Saturday 27th April The Santa Fe Trail

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An easy day today. Just 170 miles of the old pre 1937 route up and through Santa Fe along part of the Santa Fe Trail. When Route 66 was originally commissioned this circuitous route was necessary because it was the only way through the mountains but by 1937 it was possible to cut and open a more direct route from Santa Rosa to Albuquerque and Santa Fe was bypassed.

However, because Santa Fe had some 400 years of “modern” history, its status as a capital dates back to 1610, it was not dependent on passing trade and that is obvious today. It is not what I expected having passed so many neglected and abandoned communities but a thriving bustling City -  the stock in the Lexus dealers lot vouched for that - that is the State Capital and a vacation resort for winter and summer activities.  Shows what I know.

The ride up was beautiful but again it was exciting to be following such an old route – here not only Route 66 but The Santa Fe Trail – I won’t go off on another anorak session but read about it, our forebears really were tough weren’t they. My journey by comparison was a doddle, but not without incident. One as a result of a Pick-up truck driver with one tail light out – for some reason the Americans haven’t grasped the idea of amber indicators – their brake lights flash so if the left one is out they can totally screw up your day with left turns whilst braking! Another due to this chap on the road.

My resident herpetologist, ok Gary, tells me it’s a gopher snake which is a constrictor and not poisonous but that information came after my discussions as to the right of way with it so I let it

take its time.

 

The views from the road as I climbed up to Santa Fe – it sits at 7000ft - were magnificent but my camera - and my lack of skills – don’t do it justice. The stubby shrub land gave way to evergreen forests yet the grass still had the look of raffia.

 

 

 

The route went past Las Vegas - The New Mexico one – and it was only a short detour to ride through there. Again the feel of this town was so totally different to places I’d recently passed through.

Las Vegas, New Mexico

 I got into Santa Fe earlier than I thought I would and so took advantage of the glorious sunshine, hotel pool and free coffee and cookies to re-group and wash of that red dust. Hey someone has to do it and  a week in and 2287 miles gone I admit I need it.

And as the local website tells me that at this altitude 1 drink has the effect of 3 at sea level it will be a cheap night...

 

 

 

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.....

 

 

 

 

 

25th April On to Texas...

Had a great steak and a beer (or 3) at Lucille’s Road House last night – she’s obviously branched out from taking her love to town – and have to say it was a great night. Met some lovely people although not, I’m sad to say, Lucille. Beer was a darker ale brewed locally in Oklahoma Town and I think even the aficionados of The Carpenters Arms Beer against Noise Pollution Society would approve – and The Snowden Memorial Spoon was not needed (In Joke - sorry)

Another lovely day, was 16 deg and dry when I set off and it went up to 20 later.

I have been for some time in an area associated with the Cherokee Nation. However this was not their original tribal land but they were forced here along The Trail Of Tears in 1830 under the Indian Removal Act. Part of the history of the States most want to forget – read about it, it is distressing. If you can get past that though you have to smile at the Cherokee label used to sell “original arts and crafts” all along the route – now call me cynical but I can’t imagine Ma Running Bear in her wigwam baking these!

 

Again I was trying to stick to the original route and I continue to be surprised that this part of Oklahoma is not as I imagined – there are still small fields, hedgerows and creeks.

The route carries on right through it though often straight as far as the eye can see.

 

 

I know I said I didn’t want to show the remnants of peoples misfortunes but there are those latching on to the resurgence of the route and these two “businesses” were directly opposite each other in Canute.

One dead...

One thriving...

I did stop off at the “National Route 66 Museum” in Elk City which was interesting to a degree but very colloquial and a bit naughty using the National tag. Some lovely old vehicles though and a good  replica of the Joad’s truck and a young Henry Fonda  in the Grapes of Wrath film.

 

Also had a Historical Farm and Ranching section with an old boy who could talk for ever and who I could have listened to for a lot longer. Found another tractor I’d like to bring home…

After Elk City there was a wonderful long stretch of road that it was tempting to try and ride but nature was beginning to claim it back…

 

Found a source of a few more renovation projects if anyone interested!

Then on into Texas.

 

 

On crossing the State Line into Texas at Texola the change in the land is sudden and dramatic. Hedgelines disappear and small fields are replaced by vast acreages of grass and scrub. The soil – always red – is now more exposed in places and a red dust coated the road, what trees there were and eventually me.

The road became more exposed and the wind came up again. At one point after mile upon mile of leaning at an uncomfortable angle to counter it there was a sign warning of high winds for the next 9 miles!

All the books and programmes on Route 66 seem to show this water tower, never has lazy workmanship been so exulted – looks like one of my do-it-yourself projects.

 

In the stark landscape this scene stuck out, they say the devil has all the best tunes but you have to admit his competitor's advertising isn’t bad.   This cross at Groom was built by a private individual to counter the huge bill boards advertising pornography – at 190 feet it is reputedly the tallest in the Northern Hemisphere.

And so …….. after asking someone to show me the way, I arrived in Amarillo – ok corny I know but hey you ain’t paying for this.

 

24th April Tulsa to El Reno Oklahoma

What a difference a day makes. Woke up to sunshine and a cloudless sky.

Setting off for El Reno today not too far, some 140 miles but over what is apparently some of the best stretches of original road around.

This I guess is where I lose the remaining few readers who have hung on so far cos it is very anoraky!

It has been a brilliant day, I’ve ridden through countryside far away from any towns or interstates, taken dirt roads that are just passable on my bike in the drier weather and seen bridges that were part of the system in the 20’s but now closed – and I have been ecstatically happy – no, I can’t explain it!

So, apart from a few murials and a round barn I will find out about most of my photos today are of tarmac, red dirt and bridges – lost you yet?

I could have taken dozens of pictures of closed businesses, abandoned homes and rusting street furniture but that seems to be taking advantage of someone’s misfortune. When the Interstate came it cut off whole communities and though a lot struggled on – and still do – most have given up.

Immediately on leaving Tulsa I came to this bridge, closed now but Built in 1921 and taken into the Route 66 system in 1926 it was eventually bypassed in 1952. The decking is unusually redbrick which I have seen in some towns but the first so far out. Yawn yawn, I know!

Sapulpa Bridge

In Davenport I stopped to buy some stamps and whilst in the queue a siren started. I noticed it was 12 o’clock and assumed it was a factory or the like until someone said “hope that darn thing isn’t for real” and then I learned it was the Tornado Warning – but they were just testing it. Was advised to take cover if I ever heard it at other times!!!

That town is going to die if a tornado ever hits it at 12 noon.

 

From there the route just headed  west, and I say route because the actual current road  joined it and then abandoned it, taking new cuttings or avoiding sharp drops into deep valleys.  I’m now of the mind that although the “dream” I suppose is to do Route 66 on a Harley, that is not truly possible. On some of the tracks I’m on I’m on the limits of my bike – really would be easier on one of the Ewan McGregor ilk -

 

 

                                           and I cannot see anyone taking a customised hog down them. Which is a great pity as they are extremely pretty, crossing creeks and rivers where longhorn cattle are beginning to appear drinking in the red mud river banks.

Reminded of the importance of these cattle in these parts when crossed over “The Old Chisum Trail.

Some of the road could have been in parts of England I guess, well until two wild turkey’s ran into the road and one took off in front of me with the grace of a fully loaded Lancaster Bomber and nearly took my screen off. Still, one up on Billy Connolly – he never saw any.

There’s not much else to say today really, I just ambled along, taking the old route most of the way, even the dirt road bits as it was much drier now. I got lost once but as I was running short on fuel too I went into a gas station to ask the way and that was an experience in itself – talk about two nations divided by a common language There was a lot of grinning and staring and I’m sure I heard the strains of Duelling Banjo’s somewhere and I came out no better informed as to where I was.

I’ll just show the pictures and you can perhaps imagine me riding along in the sunshine,

 

Those that know me know how much I look after my bike, it got washed after every trip, however short – well it ain’t looking so good now – but I like to think that like me, it’s tired, dirty and as happy as a pig in the proverbial!