Tucumcari is barely two hours away from Albuquerque and I wonder why I stop there except that things have a way of coming undone occasionally and I (usually) don't like pressing my luck. Things were going well and I could have made it all the way to Albuquerque very easily last night but I also like to ramble around a little and get off the interstate and away from the trucks so I spread it out.
That's what I did today, too. Breakfast wasn't much at the motel...in fact I could have gotten more nutrition out of sniffing an empty box of shredded wheat. But they had coffee and orange juice and something sealed up in plastic that resembled a mutant donut. Bon Appetit!
Tucumcari was still sleeping - I think - when I left town and joined up with the trucks on the interstate again. I considered going to see the local dinosaur museum until I learned that it was actually made up of bronze versions of reconstructed dinosaur bones. I'll save that for some other time. West of Tucumcari the highway goes through some relatively interesting areas -- compared to Texas. I pulled into a truck stop in Santa Rosa and got some coffee and chocolate chip cookies to sustain me on my journey.
I drove on a short stretch of Route 66 again but headed back on the highway and continued to the Flying C Ranch about an hour or so west of Tucumcari. This is just one more of the huge number of truck stop tourist traps but they have a real flair for advertising. They seem to pull out all of the stops in coaxing people off the interstate including several miles of billboards that obscure the horizon on both sides of the highway. They have one that shows a chubby little kid...seemingly a little bit retro like a 1950s kid in modern clothes...holding an ice cream cone and saying "git yerself some!" What parent could resist? Once inside you are exposed to a vast array of stuff including cowboy boot wine racks and coiled rattle snake wine racks, sheet metal armadillos, 'indian pottery' and 'indian weaving', hillbilly figurines...just in case you didn't get any in Missouri, moccasins of all styles, t-shirts, hats and....rubber tomahawks. The rubber tomahawk is the one standard thing that I use to gauge this type of place. If it has no rubber tomahawks it is judged wanting. They sell bunches of fireworks in spite of the fact that the surrounding county is a tinderbox just waiting for someone to toss out a cigarette. This place also had a real stuffed buffalo and a real stuffed Kodiak bear (please do not touch) and a huge plush bear standing up in full attack mode that you could touch and hug if you so desired. They were trying to sell a very large cement indoor/outdoor fountain -- 25% off! This place also had the only public toilets and the only pay phone for miles around (for some reason all of the highway rest stops were closed in this part of the state). Gas prices were the highest I'd seen so far.
Well, not to be outdone....the next major intersection, maybe 20 miles ahead, was Cline's Corners....a tourist trap that has been roping passing tourists for generations. I can remember seeing Cline's Corners when I was a little kid....probably saw my first rubber tomahawk there. I had to do some comparison shopping. Gas prices were even higher than at the Flying C Ranch. They had just about all the same stuff but maybe more of the higher quality tourist junk than the Flying C. Cline's Corners did not disappoint....they had rubber tomahawks!!! I did not see any huge examples of taxidermy nor did I see fireworks. Cline's Corners also has not spent huge amounts on advertising.....they don't need to since generations of kids have memories of the place and can't wait to drag their Goth sons and preppy daughters into the place. For the sake of full disclosure, I must admit that I bought Jill a set of wax teeth on one of my earlier visits that have probably melted into the upholstery of her back seat.
Moving on...I finally reached Albuquerque just after noon and went to the old town plaza to get lunch and kill some time before I could check in at the motel. I have been to this place four of five time but I have the feeling that there must be more than I'm seeing. I stopped at the tourist information shop and they gave ma a map that showed a lot of stuff that I hadn't realized was there. I wandered around a while looking at a photography gallery and a few other shops and finally got lunch at one of the plaza restaurants.....a beef-stuffed sopaipilla with rice and beans and green chile sauce and a beer. It was good but filling....no big supper tonight.
The old church on the plaza is San Felipe de Neri which dates back to the early 1700s. The present church was built in 1793. I had never gone into the church on previous visits but it was open for viewing. The interior is simple and quite pretty and clearly very old. Apparently it was built for a small community of about 40 families that moved down from Bernalillo around 1706.
The exterior of the church looks like it might have been modernized back in the 1800s to reflect a more "American" style.
The motel was the same as always...even the same guy at the desk. It is an extended stay motel with a kitchen that is pretty cheap and conveniently located. I checked in and got my stuff moved into the room and rested for a few minutes and then decided to head out for some walking up at the volcanoes across the river. By the time I got there it was 5 PM and the park rangers were closing it down....pretty stupid to close it down so early if you ask me (Nobody wanted my opinion, however). I headed back into town and eventually back to the motel for the evening.
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