Amarillo, TX to Albuquerque, NM (Day 7)

We got an early start, as this was one of the longest legs of the Route 66 portion of our trip. Jon was upset that we didn’t get to spray paint the Bugs at the Bug Farm, we had to make a trip to Walmart for some spray paint to take to the Cadillac Ranch. We picked up a can of yellow and a can of black and off we went. We pulled up to the Ranch, and saw all the people that had already been out to the cars, wiping their shoes on the fence and the roadway, as well as a couple washing their shoes in the puddles on the side of the road. This was our first clue that this was going to be a great adventure! We grabbed our spray paint and headed out through the field on a muddy path towards the Caddies. We first saw the puddles around the cars. Most of them were surrounded by a lake of water, but one lone car was outside of the puddle. We saw a couple of people adding their touch to that car, and made our way beside them. The ground was fine up to about 5 feet from the car. You can’t really spray and make anything with the wind blowing like it was from that distance, so I sacrificed one shoe to the mud. I leaned in and made a smiley face on the wheel hub. I was happy with my addition, and stepped back out of the muck.

Then I looked over at Jon, who was in up to the tops of his shoes by this time, struggling to write his name. He wanted to write “Jon wuz here”, but the mud wasn’t allowing him to move. He managed “Jon” and I told him that was good enough. There was a group of Japanese travelers beside us, and I looked over to see the Aussie Bikers had made it there too. That’s when I heard the mud make a sucking sound and then heard the Japanese guy laugh. I turned around to see Jon’s shoe in the mud and his socked foot now beside it. In order to save the trapped shoe, I had to sacrifice my other shoe to get in deep enough. We then sat down the cans, got Jon’s shoe back on his foot and drug our feet in the bit of grass we could find, the barbed wire fence, the roadway, anything we could to try to get the weight of our shoes down to normal. It didn’t work too well, so we ended up switching to our sandals, thank goodness we had gone with tennis shoes to the place!

The next stop we made was in Adrian, TX. This is touted as the midpoint of the mother road. The MidPoint Café is there as well as some photo opportunities with the paint on the road and the sign on the side of the road. We took our photos and again saw the Aussie Bikers. We should have gotten their names, as much as we saw them, but there were one or two who spoke to us each time they saw us. We checked out the Sunflower Station and met the owner, who was the inspiration for Flo from Cars! She autographed a postcard for Jon. We also met her dog, who is the official greeter of the place. He thinks everyone came to see him! After that we hit up the gift shop at the Midpoint Café, found a geocache and headed on down the road.

The next stop was for lunch at Del’s in Tucumcari, NM. The food was awesome! We then drove on down the road there in Tucumcari, let me tell you, the entire city is a photo op! The Palomino Motel, a gas station turned Pottery/Jewelry shop, The Blue Swallow Motel (which is totally the best on the route so far with it’s attached garages painted with characters from cars and the car in the front and murals on the side.), the Tepee Curios shop, the Route 66 sign in town and the mountain with the T on the side. It was all so much fun and I could have stopped at just about every place to take a photo, but we just didn’t have the time.

We got on the road then and went all the way to Albuquerque with just the needed bathroom breaks and a stop at Cline’s Corner (a HUGE giftshop/restaurant/gas station) and we made pretty good time, especially with the hour we gained by crossing the time zone. We stayed at a Native American Hotel and Casino called Isleta. It was amazing! The rooms were awesome and the pool was top notch. We hit Albuquerque’s piece of the route after dinner at Capo’s right on Route 66. We got to see the neon all lit up and it was worth waiting for sunset! Pictures were hard to get with the amount of traffic there, but it’s all in our memories for sure. Back to the hotel we went, and got the best nights sleep we have gotten so far.

On to Holbrook, AZ and sleeping in a wigwam tomorrow!