KIT™ Day 10 & 11, Albuquerque

We thoroughly enjoyed our stay at the Blue Swallow.  Here is a picture of the light fixture in the room, and you can see the small bathroom (people must have been much smaller back then, or more likely, having modern conveniences made any internal bathroom a luxury).  The couple that own the Blue Swallow have done an amazing job in just 11 months.


Yesterday was the least amount of Route 66 places of interest during the trip.  Our target was 176 miles, so after a morning jog for me along the Mother Road, we packed up and were turning our tires by 9:30 (after a visit to the gift shop of course :o)

Between Palomas and Montoya, we were required to traverse underneath I-40, and this was the tunnel.  It was pretty narrow, I cannot imagine how larger vehicles maneuver through this.

Next up was Santa Rosa.  Some pretty good googie for Beth, over at Nutwood Junction, when we do the old sign thing, my job is to maneuver the car for her to get a picture out of the passenger window, I think we are at least 90% effective.  We decided to stop for an early lunch since most of the remaining towns were pretty small and we might struggle to get a cool amber beverage.  Just our luck, Joseph's did not start serving such beverages until 1200, and we did not want to sit there for an hour.  Since we already had our waters, and did not want to be rude, we ordered some tater skins to tide us over.  


Here is a photo of the terrain that we were traveling through most of the day, and about 70 of our 176 miles was on I-40, a triple disappointment.  First, we love the older paths where you get a flavor for the locale as we travel through, so being on the interstate was against the premise of this trip.  Second, there are travel centers every 30-40 miles, and there are non-stop billboards advertising all of the things they have there.  It really gets irritating and is an eyesore.  When we did pull off into one of the "towns" in our guide-book, Clines Corners, it was nothing more that a grouping of buildings.  Since we had already taken the exit, we did go inside and did purchase a few things, but after 10-15 minutes, we were ready to get out of there and seek out the friendlier elements of our Route 66 adventure.

We were still searching for a place for a cool amber beverage, so after Beth got some pictures of some ruins at the LongHorn Ranch, we saw a place that had cool amber beverage signs.  We pulled into the parking lot and Beth was reading the description for LongHorn Ranch and it indicated that our destination, Club 203, was a topless bar.  Lucky we recognized our mistake before walking through the door, that could have been awkward.

The next little town we visited was Moriarty, I loved the town welcome sign (not much to do with Route 66, but hey, it caught my fancy :o)  Also in Moriarty was what was the last operating Whiting Brothers gas station.  Whiting Brothers was established in 1917 in Shamrock Texas and has stations all the way to Barstow California. Unfortunately, this station was no longer in service, another victim of the mighty interstate. 

Moriarty was where we were able to get back on the historic Route 66 path, and as we got closer to Albuquerque (ABQ), the terrain turned more mountainous.  It was a beautiful drive through the mountains and into town on Central avenue.  I do not have any pictures because there really were not any good places to pull over (so here is one from on-line).  Once we got into the East side of ABQ, we stopped for an appetizer and that long overdue cool amber beverage, and I searched for a hotel to stay in.  We also watched the end of the Memorial golf tourney, it was great to see Tiger win again, especially at Jack's tournament, where Tiger matched the Golden Bear for career PGA wins.  We ended up at a DoubleTree Hilton just two blocks from downtown (near the Convention Center).

We headed out last night to get the lit neon googie signs along Central Ave., and then headed to the downtown area to watch the Heat and  Celtics playoff game.  We first stopped at a new local brew pub, only open a week, but since we were the only patrons, we decided to move on and search for something a little more exciting.  We found a neat place called The Library (make sure to embiginate the picture to read the book titles, they are a hoot).  We finished watching the game, then walked around a bit, and then had a few slices back at the brew pub (which had more people there, and we were able to share some of our pizza with a hungry patron).  It was a fun evening, but getting back to the room until 1200 AM local time, so decided to take a night off from the KIT™ entry.

Today, it was a sleep in day, then we headed down for our workouts.  Then, after getting into the correct frame of mind, we headed out to find a Laundromat, it is amazing how much laundry accumulates after ten days (especially with workouts on most days).  We dreaded it, but actually were in and out in about an hour.  Just down the road was Kellys where we had lunch.




After that, it was on to Central Avenue again to let Beth get the googie signs in the daylight (which was a challenge with it being overcast and windy).  Here were a few pictures that I stopped to take and share with you.  




Tonight it is back to downtown to watch some of the Spurs vs. Thunder, and get a bite to eat.  We will not have as much fun as last night since it will be up earlier to get our workouts in (this hotel has a great workout facility), load the car, and head on further west.  


Hope you had a great start to the week.