Where were we?
We made it into New Mexico. I don't know which camera to look at!
We made it into New Mexico and stayed for the night at Tucumcari, at the Road Runner Lodge.
It's super cute, the owner is really nice. I highly recommend it if you're in the area.
There's not a whole lot to see in this town except for
Route 66 stuff. There were a lot of motels, a lot of neon,
a lot of mid-century modern architecture vibes, but when we were there, it wasn't that busy,
and there were some places that looked like they were pretty shut down.
I don't know if they're shut down for good or if they are
bought by someone and waiting to be renovated - it's hard to tell.
But it was cool to walk around and just see all the vintage
signs and vintage buildings. But as it got darker
and people started turning on their neon signs, things got a lot more eye-catching.
The most famous motel around here is the Blue Swallow Motel, from what I could tell online, but
it actually was booked completely full - we weren't able to get a
room there - which is good news for that area.
We did walk around it anyways, because they do have really great neon,
and you just gotta admire the handiwork of all this custom signage.
In the morning, we went to a diner called "Kix
on 66." I love the interior of this place - it is primo.
And off we went to our next destination, enjoying some of the New Mexican countryside.
There were a lot of just wild sunflowers by the side of the road, which was
very cute. Brightened up the place a bit.
Our first destination for the day was in Santa Rosa,
New Mexico, and it was called "The Blue Hole of Santa Rosa."
This completely natural formation has an 81 foot depth, a 60 foot diameter, and a pretty
constant water temperature of 61 degrees Fahrenheit,
which is pretty cold, especially for early morning, but we were determined to do it.
They had a couple scuba diving groups who were in
full wetsuits, but we decided to jump in just in our bathing suits.
It was a bit of a shock to the system, but it was fun. The blue color is just amazing to me:
it's gorgeous, and you can see the lighter areas are where it's a bit shallower where
you can stand, and then it just drops off where it's that deep deep blue color.
At the same time we were there, there was actually a marathon
going on, where all of the marathon winners
were running past this line and then some of them ended up jumping into the water at the end.
On the way out of Santa Rosa, we saw this awesome sign.
I wish that we could see it at night time - I wonder if it's actually lit up.
And we headed off to Santa Fe through some more countryside.
You can see though how the countryside is evolving
as we move from state to state - here the dirt was really pink. I guess it was clay.
When we got to Santa Fe, we went to the downtown area first, and there was a festival going on that
we figured out eventually was an arts festival.
This license plate helped us to figure it out.
There were a lot of people around - probably from all
over the place - but we walked around and tried to stay safe.
New Mexico has a pretty large indigenous population,
so there was a lot of that at the festival as well: music, arts, craft.
We checked out The Palace of the Governors a little bit,
and then we went to the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum.
I actually didn't get any footage on the inside of the museum,
but I do highly recommend it if you're in Santa Fe:
go to this museum, please and thank you.
The buildings in Santa Fe are very distinctive; they
look like buildings nowhere else in the United States, I believe.
And the entire city seems very natural / nature-focused. There was something
less urban about it, even though it was an urban place.
We were getting tired at this point, so we met up with a couple of friends
and then headed off to Meow Wolf eventually.
Meow Wolf is like a big interactive art exhibit - a conglomeration of
a lot of different local artists who came together to create this experience.
You pay an entrance fee, and then you have access to this labyrinth
of galleries, but the gallery isn't your traditional art gallery -
it's a fully-immersive experience.
Much of it seemed like it would just be a good photo-op, but there were some rooms that
had wider concepts than just "looking cool."
The place was truly a maze. I did not figure out how to navigate it while we were in there;
we just wandered around and checked out as much as we could.
The next morning, we headed north to Bandelier
National Monument to check out the cliff dwellings.
It was absolutely gorgeous weather
and very majestic - I can see why ancient peoples wanted to live here.
The way the park is set up is that there's a path that leads you around, and there are
staircases and ladders so that you can actually get yourself up onto the side of the rock
and look into the different caves that are carved out of the rock.
When we headed out of there, we had to go back down a mountain.
We went up a mountain on the way there, had to go back down the mountain,
and as we were starting out,
it was beautiful - sunny, clear - and then it started pouring.
Don't worry, I didn't take this footage - Jess took this footage.
After spending a bit more time in Santa Fe, we headed off to Albuquerque,
and the first stop was the International Balloon Museum.
They're famous for having an annual
hot (air) balloon festival, so this museum was dedicated to the history of that.
We checked out the Nob Hill neighborhood
in Albuquerque - saw this throwback to Warhol, heyyy -
and then drove for a very long time to get to our hotel for the night, which was El Rancho.
Back when westerns were all the rage in Hollywood,
everyone would stay at this hotel when they were shooting their films,
so all of the old movie stars at some point
probably stayed here. In fact, each of the rooms of the hotel
is listed for a person who supposedly stayed in that room (or at least who stayed at the hotel).
The rooms themselves and the hallways are all
southwest-themed, and the lobby is pretty extraordinary.
This is where we recorded what I consider to be the
best video clip that we got on this entire trip.
It's pretty great.
"Charm of yesterday, convenience of tomorrow."
And that was it for New Mexico! On to Arizona.
It had been on my list for a while to go to the Petrified Forest
National Park in Arizona, so that's what we did first.
They've paved a really nice road in a loop shape through the Petrified Forest National Park,
so you're actually just easily following the road this entire time, and you can pull over
whenever there's a site that you want to see - and there is a lot to see. The soil turned from pink
to blue. There were all different kinds of caverns and ancient land masses. This sign made me laugh.
And then we got to the Crystal Forest, which might not look like much of a forest,
but it USED to be. These petrified logs are now crystal, but back when dinosaurs roamed the earth,
they were trees. They're that old. One thing I found fascinating is that they look like they're
split with an axe or something, they're so cleanly cut into log shapes, and that's actually because
while they were still standing is when they were petrified, and THEN they fell over. And just
like if you were to have a crystal column that you knock over, it would split evenly, it didn't split
when it was wood - it split already after it had turned to crystal. The colors of these are just so
gorgeous and complex. When we were done there, we drove through more sunflower fields to Seligman,
Arizona, which is the "Birthplace of Route 66," and it's pretty empty except for sunflowers.
There was a small town we eventually got to, but it was getting late, and we were tired,
and everything was starting to get repetitive at this point, so we just drove through
it and kept going. The drive was beautiful though, and we made it to Kingman, Arizona,
which is where we stayed that night. And the next morning, we went to Kingman's Route 66 Museum,
which as I was researching for the trip, looked like it would be the biggest and most thorough
Route 66 Museum that was on the entire route. There was a lot to see - there were a lot of
different categories that they focused on as well. Out of all the Route 66 Museums,
I'm happy that we went to that one. Our main destination that day was to drive all the way
to the Grand Canyon. The Grand Canyon's actually so big that there are multiple Visitor Centers all
around the canyon in different states, and the one that we went to is Grand Canyon West. The
big attraction at this visitor center is that they have a skywalk, which is a loop that kind
of juts out from the building and loops back into the building, and it's just - there's no supports!
It's just a glass bridge that loops out and loops back into the building!
I actually don't have any footage from being on the bridge, because I'm not really that
great with heights, and so I was not trying to take video while I was standing on a piece of
glass out over a canyon. If you want to see it, you're gonna have to go yourself. Sorry.
From there, we continued westward, and we actually went through the point - the bottommost point - of
Nevada. We weren't following Route 66 too closely at this point, and it was the quickest way for us
to jut into California, to get to Roy's Motel and Cafe before it got to be too dark. This location
used to be really popular on Route 66, and then at some point it had become pretty run down.
A man came in and bought up the entire town recently, I think in the past five years maybe,
and he's been trying to reinvigorate it. They've already repaired the sign to what it used to be,
and they've started with the front houses. There's actually a whole back section that has a motel
as well, I believe, that they're going to reinvigorate that - but right now,
the only thing besides the gas station is a post office. It'll be interesting to see what
actually comes of this and if the project ever actually gets done. Seemed to me like there wasn't
anything really much around there for miles except this golden buddha statue, for some reason. And as
the sun set, we made our way to get our first meal in California, at an authentic Mexican restaurant.
You can tell from this photo that I am exhausted at this point,
but we got to our room for the night, and this is what it looked like on the interior.
This is what the bathroom looked like, and this is what the exterior looked like.
Yep, very goofy. Very iconic.
And finally, we made it to San Bernardino.
I can't say San Bernardino without saying [sings] ♫ San Bernardino,
like in the in the song - you know...
This building, which was covered in the
world's most detailed mural, was actually the site of the first McDonald's Museum.
It's not the same building as the first McDonald's, but it's
the location of where the first McDonald's was.
And now there's a museum that basically houses all of their Happy Meal toys that they've ever had.
People from all over the world have sent in their collections of Happy Meal toys,
and they're now on display at this museum.
Next, we drove into Los Angeles and headed to Mel's Drive-In, in Santa Monica.
This is when we started seeing signs that said
"Route 66 ends here," but they were all over the place
so it's kind of hard to tell where exactly Route 66 ends. It's not as clear as it was in Chicago.
This was our last diner of the trip, and i do have to say i'm pretty sick of diners at this point.
I have no interest in going to a diner still.
But after lunch, we finally walked to Santa Monica Pier,
which I would consider to be the end of Route 66.
There's not much more west that you can go than
the end of Santa Monica Pier, and I guess that's it. That's everything.
I actually didn't stop there - I went up to San Francisco,
drove down the west coast through Big Sur,
all the way to San Diego, met up with people all along the way,
caught up with some old friends, and finally got an apartment.
And here I am now. It's still a bit unbelievable to me that this
has now been checked off my bucket list,
because it was on there for so long,
and I do think that part of the reason that we finally did it
was because of the year that everybody had last year.
It opened my eyes and made me think differently about time and the way that I was using mine.
So I guess that's it for today, Guess that's it.
'til next time!
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