26th April Across the Texas Panhandle to New Mexico

Another exciting day ahead – aren’t they all really. 

Driving out of Amarillo,Texas and into New Mexico.  Looking at books and maps it looks as if there is a significant amount of the old road left but it was so totally side-lined by the new Interstate that the communities really did suffer and one or two places are real “ghost towns”.

 Also, with a good wind, and there is plenty of that I should reach the halfway stage of the latest Route 66 alignment today.

Setting off from Amarillo the first place of note I came to was Vega which was still struggling on but you wonder how. This little gas station was no longer open but had been restored so that you could look around – or could if it was open, it wasn’t.

 However some of the other business which were specifically aimed at Route 66ers like myself seemed a little weird. Dot’s museum for example, although apparently Dot has now passed away.

 

The main cross roads in the town looked ok, with a great mural on one of the buildings ...

but look at the road in and the road out…

 

 

I drove past the “Cadillac Stonehenge” which again you’ll see in all the books but I couldn’t get a photo because it was well the other side of the Interstate which had joined us for a while. However if I’m honest I wasn’t particularly fussed. You know I can get quite enthused by all that kind of stuff but this really did nothing – a bunch of cars stuck nose first in the ground – don’t know where all that “spiritual feel” comes from.  I get a much greater emotional buzz from seeing something like this abandoned grain elevator and imagining the work, sweat and eventual heartache it’s seen.

Texas opened out in front of me – and I mean opened out. The land flattened out and in every direction to the horizon all you could see was scrub and occasional grass. There appeared to be no boundaries other than those created by the few roads. It is difficult to think that anything could survive in that terrain but there were cattle grazing – on what I don’t know – all over.  And then you began to realise how many cattle there must have been because slowly the smell began to hit you, and enormous stock yards appeared where cattle were collected and presumably freighted off to markets. 

Every time I pulled through any small towns that smell was there.

And then I was at Adrian, really exciting as this is reputed to be the half way point on Route 66, being exactly 1,139 miles from Chicago and Los Angeles. A bit difficult to confirm or otherwise it’s claim to fame as the route has changed so many times and one long stretch – from Santa Rosa to Santa Fe and down to Albuquerque via the Old Santa Fe Trail  was  cut out altogether. 

1,139 miles is a long way but I’d already travelled 2117 since leaving my daughter Lyndsay’s in Ontario and 1517  had been in route 66 from Chicago.

 But nevertheless it had to be a photo moment and there was a great café.

As I have said I was surprised by the lack of other bikers on the route, I had seen a Honda Goldwing ridden by an American couple at the hotel last night and at the Midpoint Café I met a German guy who had also flown his own bike over for the trip – a Beemer of course - but  apart from 2 or 3 Harleys obviously out for a days drive no others.

 Leaving Adrian I drove on towards New Mexico. The land around me became barren scrub or desert, I don’t know the proper description but there was a lot of nothingness. It began to climb and hills appeared.  At one point I had to join Interstate as the old route was directly underneath it and as I crested a hill the Panhandle of Texas stretched out and I felt very small and not a little twitchy as the enormity of the trip began to hit me.

 

Another “thought Provoking “ moment was when I had again got on to the old route as it twisted and turned among small hills of red rock and as the temperature rose to 27 deg C I suddenly realised I had no more water with me. If I had broken down I could eventually get help – I had all the modem gismos – but how long would it take to come? I wouldn't die of thirst but it would be uncomfortable. Got thinking then of how absolutely overpowering the burden of responsibility must have been for the mothers and fathers forced to make the trek to a hopefully better life over these roads in their Model T trucks with 5, 6 or even more kids and possible grandma and Grandpa to worry about.

Just before leaving Texas I slipped into Glenrio, as near to a ghost town as I’m ever likely to see. If I remember rightly from the Billy Connolly show there is one woman stubbornly living there but no-one else.

 

Then I crossed the State line into New Mexico – another time zone Mountain Standard Time, now 7 hours behind the UK, I remembered this time – but not a lot changed.

 

 

The wind had come up again and was raising dust in clouds which obliterated that distant horizon on occasions. The dust covered me and the bike and with this  and yesterday’s dose the inside of my nose is so sandblasted it’s begun to bleed – ok too much information – but he dust bowl seems all too real...

 

 

 

I wonder what this old timer had seen of it.

 

 

Wild life count today comprised one road-runner but as I had my helmet on I couldn’t tell if it really went “beep-beep”.

And so to bed in Santa Rosa, New Mexico.....