Day 6

14th May 2006

Amarillo TX – Santa Fe NM

28056 -28366 (310 miles)

Early start for breakfast but sleep through the alarm for 5 minutes first time on this trip that I have needed the alarm to wake. Breakfast was complimentary but took forever to be served, others that came after us had theirs first and gone before we saw ours and it was only scrambled egg on toast. Therefore, it was a bit of a rush to eat it and get out to the van to pack the bags, having arrived in time for a leisurely breakfast it failed to be that.

On the road at 8am and first stop a short while later at the Cadillac Ranch, where the owner has planted 9 cars nose down in the soil as a symbolic gesture to the end of an era. Over the years, visitors to the site have covered them in graffiti. We have a photo opportunity and then it is off on the road sweeping across the plains of Texas.

The road undulates for the next hour or so and soon, we reach Adrian the midway point on Route 66, 1139 miles each way so we stop for a coffee in the 1950’s diner that is there gathering for a group photo. From there it is just a short hop across the road to a Philips 66 gas station and there meet with a hostile reception. This is the first negative attitude we have encountered on the trip (and the last). Therefore, if you plan to travel that way it a gas station to avoid, there are others not too far away.

After this encounter, we carry on Route 66 at times crossing over or under the parallel highway. In places, grass and weeds grow through the surfaces, at one point the road just came to a dead end at a fence and no sign of the road, so we turn around and pick another part of the road. We are passing more and more places that have been abandoned, as if some great disaster hit and the population vanishes. We start a stampede of cattle as we ride by.

The road scenery begins to change the plains are giving way to bluffs they are rising out of the ground ahead of us and the road is starting to climb ever upwards. Soon we are riding through cutouts in the bluffs, going across bridges that run over dry riverbeds. Gates appear in fences with ranch names but no sign of a ranch. We arrive in New Mexico; the landscape has changed from the open ranges of Texas to the more barren and beige of New Mexico. The grass is brown, soil is a light brown to terracotta, and we stop for lunch and have gained another hour by crossing into New Mexico. After lunch, the road begins to climb and climb the altitude shown on town signs we are now 3000 feet above sea level, it is climbing in gentle undulations it is no problem for the bike. We go over a brow of a hill and the road stretches before us into the horizon, as we descend before the next rise. Cattle are appearing along the roadside more and more now. Eventually we hit the plateau and the country spreads out before us, the gentle undulations have given way to flat roads, we are on the way to Santa Fe.

We had two ‘Wind Devils’ (similar to tornados but caused by heat rising from the ground in a swirling motion generally not too much of a problem but have been known for the larger ones to lift livestock off there feet), one after another today. First was not a problem as it was going in the same direction as us in a field, the second one started to come across the road as we passed but fortunately, we all passed before it reached our side of the road.

However, black clouds are looming and we stop to put on rain gear before carrying on towards the threatening storm. We arrive at a gas station to fill up just as the rain starts and the lightening starts to strike the hillsides. We take shelter in the gas station to let the storm pass the lightening is hitting the hillside regularly about every 30 seconds, strike after strike. Not something, you would want to be caught out in the open with. The storm passed right overhead and eventually cleared away the rain easing, so we started again for Santa Fe about 50 miles away. The road went rolling through the hills up and down up and down, some good riding and nice scenery shame about the rain, first time it had rained in about a year according to the locals at the gas station. The rain stopped and breaks in the cloud let the sunshine through, as we came down into Santa Fe we could look to the left and into the valleys below. We rolled into town and entered a different world; streets are narrow compared with the rest of the towns we have passed through. The architecture is very Spanish; you could well be in parts of southern Spain or even Mexico. Buildings are coloured terracotta or pinks it is a stunning place with a small square in the centre of town you would never imagine that this was the State Capitol. I had a stroll around the town in the evening and it has a very Aztec feel to the stores especially in the jewellery and pottery. Tomorrow is a day of rest and shall explore some more and take some photos.