Where the Wind Comes Sweeping Down the Plain

Painting of Historic Route 66 in a garage at the
Blue Swallow Motel

Yes, we are in Oklahoma tonight.  Rain and tornados followed behind us for an hour or two, but we are safely tucked in for the night.  There are lots of full hotels in the area, though (this is the second one we stopped at).  And parking lots filled with trucks--workers obviously here to clean up after last week's tornados.  We are planning to leave early in the morning to escape this somewhat unnerving state.

Appropriate sign at the ghost town of Cuevo, NM

Still, we had another excellent day of travel from New Mexico, across the Texas panhandle and halfway across Oklahoma.  We had thought we'd be good and stay off Route 66, but several times were side-tracked to points of interest, often pulling a U-turn to go back to something we'd passed.  Once, we were saved from a possible accident because we stopped at the ghost town (literally) of Cuervo, NM.  We actually turned around and went up a (deserted) one-way street (for a bit) to get back to it.  We got out and explored the abandoned buildings before moving on...right into a traffic stand-still of mostly tractor trailer trucks (reminded me of our border crossing from Zambia into Botswana, going through all those trucks on foot).  Turns out it was an accident involving two motorcycles.  Looked worse than it probably was, though.

The Mexican eatery where we ate our lunch.

We took a couple of detours onto Route 66 just to break the monotony.  We saw a lot of cool signs and buildings and ate at a home-town, home-cooked Mexican place called "Unburritable."  Loved that name!  The food was pretty good, too.  Another Route 66 stop was the Blue Swallow Motel (look it up, it's pretty cool).  We met the owner and got a tour of the place.  Quite charming!

We stopped briefly in Amarillo to get something to drink at Starbuck (Iced Chai Latte for me) and to see the Cadillac Ranch, an interesting art instillation in the middle of a cow pasture.  We saw many other interesting things along the roadside as we whizzed by, looking them up on my trusty 3G iPhone so we could be truly enlightened travelers :)

Here are some of my favorite photos of the nearly 300 we took today:

Joe Bear and La Rosa de Lima at a
Hispanic Catholic Church we
stopped at (we saw the spire and
drove through the village until we
found it).

Abandoned home next door to the church at Cuevo, NM.

Linda's artistic view of the house and church.

The Cadillac Ranch--10 Cadillacs in the middle of
a cow pasture!!!

Close up of the half-buried Cadillacs.

Linda and Rondi in the heat of the day in the
middle of a cow pasture looking at Cadillac
graffiti!!!

The Blue Swallow Motel

Linda hanging out with some bikers along Route 66 :)

For the numerically challenged!

A giant cross by a church surrounded by
much smaller crosses.

Welcome to Oklahoma!

Bright colors along the roadside in OK.

More bright colors

Wind generators along the OK roadside.

On the Road Again

Rock formation in the White Mountains along the Salt
River

So.  I was going to fly home tomorrow to Boston/Maine to spend most of the summer with my parents.  But something happened on the way to the airport and I ended up in Albuquerque, New Mexico instead.  Well, it wasn't quite that dramatic, but I did have a change in plans and am now at the start of a cross-country road trip to Maryland with my friend Linda.  We are driving in her VW van and boy did we have an excellent first day, although we only went about 400 miles in 12 hours.  That's because we kept side-tracking ourselves, having first decided that we would take the scenic route 60 out of Arizona instead of the expedient route 40.  We do not regret our choice.

This is our VW van reflected in a Saddle Shop's window.

Love the name:  Drift Inn Saloon.  I also saw Rode
Inn Hotel!

Turns out there are many, many interesting things to see on the back roads of southeastern Arizona.  This is an area neither of us have explored, so we were all agog often.  Sometimes it was funny road signs, sometimes it was hilarious store signs or amazing sculptures made out of motorcycle parts or cowboys alongside a covered wagon or VLA telescopes (very large array) or throwback Western villages and towns or buffalo or pronghorn antelopes, or any number of other interesting things that kept us from making much headway.

We will make up for lost time tomorrow.  We will be good girls and stick to the highway as much as we can through the boring parts of Texas and Oklahoma.  But we don't promise to take a few side trips when we just can't stand it one minute more on the 75 mph freeway.  If we see a sign for a museum or library, we might just take off to see what we can find.

For now, though, our adventures have halted and we are spending the night in a Best Western Hotel in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  We had fun today, but were more than ready to stop for the night.  Tomorrow will be another adventure, I am sure :)

Here are some of my favorite pictures from the day:

Hilarious signs at the Drift Inn Saloon

I've heard of "Open" and "Closed" signs.  Never saw
a "Shut" sign before!

For our friend Sara :)

Yes, we did go down this curvy road from the
mountain top into the canyon and back up!

"Rambo" (Artist named him!)

A genuine Rembrandt in the town of
Springerville on the border of Arizona
and New Mexico.

This sign caused us to turn around and go back
to see the little library in the middle nowhere
and nothing (see below).

Entrance to the Cabin Library.  So quaint!

A cowboy and his covered wagon.

Joe bear kept us company.

Salt River in the White Mountains of Arizona

Seventh-day Adventist Church in Springerville, AZ

The long and not-winding road!

Windmills

Barn near the quaint little library. 

Linda and Joe Bear, my companions
on this road trip.

Linda and I decided we were works
of art :)  We're in an art gallery
in Springerville, AZ.

We ate lunch in the Java Blues
restaurant.  Sign says "All Gamblers
and Fancy Women must sign up with the captain
before boat leaves for New Orleans!"