More thunderstorms were forecast for the day, but we somehow managed to avoid them and spent the day basking in sunlight and heat as we travelled out of New Mexico via Madrid, used in the film “Wild Hogs”, and Albuquerque.
Into Arizona and a bit of a treat: the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona as sunset started to fall. Very impressive it was too.
As sunset fell, we got into Holbrook where we were staying at the Wigwam Motel, which was interesting!
Our first stop of the day was the world-famous Cadillac Ranch which – if you don’t already know – is a patch of a field with a load of buried Cadillacs with their rear ends sticking out of the ground!
Visitors come along and are allowed to add graffiti to the cars; every so often the owner has them repainted to provide a blank canvas. Impressive as I thought it would be.
Then we stopped at the Midpoint Café in Adrian, Texas: halfway along Route 66. An impromptu performance by a group of musicians saw us on our way towards New Mexico, with the Blue Swallow Motel and then onto Santa Fe where we had stopped before a thunderstorm and torrential rain found us sheltering in (expensive) shops and a Starbucks.
Leaving Oklahoma City a short while after a much bigger group of Norwegians and Swedes, we headed off towards Amarillo (as we knew the way…), stopping by the Oklahoma Route 66 Museum.
Oklahoma Route 66 Museum
Then a stop for lunch at a Chinese buffet restaurant, eating with some of my new friends, Angelo and Manuel with Davide and Loredana and a great fortune cookie message:
Fortune Cookie
Arriving in Amarillo, we were collected by Cadillac limousines with bullhorns mounted on the bonnets – no worries with Health & Safety here, it seems – to be taken to the Big Texan Steak Ranch and its 72oz steak challenge (which I declined to take). Good steaks though, and possibly the biggest carrot cake I’ve ever seen!
Big Texan Steak Ranch
Leaving Missouri, we headed through the SE corner of Kansas, stopping in one of the bypassed towns, Galena, for some photos.
Then into Oklahoma with its “heat advisories” given it was 115°F/46°C. This was to be a common occurrence for the rest of the trip, with temperatures above 100°F every day, hitting 115°F throughout Oklahoma, Arizona and the Mojave Desert in California.
Along the way, we met a biker from Toronto called Giles, who was semi-permanently on the road these days.
Sadly, our hotel for the night had a problem in the kitchen that even with its chef(s) who’d walked out and cover from other staff failed miserably: after a late 2 hour wait for food, it was awful so we didn’t pay and went to our rooms hungry and tired.
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