Made the most of the great free brekky at the Sleep Inn in Amarillo - then set out for a longish drive, hoping to make Albuquerque tonight ready to head north for Monument Valley.
We stopped just outside of the city to have a look at "Cadillac Ranch" which is 10 Cadillacs stuck nose first into the red dirt in some guys ranch! The cars are at a 45 degree angle, apparently the same as the Pyramids - very schmaltzy stuff, and this is the second spot they have been placed in!
Tourists are encouraged to spray graffiti on the cars and we had come armed with a can of spray paint we got at Home Depot yesterday. So we duly made our mark on a couple of cars, only to have some smart arsed kid spray right over it! Little p**** I was itching to kick his arse!
We pushed on following the old Route 66 road rather than the Interstate and came across a couple of little places of interest, before we came to the Midway Cafe which is the central point of Route 66! It was 1,833km to Chicago and the same to Santa Monica.
We bought a nice pictorial record of the route from the shop there and then it was on towards Albuquerque, through some ranch land which was covered with wind turbines - I have never seen so many, even in Europe where there was some big wind farms - but this was huge! We drove about 70 km and saw many hundreds of them. Apparently this is one of the biggest providers of wind energy in the US.
There was also a huge cattle feedlot we passed that contained many thousand head of Friesian steers - again the biggest I have ever seen!
After stopping at a truck stop that had a magnificent collection of restored cars and memorabilia, and another small place that had a few cars for sale (which made Greg mutter on about containers and shipping costs) we pressed on through very barren and dry country in this part of New Mexico. There were many scattered settlements that were so run down and filthy - God knows who inhabited them - and also some mining and ranches.
Pausing only for an ice cream stop and fuel, we made good time, bypassing Albuquerque and deciding to get to Gallup for our night stop.
We crossed into another time zone on the way and lost an hour, so we were pretty tired by the time we got in at 5.30pm.
After a finding a motel as far from the ultra busy rail line that passes through Gallup (some of the trains had 5 engines and were carrying thousands of containers, tankers of fuel and mining products on a hundred or more carriages) we wandered over to a steakhouse for dinner and were asked to provide ID when we ordered drinks! Hello????? Apparently in New Mexico there are very strict rules about drink driving and many people have alcohol interlocks put on their cars after drink driving offences, so they require your drivers licence before they will serve you!
So tomorrow we will head northwards towards Monument Valley - we have already booked some accommodation in Blanding, Utah, because motels etc are few and far between up there!
From all accounts the scenery will be spectacular! Hope so!