Sunday 28th April Across the Rio Grande

Another glorious morning and west New Mexico beckons.

Definite objectives today and not necessarily associated directly with Route 66 but still very much on my “to do” list. I want to see the Coronado Monument, the Statue Tribute to the Pioneer women who trekked across the west with their men and follow a bit of the El Camino Real (yes Roger I know El means the but I’m an intrepid biker not a linguist) the earliest Euro-American Trade Route in the US.

But first I had to drive down the escarpment from Santa Fe and on the way down look for the remains of the original winding route from the early 30s. I never found that – the guide books say approach by 4x4 only and my 2x1 began to object at the off-roading, constantly moaning that it was a Pan European designed for French Autoroutes and German Autobahn - even this cow thought “what the ….”

 

After abandoning that search I enjoyed an amazing ride along sweeping roads across a landscape with red rock buttes in the distance yet scattered with black volcanic rock from the long extinct – like 150, 000 years long - Black Volcano near Albuquerque...,

 



 



 and chasing trains...

 

 

the climax of which must have been actually crossing the Rio Grande, still can’t believe I’ve done that!

Then immediately on to the Coronado State Monument in Bernalillo. In 1540 Captain-General Francisco Vasquez do Coronado led an expedition north out of what was then New Spain in search of the Legendary Seven Cities of Gold. He hoped to find treasures similar to those found a couple of decades earlier among the Aztecs and Incas. He didn’t and after wondering about a bit and generally making life unpleasant for the indigenous population – in this case Pueblo Indians – he went home. It was the life of the Indians I was interested in and the Coronado monument is on the site of one village, Kuaua, started in the early 1300s.  The village was excavated in 1935 and the major find was an underground room, known as a Kiva, which was the heart of the villagers ritual ceremonies – like many such peoples their homage was to the land, the sun and water and whatever they undertook they called down the spirits of the elements to bless them. In this Kiva the archaeologists found murals from the 1500s and they were on show – it was a truly wonderful, peaceful place and the fact that it was on the banks of the Rio Grande was just too tempting – I had to have a paddle.

 

That - and below - is the Rio Grande - and a big grin!

 

 

Now on to Alburquerque. Tales of pioneers moving westwards always feature men doing men’s stuff, fighting indigenous tribes, harsh winters, rough terrain, weather etc. So in 1909 a group of women, later joined by the National Society of Daughters of the American Revolution and National Old Trails Road Association started a project to honour and celebrate those eight hundred thousand women who accompanied the men and did exactly the same - as well as looking after the children, the “mobile home|” and of course their men. Referred to as The Madonnas of the Trail Project the early plans to erect a monument every mile across the continent - 3095 in all - didn’t materialise but 12 statues were erected in 1928-29, strung along the National Old Trails Roads – each identical, 18ft high showing a mother with a babe in arms, a young child, a determined look and a rifle. There is one in Albuquerque and I wanted to see it. And see it I did…

 

 

From Alburquerque I began to look for El Camino Real (see I learn quickly) but that will have to wait til tomorrow – did 269 miles today in 29⁰C wearing full riding gear and am very weary need a bath and maybe a beer…..

 

I must admit on looking back at the above it is a bit heavy, sorry must have been more tired than I realised. It really wasn't that kind of day - but full of really good riding roads, twisty and through the red rock gorges - some though just petered out...

 

Notice the Cow theme today...

others swung far away from the Interstate to take easy routes but you could see where the more modern road builders had just sliced through

 

Here the old route swings right to go around but top left the Interstate just goes straight

 

At this stop I found a shrine to a German Biker who died in October last year and who apparently loved this rout. Someone had placed a photograph in a rock cleft

 

 

Don't know where you are Klaus, but it is still as much fun as ever....

 

Then, another significant find, well I thought it was.... The Continental Divide, the line at which rain that falls to the East drains into the Atlantic and that which fall on the West drains into the Pacific. Now here I owe my American friends - I have a few, ok 3 but it is the quality of friendship not the quantity, now there's a dig at facebook, that's important - and I did think that with all the "World Famous" this (bait farms, totem poles, pancakes etc) they would have made a big thing about the Continental Divide and was quite excited. Well......

 

a bit of a disappointment to say least.  However... on talking to one third of my American Friends, ie Gary, I realise that being off the track I saw the local Native American approach and there is an official and perhaps more detailed acknowledgement nearer the Interstate. Sorry America...

 

 

 

 

 

Saturday 27th April The Santa Fe Trail

http://maps.google.ca/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msid=200059512251364914226.0004daba15b3107f38ef0

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.