Monday 4th September 2000

LABOUR DAY

AMARILLO


Had breakfast in room today, good coffee, juice and pastries, not so hot at the moment, cool breeze blowing and temp about 85° to 90° (or are we just getting used to this temp every morning). While checking out of the hotel we asked for a message to be left for Becky when she retuned to work on Tuesday. We asked if she could sort out those stairs to our rooms as we had worked out, that all 4 of us had tripped up over the past two days.

We soon found the route out of town on our day’s journey to our final destination of the day the Blue Swallow Motel, in New Mexico and the 6th State of the trip.

We stopped along the roadside to have a look at the famous Cadillac Ranch, what an amazing sight, 10 old Cadillac cars stood on their ends and buried halfway up and all covered in graffiti. This was in the middle of a farmer’s field: there wasn’t any shop or any fuss or bother, certainly no commercialism.

We carried on, staying on Route 66 as much as possible to the Midpoint of our whole journey, at this point we had travelled 1546.4 miles and were half way across Route 66 between Chicago and L.A. Here there was a café that we had earlier decided to have lunch; it was called The Midpoint Café.

While we were menu viewing and deciding what to eat the waitress came over and asked if we were Ken & Bev and Rob and Penny and looking at each other began to worry as no one here knew us and no one knew we were here, until she said that Becky had rung ahead and said we were lunching there today and she wanted to wish us one last farewell. As we eat lunch a young couple from Nottingham came in they were on their Honeymoon and travelling the route, but they were only taking 2 weeks and also stopping over in Las Vegas as we were. The Café owner was so pleased and surprised to have 6 English people in the café at one time so we all had our photograph taken together.

After an excellent lunch and some free goodies at Beck’s request we made our way along the route and at 1.35pm we crossed the border into New Mexico, but as we were also crossing another time zone we had to put our watches back one hour. Arrived in Tucumcari and our first visit was to the Tee Pee Curios, a shop selling all sorts of souvenirs including all manner of Route 66 ones. The shop doorway was in the shape of a Tee Pee and you entered as if you were going into a real Tee Pee and it is said that this is the last curio shop left in Tucumcari.

We found the Blue Swallow Motel, another small mom & pop place, very quaint with old curio’s scattered around the office that was one out like a lounge room. Excellent rooms very clean and well decorated with Tiffany lamps (Ken’s favourite) and lovely pictures on the walls. No swim for us today though as no pool, so make do with an extra long shower.

As it was the middle of the afternoon and this was a small one horse town we found a bar and had a long awaited beer, it was so relaxing and very hot outside, we spent the rest of the afternoon in there drinking beers and eating chips and salsa, very friendly staff. We decided it was a good place for dinner as they boasted about the Catfish and the Salmon that they have flown in specially.

We went back later for dinner to find that the Salmon and Catfish were very peppery and the service was very slow. We were promised after dinner entertainment of live music, good we thought some entertainment, but as there was a very important ball game on the TV the music would be on later. So as 10.00 and still no sign of the game ending we decided to take a drive along the strip and take some video of the renowned Neon at night and check out where the museum was for tomorrow.

We all had an early night again as this driving and not doing much everyday is very tiring.


TRAVELLED TODAY 149 MILES