Tucumcari is a cool little town. In it's heyday, it was the best place to visit. We stayed at the Blue Swallow Motel, open since the early 30s. Basically a bed and a bathroom little box of a room. No phones. I spent a long time talking to the owner of the TeePee Touristshit Shop - his family has owned the store since the 20s. He said if he had realized that the town was dying, he would not have moved his family back to his childhood town. I-40 by-passes the town, although there is an exit for it, but the huge chain motels (Motel8, Howard Johnson's, Motel6) have built motels at the exit so that people do not drive into the town anymore. Also, the railroad is talking about by-passing the town in the near future. We had the very best dinner along the entire route in Tucumcari so we ate breakfast there as well....and it was heaven. From around Santa Rosa, we headed north to Santa Fe - the older version of the route (the newer version - changed sometime in the 40s - went straight from Santa Rosa into Albuquerque). We took a wrong turn and ended up in Las Vegas, NM. Wow! What a treat! We stopped to talk to a store owner who gave us a little history lesson of Las Vegas (the real Las Vegas...."las vegas" meaning the valleys....like, he said, there were any valleys in Arizona). This town was where Roosevelt and the Rough Riders got their start. Santa Fe was beautiful, but too commercial for my taste, but by this time I had really gotten into all the Native American stuff - not just the artwork but the whole feel of the different Nations. We drove through Sante Fe and headed down to Albuquerque, stopping at a few art fairs at different pueblos along the way. The highlight in New Mexico was visiting magnolia! Her new home is glorious! She took us out to dinner and afterwards we sat out on the back veranda watching the skies change colors. Oh damn...I was wrong....the Internet66 is not in Oklahoma City but in Albuquerque! No wonder we ended up in Las Vegas, NM instead of Santa Fe :) I actually enjoyed Albuquerque more than I enjoyed Santa Fe and ate breakfast in it's old town. It was there we found this neat little book written in the early 40s about the route - complete directions including where to find gas stations, tourist courts and grocery stores - who was friendly to the traveler and who was not. We stopped for a quick bite at Mr. D'z in Albuquerque. In our meanderings down the Mother Road, we found the old Paco's Pueblo. I say "found" because it came upon us suddenly. We had not seen any signs for this historic monument nor any refrerence in our internet maps. We spent some time talking to a tinsmith and viewing the ruins. We crossed the Continental Divide heading toward the border and had to stop to play on the Jackrabbit! We stopped by the WigWam Motel. We spent the night in Gallup so that we could visit the Red Rock Canyon State Park - glorious walls of deep red which makes a natural stadium. It was closed. Such is life. We thought about staying at the El Rancho Motel. In it's heyday, it was where all the film people stayed. Beautiful lobby with hundreds of film stars' pictures along the walls. Each room is named for a movie star. We booked a room.....and sat on the beds.....and realized we wanted a room with air conditioning and a modern bed.....and headed down the road to a modern motel. Heading down the highway: Arizona
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