Day 7: Elk City, Oklahoma, to Amarillo, Texas. A long but enjoyable day. We started off by visiting the Old Town Museum, in Elk City which was surprisingly good, with exhibits (including houses moved lock, stock and barrel) from the early pioneering days through to the "glory days" of Route 66. We crossed the Texas state line and continued criss-crossing the I40 pretty much all the way to Amarillo. Stopped in at the Devil's Rope museum in McLean, made famous by Billy Connolly's visit in his Route 66 series. This also was surprisingly good - you would never have thought that barbed wire could be so interesting! Also popped past the Bug Ranch, which I presume is a tongue in cheek take off of the Cadillac Ranch (which we shall be visiting tomorrow). Tomorrow we leave Texas and enter New Mexico, headed for Santa Fe and a well earned day off! Oh, and we found our hotel without any problems this evening!
Day 8: Amarillo to Sante Fe. A long day today, we covered over 300 miles. First stop, Walmart, to buy some spray paint. 2nd stop, the Cadillac Ranch to do some graffiti! Very quirky but well worth the visit for a photo op if nothing else. We painted all the family's names on most of the cars! We met a German couple back in Missouri a few days ago and since then we keep bumping in to them (not literally obviously!). We met them again today at the Cadillac Ranch, again at the mid-point cafe in Adrian, Tx, and then overtook them on the way to Tucumcari. We are now in New Mexico, our 6th state. The terrain has changed from flatter than a very flat, flat thing to mountains and valleys and quite a bit cooler. We got a bit bored of criss-crossing the I40 and decided to take Highway 104 from Tucumcari to Las Vegas, NM. What a great ride - fabulous scenery, over 100 miles with barely a sign of human habitation other than the odd ranch and quite a few cattle! Once again we seemed to have avoided getting wet - heavy thunderstorms were forecast for Santa Fe this afternoon and evening but no sign of them (yet!).
Once again, had a few problems finding the hotel! Not entirely our fault - the junction that we had the directions from was closed so we had to guess a bit - didn't take too long though. Oh, and we're in a new time zone - we're now on Mountain Time, so we're only 7 hours behind UK instead of 6.
We have a rest day tomorrow, time to explore Santa Fe.
Day 9: we had a nice relaxing day chilling out and exploring Santa Fe. It's a lovely place, very touristy but pretty cool. I had to work extremely hard to stop Jilly spending an absolute fortune! Glad to see the Met man in the USA is as useless as the one in the UK - heavy thunderstorms were forecast all day but we have been basking in glorious sunshine, not a cloud in the sky and temperatures of nearly 30 degrees! Bloody marvellous! We're back on the bike tomorrow heading for Gallup, NM, where we shall be meeting up with Scott & Caroline who are heading back East. We were hoping to stay with them in San Francisco but they have had to up sticks and move back for family reasons. Fortunately our routes have coincided so we shall get to see them after all!
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