Day 4 Tucumcari NM to Holbrook AZ

Route 66 Monument in Tucumcari

Well just as we had hoped, Tucumcari was a great place to spend the night.  The most famous motel in town, the Blue Swallow, didnt have such great reviews on Trip Advisor - a great tool by the way- I have made many a follie in hotel selection - not anymore.  So we decided to stay at the Motel Safari - which had much better recent reviews.  It was all refurbished and set to an updated 1960's motif.  It wasnt the Hilton, but it was only $47.  So we really couldnt complain.  We just needed a place to spend the night, and it fit the bill.

Classic car in motel lot adding to the ambiance.

Tee-Pee Curious

  Clean and comfortable bed - and a few old cars parked in the lot to boot.  It was a typical motor court place, with outside facing rooms, in a cloister, with parking lot in the middle.  The owners decided to add a few classic cars in the lot to add to the feeling that you were back in the 60's.  There was even an abandoned field behind the hotel that our small bathroom window looked out on.  You know, the one for would be escapes when the sheriff or psycho murderer showed up.  For some reason this place reminded me of the movie Joy Ride (the one with the killer semi truck) and No Country for Old Men - when he was hiding the money in the air vents.  I am starting to think that I might watch too many movies. Speaking of movies there have been a boat load filmed or partially at lease filmed in Tucumcari.  The TeePee Curious and Blue Swallow are two of the more famous standouts seen from time to time.

Main Street through Tucumcari

In any event, sadly, most if the neon signs were not on when we pulled into town near 11pm.  So we decided to do our trekking around town after a nights sleep (I double locked the door and made sure the window in the bathroom was as locked as it could get).  We drove through town a couple times to lose any would be murder tails we might have picked up back in Glenrio.  That said it was a new day and we were both in one piece.  We snapped a few pictures through town, and found the famous Blue Swallow, it really does have a nice sign.  The whole town seemed to be a sort of Route 66 tourist trap.  But it was definitely a stop I would recommend.  The restoration of the places that are still open are amazing.  And there is a good share of others that have fallen into dis-repair as well.  A really good mix of modern day, throwback, and those of days gone by.  Today the population is around 6000 people. For the amount of businesses on the main strip alone you might think there were three or four times that number.  The pamphlet I picked up in the motel lobby describes the way the town got its rather odd name.  "The two finest warriors of an Apache tribe that made their home at the mountain met in combat to determine who would succeed their dying Chief Wautonomah. The survivor would also win the hand of the chief's daughter, Kari. Tocom, the brave loved by Kari, was slain by Tonopah in the battle. Overcome with grief and rage, Kari seized her knife, killed Tonopah and took her own life. Heartbroken at this tragic turn of events, the old chief stabbed himself, crying out as he died, "Tocom-Kari, Tocom-Kari." This story is what became known as "The Legend of Tucumcari."  
Who knows if its even remotely close to true - but it sounds pretty good and I bought it.

Before long we were back on our way west.  We had a big day planned, and we needed to get going.  For some reason being in New Mexico, I felt like we were much further than half way.  That was before I drove across "The Land of Enchantment."  What an amazing state.  We had a lot of stops mapped out - and we needed to hit them in the daylight.  Lucky for us the weather was beautiful, and we were traveling in the summer months, whose long days were allowing us to view the sights well into the evening hours.

Downtown Las Vegas - New Mexico

Our first stop was a little way off the beatten path - and a little further off of route 66.  We headed out into the New Mexico desert - away from I-40 and Route 66 toward Las Vegas - no not Nevada, New Mexico.  The famous old west town where the Santa Fe Trail ran and where Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Jesse James and Billy the Kid were known to have stayed.  Historian Ralph Emerson Twitchell once claimed regarding the Old West, "Without exception there was no town which harbored a more disreputable gang of desperadoes and outlaws than did Las Vegas."

Imagining this town without the cars and pavement - you could almost hear the horses and six shooters.  And I wasn't the only one who thought so.  There have been numerous films shot in Las Vegas, dating back to Silent Westerns of the early 1900's.

Remember that "No Country for Old Men" reference earlier??  Well it turns out I wasn't that far off, it was filmed here.  More recently - Due Date - Red Dawn, and Beer for My Horses (Toby Keith), were all shot in town.  It is said that this (the Stern and Nahm) building was once a bar that was owned by Wyatt Earp.  Is now apparently used for storage, which I found to be a shame.  The town is divided into new and old town, by a river that passes through it.  A beautiful place with a whole wagon load of history running through it.  The Train Station is as you would expect from an old west city.  Constructed of brick, with a single platform, it was opened in 1899, and has operated ever since.   It sort of made me wish we had taken a train into town.
 

We were moving further northwest, toward Pecos - where we hoped to find a Pueblo.  We struck gold.  Pecos National Historic Park   a Pueblo dating back to the 1400's, is still in remarkable condition.  We were the only ones there (It was way off the highway after all, and I am a history nerd) and had the run of the place.  At its peak - the pueblo is said to have housed a town sized population of just over 2000 people. The significance of the pueblo, though abandoned by then, spanned through the American Civil War.  Typically I get to visit civil war battle fields in Virginia, Carolina, Tennessee, but New Mexico, this was going to be an interesting read.  Indeed, a three-day Civil War battle in March 1862 is said to have brought to an end the Confederate South dreams of taking Fort Union, Colorado mines, and California ports.  It was hard to believe that they would let us into such a historic structure, it was in great shape though, for being some 600 odd years old.  Much to our delight, not only did they let us in,  they encouraged the exploration.  We crawled down into the dwellings that were home to families of the community.  There was a greatly ingenious tiered farming system that utilized the scarcest resource of the area, water.  The runoff from one tier would drain down to the next and so fourth.  It was apparent to me that this is a terribly under utilized national landmark.

It was getting to be about lunch time and we decided to head into Santa Fe, to have some tacos and see some of the sights.  Had read that the oldest standing church in the US was there, as well as "The Miraculous Staircase."  The Story behind the Staircase is that the church had added a second level to ease seating with the increasing patronage.  There wasn't room for a set of standard stairs.  After an exhausting search of local carpenters, no one was up to the demanding task.  After much praying, a nomadic craftsman came along and constructed the staircase.  Miraculous because it was completely hand made

and encompasses two complete 360 degree spirals- without any means of support. That was in the 1880's.  Somehow it has stood and is still used to access the choir loft, over 120 years later.  Upon completion he asked for no fee and vanished on to the next town.  It is located at the Loretto Chappel, right in the heart of downtown, and just a stones throw from the oldest church.  So we decided to go and see both.  Though the miraculous staircase was roped off from access, you could get a good

 look at it, and it was amazing.  No center post, no lateral or vertical support, bent wood, and all that in 1880.  From there it was on to  the San Miguel Church.  Founded in 1610, it has stood the demands of man and nature for over four hundred years.  It sustained some damage in the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, but was fully rebuilt and restored in 1710.  It wasn't the most opulent of churches, but was definitely the oldest I have had the pleasure of being in.  That said we picked up a few items from the gift shop for the family.
It was early afternoon and we had some ground to cover before reaching our next destination, which was even more out of our way than we already were.  Our journey took us up towards Los Alamos, where our country entered the nuclear age.  I wondered if it was just reading the signs that made the hair on my neck stand up - or the rogue isotopes that were doing the trick.  Regardless, Los

Bandelier National Monument Cliff Dwellings

Petroglyphs

Alamos wasn't our stop - Bandelier National Monument was.  This area and its cliff dwellings have been home to humans for over 11,000 years.  Yes thats right, 9000 years before Jesus.  Impressive enough to me for a few hour detour.  I wanst sure that Carrie would enjoy it all that much - but she seemed to.  Much like the Pueblo earlier in the day - they had ladders set up so that

you could climb up into the cliff dwellings.  Most were not much more than a six foot sphere dug into the side of the cliff face.  There were a few family style dwellings with larger rooms and common areas.  The elevated perch protected them from predators, flooding, and gave them an advantage when enemies came.  There was a pretty good amount of walking involved, and if you wanted to go up in the dwellings, obviously some ladder climbing.  We had a great September afternoon and it wasn't all that crowded.  Would honestly call it one of the highlights of our trip.
On the way out of town we caught a great natural sight.  Camel Rock.  Its name is no mystery, the curious part is that it is just adjacent to the highway.  The first time by I did a double take. A pretty cool natural anomaly.

We had a huge drive ahead of us that night. The plan was to get to the Grand Canyon - another side trip - tomorrow - and we still had 200 miles of New Mexico to get behind us.  So we jumped on the expressway - as there wasn't a whole lot of the old route through that part of the country anyway, and tried to make some time.  We did our best to take the old route through a couple of towns for bathroom breaks and for dinner.  Did spot a pretty cool old  bridge that was part of the old route.  So I jumped out and snapped a few quick pictures on the side of the road.  Seemed a little strange to me that there was a bridge there at all, if you notice there is nothing but a dry river bed below.  Pretty amazing to think that a bridge of that size is required at times to span what must be a pretty decent water flow.  Life in the desert.  no thank you.

Old Route Bridge

Now there were only a couple things that Carrie really wanted to do on this trip.  And sleeping in a Tee-Pee was one of them.
We arent talking buffalo skin tee-pee's - we are talking the cement variety.  There were a whole group of these "wig-wam" inn's along the route.  Today only a couple remain:  Holbrook Arizona and San Bernadino California.  Holbrook was the one we were going to pass on the route any time towards the evening hours.  And as we had spent a little more time at the park and in Santa Fe than I had originally planned, we really had to haul to get to the Wigwams at anything resembling a decent hour.

Muffler Man Cowboy

We found out- just about the time we had called to make sure that they had room that they closed at 8pm.  This wasn't set up like a normal hotel apparently - and there was absolutely no way we were going to get there by 8.  Upon explaining ourselves - she agreed to hid a key for us, so that when we got in we would have access.  Upon hearing this - I insisted that we make one last stop - the westernmost of the Muffler Men.  We had seen So many along the way, being the last along our journey was definitely worth a stop.  The problem, it was dark, and on top of that it had started raining.  I had Carrie Drive so that I could navigate and peer through the streets for our fiber glass friend.

The Wigwam Hotel - our Stop for the night.

After having driven past him twice, I caught a glance of him - set back from the street, perched up on top of an auto body shop.  I was drenched, the picture came out dark - and I was tired.  There were a few more sites I wanted to catch, but I decided it was time to get ourselves to bed, and bed was still 50 miles off.  With another state behind us it was starting to feel like we were never going to get to California.  We finally arrived at the Wigwam hotel, and it was still raining, and pretty hard.  I just hoped our tee-pee was waterproof, as there was no inn-keeper there till the morning.  We found the key and opened up the door to Wigwam #11.  It had a shower, bed and air conditioning.  Also a flatscreen that never made it on, as I had to use the plug to charge the batteries on the camera. 
          

Out of New Mexico and into Arizona - another State in the bag