Awesome! Amarillo to Albuquerque

by Jane

Long, long ago I laid plans to get back to visit the South West. Gary said he wasn't interested in driving through a desert with the air-conditioning going on full.

So, today [Friday, 19th October] we drove from Amarillo in the Texas Panhandle and down into New Mexico. There were three distinct sorts of landscape (okay, they were all a bit dry and quite open) the first in Texas where farming was still going on, then we seemed to drop down to a new sort of landscape, more desert-like and with small mountains on the plains. This was pretty barren looking land. And then as we got closer to Albuquerque there were real mountain ranges bounding the plains and people were living all over the place.

Our first stop was the Caddilac Ranch (no photos from me - I refused to get out of the car).

Cadillacs - Gary's photo

Cadillac close-up - Gray's photo

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Inserted by Don: Gary the Graffiti artist--Gary picked up one of the hundreds of empty spray cans and found that it still had some paint left. Strange how such a simple action can trigger the 'garaffiti gene'. We went back to car leaving a grey GD behind.

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Then we had lunch in Tucumcari, soup and salad at a very nice restaurant, and then on their small historical museum. One thing I was particularly taken with there were the gates, which had obviously been designed locally as they had images reflecting life in the area.

Right gate

Left gate

Left gate detail - Route 66

Sadly the gates were padlocked open and so I couldn't shut them to get a photo of the pair of part-circles that would have been joined at the centre when the gates were closed, the left circle with the characteristic shrubs and cacti and the other showing Tucumcari Mountain.

I don't have any very good photos of the landscape as mine were taken through the windows of the car. I might add some of Dad's or Gary's later.

Closer to Albuquerque - the cloud was red

I just love all the of the scenery and and awed by the location of Albuquerque itself. Huge plains out one side, mountains on the other. High rise buildings poking up through a city that seems to be full of trees.




Jane
in Albuquerque
(Who knew I would ever learn to spell such a tricky word! ;o)

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