October 18, Day 61
Today was a travel day. We hit a couple of segments of Rte 66, but were mostly on I40. We did stop in Grants, NM and toured a mining museum. Grants has a varied history with ranching and farming, but took off with the discovery of uranium. The town flourished in the WWII and cold war era. The main floor of the museum was a history of the town and a little bit about mining. The basement was a replica of a uranium mine and included a lot of actual mining equipment in a well developed mine setting. The docents were audio recordings by retired career miners who told about different phases of the mining operation. We learned that the mine replica was developed by the mine workers in conjunction with some of the mining companies and was actually in place before the above ground structure was built. A great museum! We are spending the night in Santa Rosa, NM.
October 19, Day 62
I had my oil changed before we left Santa Rosa. We followed old Rte 66 for the remainder of the state of New Mexico. The road surface was decent and it closely followed I40 on either the north or south side. There were a couple of segments where it was difficult to determine what was old 66 and what was a local road. At one point, the road hit a tee; north went over the tracks and continued east as a gravel road, south went through a very narrow tunnel under I40 that looked more like access for farm stock than vehicles. As it worked out, we needed to go through the tunnel. If our rigs had been any wider or taller, we would not have fit. We entered Texas just after lunch and lost an hour. We are now on Central time for the remainder of the trip. Just west of Amarillo, we stopped to view the ‘Cadillac Ranch’. The owner of the ranch half buried at a forty-five degree angle ten Cadillac cars in a neat row with their front ends in the dirt and the rears sticking in the ground. The cars have been totally spray painted with graffiti. We chose to bypass Amarillo and picked 66 back up on the east side of the city. In Groom, we observed the leaning water tower. Evidently it was built that way. We are spending the night in a rest area just west of McLean, TX. I wonder how much sleep I will get tonight with all the truck coming and going.
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