is and take her home.

We're back to brown signs as our friendly companions in New Mexico

We only had a short stint of Route 66 to cover today, between Tucumcari and Santa Rosa, New Mexico. That short drive turned out to be quite the adventure, as there are long stretches of this road that are unpaved. It mostly runs alongside the Interstate, but (as ever) we resisted the temptation to cheat. Had we cheated, we would have missed the excitement of our road of clay making a sudden turn into a very narrow and really rather creepy tunnel. Those Interstate travellers don't know what they're missing.

As we reached Santa Rosa, we turned left and headed south into the depths of New Mexico for our first of three detours from Route 66. I cannot begin to describe how huge and empty this place is. It seems to  go on forever with no sign of civilisation, and we barely saw another car for hours. If you were an alien looking for an unobtrusive place to land and investigate this new planet, this would be a good place to choose.

Ideal spaceship landing site.
Unless you're Captain Kirk, in which case your primary mission objective is to cause as much of a commotion as possible.

A couple of hours down this empty road, we came across a hitchhiker:

The hottest holiday destination in the Alpha Quadrant

We didn't really have a destination in mind, but figured if this "Roswell" place was good enough to travel from wherever this fella came from, it was good enough for us.

The first thing that becomes immediately apparent as you drive into Roswell is that this is a town with one claim to fame, and it's determined to build a tourist trade out of it. Even the McDonalds is shaped like a flying saucer - er, I mean weather balloon.

Clearly, the aliens were aiming for Route 66. Clever aliens know where all the cool kids are at.

The streetlamp is watching you

Apparently Roswell's immigrant population has gone into the moneylending business

What are the odds inflatable Kirks are for sale in a tacky tourist shop on some alien world?

We decided to investigate further, and the obvious place to start was the UFO Museum.

It's a "research center" which means it's all serious and scientific and stuff

The museum was actually quite cool. It's obviously very low budget and had the feel of a display set up in a school gym, mostly consisting of laminated pieces of paper attached to the display panels used for convention art shows. There is a lot to read: big blocks of text telling the story of the Roswell Incident as well as other UFO sightings and weird phenomena, newspaper cuttings, witness statements (admittedly some of these "witnesses" were along the lines of "many years later, my grandmother who was around Roswell at the time casually mentioned that something weird happened that week" but others were actually quite interesting).

We both liked the fact that they don't ram the conspiracy theory down your throat: they just put up all the details (including the official explanations) and allow the visitor to make up their own mind. We both left convinced that something had been covered up, but less convinced that the explanation was necessarily extraterrestrial. Still, it's a lot of fun to pretend.

To be fair, these guys just look like me after I've spent too long in Durham away from the sun.

As a break from all the reading in the museum, we ventured into the video room, which is a load of plastic chairs in front of a large TV playing a "documentary" about crop circles that looked to have been made on a cheap home camcorder in the 90s. The tone of it was so forceful (lots of hating on the "irresponsible media" who are "denying people the truth") and the explanations so ridiculous (unless aliens really do travel all this way to leave Christian propaganda) that after a while it stopped being funny and we left.

After the museum, we felt it was our duty to support local businesses by visiting the other tourist tat shops and buying unnecessary numbers of t-shirts. The staff in these shops were very nice but not terribly talkative.

Apparently they don't sell trousers 

Where else can you get artwork by an alien?

The proprietor of one of these establishments told us we had to experience something called the "Spacewalk." This sounded relevant to our interests, so we ventured around the corner towards what appeared on the outside to be just another purveyor of tourist tat.

Dammit, I just cleaned that pavement

I made a new friend! He looks scared.

As soon as we opened the door, we realised this place was Different. We were greeted by a man with pointed ears who gave us a Vulcan salute, said "Greetings, humans," and explained that he was minding the store while the humans were out.

It seemed like it would be rude not to take the Spacewalk after that, so in we went, having been assured that however many hours we spent in there, only a few minutes would have passed in New Mexico time. We entered through what appeared to be a curtain made of tin foil, and emerged inside a lava lamp.

Stargate got wormholes all wrong

Our tour of space included a psychedelic galaxy, depictions of the Roswell Incident, and several pieces of unidentified artwork.

I'm going with a circus on the planet Zog

Seriously, this place is worth the trip to Roswell by itself. By the time we emerged through the exit foil curtain, we were both crying with laughter.

Also, as a bonus, the Vulcan gave us some alien money so that if we're ever abducted we can buy our freedom. Win!

Sadly, we eventually had to say goodbye to our many new alien friends and head back up to Santa Rosa. Along the way, I started to notice black things scurrying across the road just in front of the car. We started watching out for them, and realised they were TARANTULAS. As in, actual massive, black, hairy, people-eating (possibly) TARANTULAS. At this point, we stopped getting out of the car to take pictures, because we are wusses who have a hard time with British house spiders, so the following was taken out of the window.

Sun sinking below New Mexico horizon, or explosion of crashed alien vessel? You decide.

We arrived safely and un-devoured-by-tarantulas at our hotel in Santa Rosa, ready for an evening of high glamour: we're at the halfway point of our trip (or thereabouts), and that means it's laundry time.

A night on the town in Santa Rosa, New Mexico. Don't wait up.

Rock 'n' roll, baby.

Day 11 - Mid-trip crisis

Day 11 was a bit of a rest option after the mad cap mileage of the last few days.  We only had about 120 miles to cover between Amarillo, Texas and Tucumcari, New Mexico so we had time for breakfast and a little shopping in Amarillo first.  Breakfast was a chance for me to experience IHOP for the first time and for Rachael to continue her extensive American Breakfast Carb testing program.  There were chocolate chip pancakes on the menu, they were thoroughly tested and found totally satisfactory.

A stack of the chocolateyist pancakes I've ever seen. 

Then we moved on to do some shopping. Rachael bought some really nice cowboy boots and other bits and pieces.  No pics because this outfit is likely to debut in the next couple of days so there will be pics then.  A young man called AJ at Cavenders Boot City helped us spend money on cowboy stuff before we left the city heading west.  We were in search of the Cadillac Ranch which we'd been told was on R66 after you leave Amarillo but honestly if it were not for Rachael's eagle eyes we'd have missed it because it's on the wrong side of the Interstate and it's still just about within Amarillo's limits.

So after negotiating our way under the interstate we pulled up on the southern frontage road to go see the Cadillacs.  The Cadillac ranch is another feat of imagination from the same guy that thought up the Bug Ranch we saw in Conway, Texas.  Essentially it's a line of Cadillac's buried nose first in a field and people are invited to decorate them with spray paint cans.  I made our Geek 66 mark on one of them and we photographed it for evidence.

The vandals are proud of their efforts.

We are geeks and we are on Route 66 playing pic-a-boo. Can you spot Rachael? 

There were a bunch of other people there today - a couple with their dogs, some girls from Texas A&M university (their logo was some v. impressive spraying) and a guy who shows up about once a week to put his stamp on the installation.  Having taken more than a few photos we got back in our trusty SUV and set off for the next stop.

Adrian, Texas is barely a blip on any map but it marks the official half way point between Chicago and Los Angeles on Route 66.  The enterprising folks at the Mid-point Cafe in Adrian have taken this idea literally and do a roaring trade in souvenirs in their cool cafe/diner. The cafe is also the home of the Ugly Crust Pie (why it's named this we don't know because it's amazing pie and it looked very pretty to us). We tried the chocolate peanut butter version between us and still couldn't finish one slice - it's EPIC pie.

Ohhhhhh...We're halfway there..... Ohhh OHH Living on a prayer...

Leaving the mid-point, and having a minor crisis when we realised that our trip is half over, we approached the border between Texas and New Mexico in search of a ghost town called Glenrio.  Ghost towns are a depressingly common Route 66 phenomena.  When the interstates were built starting in the late 1950s (and continuing all through the 60s and 70s), there were many towns on Route 66 that went from being on the arterial road of America to being a barely visible spot on the horizon as cars on the interstate flash past.  Some of these towns found new ways to entice people in but some of them did not survive at all.  Glenrio, a town that straddles the Texas / New Mexico border is one of the casualties.  All that is left are the remnants of the motel, gas station and post office that were the last few survivors.  An interesting fact is that the Gas station was in the Texas part as the prices were cheaper, but the Motel and Bar were on the New Mexico side because Texas was dry when the town was built. The name Glenrio is derived from the Scottish word for Valley and the Spanish word for River, yet the town is neither in a valley or on a river.  Someone clearly had a sense of humour when naming it! Could this have been a contributing factor in it's downfall? Who knows... but fall it did and now it's a shell on the roadside.

A non-resident of Glenrio goes for a stroll towards the Motel.

Leaving the ghost town to it's ghosts and significant ant population, we headed further into New Mexico looking for our final stop for the day, the town of Tucumcari.  Tucumcari is also important for our Cars odyssey because the Hubcap mountain of Radiator Springs is based on Tucumcari mountain (even down to the RS painted on the side being copied from the T painted here).  The top of Tucumcari isn't exactly hubcap shaped but we must allow them a little artistic license I suppose.

The lizard finds a rock upon which to bask whilst Tucumcari mountain does mountainy things in the background.

After checking into our motel for the night (one of the restored Route 66 elite - more about that in a minute), we headed to Mesalands Community College's Dinosaur Museum.  New Mexico is prime fossil country and the museum although small had some amazing life size bronze castings of dinosaur skeletons. We also met a wonderful lady who explained how scientifically there is some evidence that Dragons could be real. This made Rachael's day - not least because she met someone who is as passionate about science as she is.  We left the museum with huge grins on our faces. :D

The lovely couple who run our motel recommended a local mexican restaurant for dinner and the Pow Wow Inn Restaurant did not disappoint.  The portions were predictably huge but we thoroughly enjoyed the deep fried pickle slices and mushrooms, Burrito and Tamales we ordered.  Looking forward to more mexican food on our trip through the SW states.

Our lodging for the night is the fantastic Blue Swallow Motel - one of the oldest motels on route 66 - it was built in 1939 and has been recently restored to a modern/historic standard that seems to satisfy the nostalgic as well as those looking for a wifi connection.  It also has one of the most recognisable signs on Route 66 and it's a fantastic example of neon art.

The amazing neon sign at the Blue Swallow motel on Route 66.

Tomorrow we do our first proper detour off of Route 66 - we head south to Roswell, New Mexico in search of Aliens and conspiracy theories.  The truth is out there... we're probably just going to photograph some touristy stuff but you never know we may find it.