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Location Date California 1435359600 Arizona 1435100400 New Mexico 
1435014000 Texas 1434927600 Oklahoma 1434841200 Tennessee 1434754800 North Carolina 1434495600 Virginia 1434322800 Maryland 1432854000 Pennsylvania 1431730800 Indiana 1431644400 Iowa 1431558000 Nebraska 1431471600 Wyoming 1431385200 Utah 1431298800 Nevada 1431212400 Arkansas 1370386800 Georgia (Usa) 1369350000 Florida 1369004400 Louisiana 1366930800 New York 1318892400 Massachusetts 1318806000 Vermont 1318546800 Maine 1318028400 New Hampshire 1317942000 Ohio 1317164400 Missouri 1285110000 Illinois 1284764400 -
Location Date Albuquerque 1435014000 Gallup 1370646000 Tucumcari, New Mexico 1370559600 Las Cruces 1366585200 Santa Fe 1285542000 Santa Rosa
1285455600
First things first: Wal-Mart for groceries. Always an experience.
Next was the Cadillac ranch, just west of Amarillo. Ten Cadillacs nose down in the dirt out in the middle of a field. Graffiti is, apparently, encouraged, and the cars are covered with it. The paint is visibly thick, and spent cans of spray-paint litter the ground. It's right on Interstate 40, but you’d miss it if you didn’t know it was there.
We moved on to lunch, still looking for the perfect 50s-style café after yesterday’s disappointment. Found it!
Both Vega, Texas, and Adrian, Texas, claim to be the mid-point of Route 66. In Adrian, you find the Midpoint Café and Gift Shop with a sign across the road proclaiming 1139 miles to Chicago and to Los Angeles. Couldn’t tell by us, though. We’ve travelled 1473 miles since Lou Mitchell’s in Chicago to this midpoint. That’s 334 miles of getting lost. Sounds about right.
Anyway, we went into the café, and it was just what we were looking for: full of Route 66 memorabilia, clean booths and tables in the 50s-60s style, and great hamburgers. A very nice young lady took our orders and served us our food (I’m sorry I didn’t get her name), and we met Becky Ransom, who sat us when we came in, took our picture for us after we ate, and talked with us for almost an hour in the gift shop. She works at the café one day a week (on Sundays), and if we’d found the café on Monday, we would have missed her. She is a teacher and set up a six-week curriculum on the history of Route 66 for her sixth grade class. She also met with the Pixar people as they were researching the Mother Road for the movie Cars. Her name is in the acknowledgements at the end of the movie (shown under The Big Texan, as she works there full time).
We also met Fran Houser, who owns the Café. Conventional wisdom says that the character of Flo was based on Fran. Easy to believe—just like Flo, she’s just nice people. Her name is in the acknowledgements, too. Look for both of them the next time you watch Cars.
We reluctantly left the Midpoint Café and moved westward. On the Texas / New Mexico state line is Glenrio, which sits right on the line, half in Texas, half in New Mexico. Today it’s a ghost town. Very few buildings, we missed it and had to come back to find it. Didn’t see any ghosts, though.
Onward toTucumcari, NM, and we saw the Blue Swallow Inn. Okay, who doesn’t think that was fun?
DAILY ENTERTAINMENT... courtesy of Shannon
More pictures of everyone, but no names. Who is that in the middle?
STATS
Day: 23, 9/26
Leave: 10:30 am; Amarillo Ranch RV Park, Amarillo, Texas
Breakfast: Pastry and coffee at the RV park
Lunch: Midpoint Café, Adrian, Tx
Dinner: RV
Arrive: 5:15 pm, Santa Rosa Lake State Park, Santa Rosa, NM
Travelled: 194 miles; 7.75 hours (gained an hour at NM state line)
Comments: We’ve met nothing but nice people on this trip, but none so nice as we met today at the Midpoint Café.
- comments
rietta you hit the half way point with a week left! are you gonna make it home? :)
lad Doug and I passed the Cadillac Ranch on our way back from my Dad's in 1991. Then, driving the very same route with Audrey in 1992, I did not see the nose down Cadillacs anywhere. Audrey thought I must have hallucinated them in the first place and accused me of all sorts of stff. Glad to see you found them!
Brudder I have to do something to the picture viewer on my computer. Some of your pictures are just fine, but others, especially ones that have a lot of contrast, are like viewing a black bear in a dark room. This was true of the burried Cadillacs picture, blue sky and black. Perhaps Bill has an idea. I had a similar problem with indoor pictures until I figured out my thumb was covering the flash. Oh for the simple Kodac Box camera. Point and shoot.
wjmccain Don't worry, Leigh Ann, these things are not easy to find. We missed it even with the directions and had to drive around the block, which was about 5 miles long. We've spent half the trip lost trying to find these things.