Day 8 - Santa Fe, NM to Gallup, NM

First off, a quick update on our dinner last night. We went to a restaurant called Cowgirl BBQ on the recommendation of the lady at the front desk of our hotel.

The food was great, but the live music was fabulous. Not country & western, as you might expect, but a band called Welcome to Bohemia playing music which was more like polka, French and Eastern European. They were a big hit with the crowd, us inlcuded.

A rather poor photo of the band down the room, but it's the best we've got

On to day 8 though. Big News of the morning though - Neil shaved for the first time this trip.  We grabbed breakfast at a small creperie attached to our hotel. Again, not what you necessarily expect in Santa Fe, but delicious.  After breakfast we did stroll across the street to a very nice looking hat shop; they actually custom make all their hats on site, and even had a fitting chair.

A good look, but given that only the decorative braids to go around the base of the hat cost anywhere from a few hundred to a couple of thousand dollars, we decided that an entire hat might be out of our budget.

We drove south from Santa Fe (after stopping to snap our third state capitol) and started descending again through the mountains towards Albuquerque to rejoin the later alignment of the route. Albuquerque is a decent sized city, the largest in the state, but still retains some old Route 66 attractions.

The New Mexico State Capitol, in Santa Fe, is much more modest than most other states, but fits in well with the surrounding city

On the road between Santa Fe and Albuquerque

We stopped for lunch at the aptly named 66 Diner, which is actually on the east side of town on the post-1937 route which cut through directly to Albuquerque.

The 66 Diner in Albuquerque

The diner was like a step back in time to the 1950's. The waitresses were resplendent in turquoise dresses, a juke box played Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis, and the walls were filled with Route 66 memorabilia and period advertisements.

Unfortunately, it appears that ukuleles have finally penetrated into Albuquerque

 

Leaving the city to the west, we started climbing again up and over Nine Mile Hill. As with the previous couple of days, we had to drive along the interstate highway for some sections as no alternative still exists, with the most recent US66 alignments generally underneath I-40 around these parts. On the plus side, the 75mph speed limit allowed us to make good time through the barren scrub.

Looking across the top of the plateaus

Bridge Alert: in Rio Puerco was a restored Parker Truss bridge which the old 2-lane Route 66 passed over. As you might expect, your heroes stopped to take pictures for your viewing please. No no, don't thank us, your appreciative silence is enough thanks.

I think we can all agree that this image speaks for itself

We had some glorious views of the mountains as we travelled down towards our stop for the evening, especially as we skirted around the somewhat alarmingly named named 'dead man's curve', luckily we escaped unscathed.

Windmill, with non-elevated tank

Train Alert: The route ran alongside a very busy railroad, so needless to say we saw a lot of this all day. Actually, the east-west railroads, oil pipelines, roadways and communication lines all converge through the valleys around here, making the area around Gallup a Cold War nuclear target.

Dead man's curve goes around the right side of the mesa in front, and is part of an older alignment. Later, the 4-lane upgrade to Route 66 just blasted its way through the mesa, as seen by the path of the current I-40, which was simply built on top of the later alignment.

The appraoch to dead man's curve, the sign says it all - wait, are those bullet holes?

We did pass through a small place called Budville, reminding me of a certain beverage favored by certain friends

Quick opportunity for a Mini portrait during a driver swap

On the route we passed bands of dark lava rock, several feet high in most places, which stretched across the valley. Our book made an obvious statement: the lava flows hindered the progress of early pioneers... You think?

We followed the railroad across the continental divide, (and the aptly named town of Continental Divide, if you could call it a town), from here everything flows to the Pacific, including us hopefully. 

At the continental divide of North America. I would say it's all downhill from here, but alas there are actually some higher elevation points we cross in Arizona (you may recall that we reached thebhighest point of the entire route yesterday at 7600 ft).

We went on to Gallup, NM, and our lodging for the evening, the El Rancho Hotel. It dates from 1937 and in addition to being a popular Route 66 destination, it was frequented back in the day by numerous Hollywood stars while making western movies out in the nearby desert. Many of the rooms are named for them; we're in the Robert Taylor room (does anybody know who he is?). The hotel lobby is the centerpiece really, restored complete with player piano, a shoe shine stand and the original mechanical elevator which the door man has to operate for you.

The place does have a few quirks though, most annoyingly of which is that all the electrical outlets/sockets in the rooms are only two pins (!), so you can't plug in anything with an earth pin (including this laptop). Also, we had to akwardly walk through a function room which was hosting a convention meeting of emergency managers (apparently) in order to reach the bar.

The El Rancho Hotel. If their motto is anything to go by, then apparently earth pins are on their way out, along with Flash and DVDs by mail.

As you might expect, another spectacular sign, can you tell we're nearing Vegas (comparitively)

A view down our sink's plug hole (is that the same slime stuff as in Ghostbusters 2?). Actually, it's a view outside our round window, looking at the hotel's neon trim.