From Albuquerque we detoured. When you are a lilac’s throw from Sante Fe you’ve got to go, right? So we headed nor’east for a short hike through the slot canyon at Tent Rock and into Santa Fe for the afternoon and night. 
It’s a great town and if you haven’t been, you should have been by now.
And then it was back to the Road. We put the Spotify back on shuffle and it was another perfect day though New Mexico.
If Rt 66 is about anything, its about cars. When you travel the cracked asphalt you can just feel the years of wear and tear as Americans of all colors found each other while the West opened up by road and automobile. With the wind in your hair (well, your hair anyway) if you close your eyes you can see the cars of yesterday creating the first social network.
In Tucumcari, NM they’re all gathered in one place. How many of these makes and models can you name?
The cars, of course, are only part of the story. The sights on 66 are like nowhere else I’ve seen and as we made our way to the Texas panhandle the visuals just kept a’comin’.
That’s an art installation called Cadillac Ranch. People from all over bring their own spray paint and become a little part of history. With a stiff breeze blowing, we were sure to stay upwind of the nozzles!
The history is everywhere. As we passed each relic, I though about who might have worked here…
or here…
or even here…
These were businesses along the old Road that vanished when the highway was built. In other areas, business still thrive. The ones that serve the touring public. Like us.
The sights are everywhere and we marked each one as we traveled in to Texas where, as you’d expect, we received a big Texas welcome.
Crossing into Central Time we made into Amarillo for the night. Thanks for riding along with us as we’ll see you on the road tomorrow!
gone'splorin 
all the cars I drove a long time ago. nice shots you gave us thanks Dad
65 Mustang
69 Camaro
68 Dodge Roadrunner
52 Ford Tudor
69 Corvette
57 Chevy
56 Caddy Eldarado
68 Plymouth Belvadere
67 Big Block Vette
71 Mustang Mach 1
68 Chrysler New Yorker
54 Cadillac
55 Mercury
69 Camaro
60 Thunderbird
Steve, that’s incredible!
Is Tucumcari, NM a gentleman’s heaven?
This whole trip is!
Great pictures and looks amazing!
This sounds like an awesome trip! Please pick me up if you see me hitchhiking!!
Love the car pics! Glad you’re photographing grills and not girls. (Marci paid me to say that) And Steve got a few of the grills I couldn’t identify.
Once you get into the near bankrupt Land of Lincoln, much of the old road is alongside Route 66. And next to Route 66 is the nicest line of old phone lines with the prettiest green glass insulators. Many a time I thought about pulling off the interstate and purloining one. Never did however.
And just in case the history of the song is not in your guidebooks:
The idea for the song came to Bobby Troup on a cross-country drive from Pennsylvania to California. Troup wanted to try his hand as a Hollywood songwriter, so he and his wife, Cynthia, packed up their 1941 Buick and headed west. The trip began on Highway 40 and continued along Route 66 to the California coast. Troup initially considered writing a tune about Highway 40, but Cynthia suggested the title “Get Your Kicks on Route 66.” The song was composed on the ten-day journey, and completed by referencing maps when the couple arrived in Los Angeles.[3]
Location of U.S. Route 66
The lyrics read as a mini-travelogue about the major stops along the route, listing several cities and towns that Route 66 passes through, viz. St Louis; Joplin, Missouri; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Amarillo, Texas; Gallup, New Mexico; Flagstaff, Arizona; Winona, Arizona; Kingman, Arizona; Barstow, California; and San Bernardino, California. Winona is the only town out of sequence: it was a very small settlement east of Flagstaff, and might indeed have been forgotten if not for the lyric “Don’t forget Winona”, written to rhyme with “Flagstaff, Arizona”. Many artists who have covered the tune over the years have changed the initial lyrics, usually to “It goes to St. Louis, down through Missouri…” then continuing on with Oklahoma City and so on. Of the eight states through which the actual route passes, only Kansas and its cities – US-66 spends just eleven miles (18 km) inside the state’s southeast corner — are not mentioned by the song. Chuck Berry famously mispronounces Barstow to rhyme with “cow” instead of correctly pronouncing it to rhyme with “go”.