The way back home or...Oh my God, the heat!

After spending the night in Santa Fe at the Silver Saddle, we continued our trek west and stopped briefly in Tucumcari, NM
The famous Blue Swallow Motel, Tucumcari, NM. A national historic landmark on the old Route 66

A few places in Tucumcari...



Leaving New Mexico skies...

Arriving in Amarillo for the night Friday, we stopped at another historic landmark, the Golden Light Cafe, possibly the oldest continuously run business on Route 66. They serve up an excellent cheeseburger.

After the cheeseburger, we walked across the street to the Blue Gator run by a former cop and his wife. Nice folks and they happened to have karaoke night that night so we partook of the questionable singing. As a tradition, we both have a dollar bill on the wall from a previous road trip and we signed that days date to update the bill marking our visit this year.

Well, I guess that's about it. I think I've added all the photos and comments I'm going to. You might visit some of the previous posts for I have added some photos to those entries too.

See you down the road...

Fallin' arches

With the life savings gone via Vegas, we thought we’d have a look at holes in rocks, specifically, Arches National Park. It’s kind of silly, they specifically tell you not to stray from the trail getting there, but once you arrive at an arch, there are no restrictions and people are climbing all over them. They had recently had a very rare 3-inch rain that had done some damage to the park that delayed our arrival to and departure from the park.

Got rain?

Your hosts mugging for the camera before going into Arches NP.

Taking a rest before going to Arches NP

Scenery outside the park

There are suppose to be 2,000 arches in the park, but I think we saw…three. You have to hike quite a bit to see most of the arches. Well, we decided to work off last night’s excellent dinner from the Moab Brewpub (Moab, Utah where we spent the night, just 3 miles from the park entrance) with a 3 mile round trip hike to look at one of the famous arches. It was quite a death march getting there, but it was very spectacular scenery that photos just don’t do it justice, but here are our attempts.Storage building at old abandoned Wolfe Ranch in Arches. The living quarters weren't much nicer. Notice the blue-green tint? There's copper all over this place, and with the prices of copper and uranium going up, they are going to start mining in this area.

Of course no blog that we do would be complete without photos of us climbing on rock, so to not disappoint:
The long and winding road out of Arches NP

Coming into Santa FE

After Arches, we took a very scenic and long drive to Santa Fe where we are staying in the Roy Rogers room at the Silver Saddle Motel. It’s a funky old motel, from the Route 66 era. Most of the motel rooms are named after western movie stars.Me with my new friend at the Silver Saddle. I blog and he runs and spits a lot.

Selling roasted green chili in the Silver Saddle parking lot

More new friends in Santa Fe
What Dave really does on vacation

Luck be a lady tonight

Your Flight Engineer/ Navigator for the trip...
Your pilot for the trip...
Made it over Hoover Dam and into Las Vegas. Saw the Circ De Soleil show “Love” that was produced by George Martin, the producer of all the Beatles albums but one. It’s quite a show and imaginatively produced. Paul McCartney has snuck in 3 times to see the show so far, and Ringo twice.

Graphics at the theater

Gambled a bit in Vegas at the Roulette table, had an awful run of luck. I may have lost my heart in San Francisco, but I left my wallet in Vegas…
A few views of the suspect…This is the view from our 7th floor room at the Frontier Hotel and Casino, one of the last of the old hotels on the strip.
Pool area at the Frontier.

Where Elvis played his first gig in Vegas...


Remember if you double click on the photos it enlarges them.
We are in Moab, Utah tonight, Albuquerque tomorrow night, Amarillo Friday, and Dallas Saturday.

Standin’ on a corner in Winslow Arizona

I have a crappy internet connection so I'll up load more photos later. It's a good idea to view previous posts because sometimes I'll add a comment or two or add photos when they become available.

Stopped in Winslow for a brief time. Their claim to fame is the line in the Eagles song about “Standin’ on a corner in Winslow Arizona, what a fine sight to see”
It’s a tourist stop and lots of tourists stop including us to take a photo or two of the corner the chamber of commerce has set up for tourists to congregate to help out the downtown businesses push their wares.














Taking a little nap at Meteor City before going to the crater...
Then on to Meteor Crater. We didn’t travel as far west as we had planned due to the weather last night so a visit here got put back on our schedule. 15 miles off the highway and 15 bucks out of the wallet later, we see the best preserved meteor impact crater on earth. Good thing it landed here, there’s nothing for miles around.Lewis and Clark and a hole in the ground.

Just in case you didn't know where to look