Amarillo --> Santa Fe: Into the West

Midway Between Chicago & Santa Monica

After leaving the Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, we stopped for a few photos in Adrian, Texas - the ‘geo-mathematical’ center of the route between Chicago and LA (i.e. we still have 1,100 miles to go). Little more than a blip on the map a couple miles east of the Texas/New Mexico border, Adrian is home to the Midpoint Café, famous for its ‘Ugly Crust’ pies and for inspiring Flo's V8 Café in the movie Cars.

 

Written on the side of this rusty old rail car in the middle of a field - "Ship and Travel: Santa Fe All the Way" 



Ascending into the Mountains

We left behind Texas ghost towns and endless plains to travel between the soaring mesas of New Mexico. We saw red-colored deserts and thriving, dense forests as we entered "Mountain Time." The roadside attractions along this leg of Route 66 (from Amarillo to Santa Fe) are mostly incredible landscapes - sites that nature created with rift valleys and centuries of semiarid climate.

 

 After our exciting, exhausting journey from Chicago to Oklahoma - and our short trip through unfamiliar heat and isolation in Texas - we felt both a sense of relief and accomplishment as we entered New Mexico. We had, in fact, made it to the West (even without seeing a tumbleweed). Perhaps that's why Lindsey finally took a nap on the highway and we took a more casual approach to our tracking of the Route (i.e. we saw a few dead-ends).

The Tucumcari Legend
As we drove closer to Santa Fe, we stopped at the largest city between it and Amarillo - Tucumcari. During the height of travel on Route 66, Tucumcari became a popular destination partly due to its "Tucumcari Tonite" campaign (which included dozens of billboards advertising hotel accommodations). Many businesses along the Route through town are still open - some have converted to chains, others are a bit dilapidated, a few retain their neon signs from the 1940s and 50s.

Thriving Tucumcari Route 66 Restaurant.

The Tucumcari area is also surrounded in legend, one involving an Apache Chief's sponsorship of a fatal battle between two suitors (Tonopah and Tocom) for his daughter, Kari. The battle went on, even though Kari had already chosen Tocom. When Tonopah was victorious in killing Tocom, Kari took the other brave's life as well as her own. Devastated, the Chief drove a knife into his heart, crying out "Tocom-Kari!" - which today remains the name of a the nearby Tucumcari Mountain.