Landed at The Historic Route 66 Motel in Tucumcari, NM, about 3:30 PST/4:30 with the time change. Sailed in listening to 50s tunes on the car radio. After I got in and got the AC cranked up to cool the room, I ran down to the grocery about a mile and a half away, and bought some Triscuits and a Waldorf salad. Eating in tonight. 
Spoke to the motel owners and asked if they had heard of Adventure Cycling and its planned Route 66 cross-country route for cyclists. They hadn't. I will write to Bike Bits and see if I can get them a bit of press. The motel, while small, would be a great place to land if cycling Route 66, and while it doesn't have a restaurant, just a block up the street is the Kix on Route 66 restaurant.
Without my trusted secretary, Sarah, I was left to my own devices today to try to remember things I wanted to remark on in my journal. I am now faced with a tablet of scribbled letters, many of which I cannot read. Here‘s a few I deciphered:
- JUNKY ROAD, which it was until well past Gallup.
- Sign reading: “CAUTION: ZERO VISIBILITY WITH DUST PRESENT” Now I ask you. When is dust not present in this area of the country? And, Sarah later reminded me, if there was zero visibility, how could one read the sign?
- MANY BIG BILLBOARDS along I-40. Two groups that reminded me of the Stuckey‘s billboards along the east coast to Florida. The first, Bluewaters Outpost. How it got that name in this dry desert area, I don‘t know. There must have been 100 full-sized billboards beginning about 50 miles from the outpost. The billboards advertised such things as kachina dolls, authentic Indian beadwork, pottery, knives, meteorites, petrified wood, blankets, Minnetonka moccasins, food, clean restrooms, candy, etc. etc. etc. The second, pervasive billboard was Flying C Ranch, which I first read as Flying F Ranch. The Flying C advertised all of the items mentioned above, but also advertised Mexican Imports, Mexican pots, bajas and ponchos, Talavera figurines, and pottery.
- LAVA NEAR GRANTS. At first I thought that NMDOT had scraped off the surface of a blacktopped section of I-40 and merely left it beside the road, but then I realized that I was looking at vast fields of lava rock. Looked it up when I got to the room. Here is what I found: "There is much evidence of past volcanic action in New Mexico, including Capulin Volcano in the northeast [a place I visited on my second day out], several lava plugs inner remnants of ancient volcanoes near Shiprock in the northwest, and large lava fields around Carrizozo, south of Socorro and south of Grants, together with various smaller areas. The deposits near Grants are the largest, and most are contained within El Malpais National Monument, which covers 60 x 25 miles and crosses Route 40 to the north."
- ALBUERQUE INTERCHANGE AND BRIDGES OVER I-40. The Interchange is very impressive. One crosses under it on I-40 and when you look up the sky is filled with curving layers sand colored road spans, the sides of which are blue. There are also several roads that bridge I-40 and these bridges are arty with metal sculptures at their edges. Couldn‘t find a photo of them but here are two of the interchange. Called the Big I, it took several architectural awards.
Nuff of this.
No comments:
Post a Comment