Route 66, Day 6: Morning, Roswell NM

Yesterday was great; nice and leisurely. We really enjoyed Blue Swallow in Tucumcari. It was a nice change from the Motel 6, homey, clean and pleasantly retro. It reminded me a bit of the motel room in The Lost Room which does a lot to recommend it.

Blue Swallow Motel

Tucumcari has a long strip where the businesses have the cool googie retro signs, and the blue swallow is one of them. When we cruised in at night, we wondered why the sign wasn’t all lit up; turns out they had a hail storm a while back than damaged a lot of the neon and they’re having it fixed in Amarillo.

Tucumcari, New Mexico

When we got up yesterday, we had breakfast in the Kix on 66 diner that The Blue Swallow recommended; big omelets and huge slabs of bacon. Then we poked around in the famous Tee Pee Curios shop and took pictures of many of the signs.

Tee Pee Curios in Tucumcari

Tucumcari has an interesting dinosaur museum; it wasn’t the concrete dinosaur park we thought we were looking for, but it was fun for a couple hours, and I got small dinosaurs in the gift shop so we can set up a “Dinosaurs vs. Aliens” diorama in the back window of Phoebe for the car show.

Scary dinosaur!

Eventually, we took of to Roswell. New Mexico is really beautiful; I took lots of landscape pictures on the road that I’m afraid will all look about the same when I upload them. I was trying to convey how wide-open and vast the land is, but that never comes out in pictures. I should have done a stitched together panoramic.

New Mexico Skies

Last night we checked in and met the rest of the caravan, plus a lot of new folks at a nearby Mexican restaurant for some tasty margaritas.

Zig Zag has some margaritas

I think the plan for today is to find wireless access, give the car a bath, and go hunting down some aliens. I’d love to find an Area 51 sign somewheres if we can.

While puttering around in the hotel room this morning waiting for the day to begin, I started reading Kerouac’s On The Road. I’m wondering how in the hell I made it to the age of 39 without reading it. Why was this not on Mr. Bray’s hyper-testosterone-laden “Great American Literature” reading list in high school? I feel extremely cheated by my American Literature education. Damn you, Mr. Bray. It’s like I put on a pair of glasses for the first time and saw literature clearly. Don’t mind me; I’ll be over here with my nose in a book.

UPDATE: we ventured out to find a donut, then hit target for some car wash supplies and gave Phoebe a bath. She still needs some TLC before the car show, but we started getting hungry so we drove to downtown Roswell to find the Not of This World Coffee shop to get sandwich and free wireless. It’s verrrrrryyyyyy slllllloooooooowwww, but at least we’re connected. I’m going to attempt to upload yesterday’s pictures and plug them into this post.

This Post Has One Comment

  1. Matt B.

    I was assigned to read On The Road for a US History class when I was at Ball State. I never actually read all of it, but I did start picking it up again fairly recently. You’ve reminded me that I need to finish it sometime soon.
    Hope your enjoying the rest of your trip, and keep the photos coming. 🙂

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