We did a longer run on the bike today as there is not a lot worth stopping at along this stretch of road, our destination tonight was Albuquerque we did 306 miles (493 km) today. There’s not a huge amount of touristy things to do along this stretch. That said our journey included looking at the following: include:
- Cadillac Ranch, Amarillo, TX.
- MidPoint Café, Adrian, TX.
- Glenrico Ghost Town, Glenrico, TX.
- Route 66 Auto Museum, Santa Rosa, NM.
There are multiple photo opportunities to be had along this stretch of road, from road signs, to scenery, to old Route 66 motel signs. The best place for getting photos of motel signs would be Tucumcari in New Mexico. I think you’d need to stay overnight to get the signs all lit up in neon for the best photos. You would need to invest a lot more time along the whole of Route 66 to capture all the photo opportunities that present themselves.
Our first stop of the day was the Cadillac Ranch for some photos. From there we would make our way to Adrian Texas and the 1/2 way point of Route 66. We made the Mid Point Cafe our breakfast stop where Mrs. Thirsty had the Texas sized pancakes for breakfast. They were ridiculously huge and came on 2 plates.
The waitress was more interested in flirting with the locals then serving anyone and we were the only 2 in the diner besides the 2 local dudes. Breakfast took over 1 hour to get sorted. Then the waitress basically demanded a tip from us for the ‘shitty’ service we had received.
We got on old Route 66 for most of the morning and I was thinking this road sure is rough. Then I looked at my speedo, I was doing 64 k/ph (40 m/ph) over the limit. Needless to say I dialled it back a fair bit to suit the road conditions.
A stop at ghost town of Glenrico on the Texas – New Mexico border was next. Glenrico once boasted 3 service stations, a cafe and motel. It died as a town when the interstate bypassed it around 1975.
A quick photo stop at the New Mexico border was in order. With our destination still 350km away we continued our journey. Our next stop was going to be the Route 66 Auto Museum at Santa Rosa.
The museum has a truly impressive car collection, making it well worth a stop for any of the ‘petrol heads’ travelling with you.
We managed to find a couple more Harley-Davidson dealers in Albuquerque.
Arriving at the Fairfield Inn Albuquerque University, there a was lot of people waiting to check in and it was late afternoon. Not sure what was going on, a little frustrating after a decent ride and summer heat. First world problems though.
It must be a bit of a dodgy part of town as they had security guards patrolling the car park.
