I’ll start this posting out with a warning. I’m tired. I have no real ambition to write this. I’m cranky and need some sleep. I’m staying at a KOA outside of Santa Fe. I can’t afford motel rooms in Sante Fe ($100/night), so I had to stay here ($25/night). There is snow on the tops of the mountains. I’m about 7,000 feet up and it’s going to drop below 40 degrees tonight. And, to add insult to injury, the KOA is supposed to have WiFi, but it’s not working. And with that said, I’ll tell you about my day.

Staying at the Blue Swallow Motel was great. It’s a great place with great hosts. And it’s in a great town. I ended the day early, so I was able to catch up on emails (though not all of them) and watch a bit of TV. I slept fairly well and was quite warm.

Morning came too quickly for some reason and, though I slept well, I needed a bit more. I tried, but nothing doing.

I really took my time getting myself ready, so it wasn’t until 9:30 that I was on the road. I rode a bit around Tucumcari and had to venture out onto the interstate for about eight miles. I held my own.

Once in a while, you could see old remnants of Route 66 on either side of the interstate. They were mostly dirt paths now.

The Route through this part of New Mexico is basically a frontage road. And while that was true for Oklahoma and Texas, at least they kept the original concrete and, for the most part, the original width. But in New Mexico, any semblence of Old 66 is gone. This could be any frontage road. You can’t tell it ever was more than a crappy interstate access road.

You have no idea how much of a buzz-kill this is.

Still, it’s better than riding on the interstate.

The towns are few and far between. The views are wonderful, but they are forever polluted by the interstate. Rittenhouse writes of this stretch: “Often at a turn of the road or at the top of a rise, a dramatic view of the countryside is revealed.” But now many of the curves have been straightened and many of the rises flattened or blasted away to make room for the interstate. I must have forgotten how depressing New Mexico can be when it comes to how they treat Route 66.

Montoya is the first real town I came across. It was a real town with a couple of gas stations, a hotel, a restaurant, a church. But now all are gone. When the interstate came through, there was no longer a reason to stop.

Tourists used to camp just east of Montoya, when camping along the highway was allowed. It can get you arrested now. Billy the Kid also used to hang out here.

New Mexico has also forgotten its history. There used to be historical markers along this stretch, but since people on the interstate can’t stop to read them, and people on frontage roads don’t matter, few know that just west of Montoya was the “Goodnight Trail.” The historical marker used to read: “Cowboys who followed bawling herds of cattle from the grasslands of Texas and New Mexico to markets in Colorado, Wyoming and Kansas, carved a picturesque niche in the history of New Mexico. The Old Goodnight Cattle Trail, blazed in 1866, is crossed by Highway 66 near here.”

I love how it’s worded. The Goodnight Trail didn’t cross 66 - no, it was crossed by 66. Route 66, then a modern road, was clearly less important than the historical Old Goodnight Cattle Trail. Now that’s respect for history.

Today, at the point where the Old Goodnight Cattle Trail is crossing by Highway 66 neither are marked.

West of Montoya, towards the next town of Newkirk, you notice old remnants of Route 66, all inaccessible. 1920’s Route 66 wove its way through these bluffs. By the 1950’s, much of Route 66 was straightened, though it still passed through the towns, keeping hard-working folks in the black.

But when the interstate came, it bypassed all the towns along here, slowly choking them. However, with Cuervo, the next town, the interstate cut it in half, killing it almost over night.

Though, that is how most Route 66 towns met their end. One day, and for decades before that, there were hundreds of customers each day. They needed gas and food, lodging or just a place to get out and stretch their legs. And the next day, the day the interstate opened, there was nobody.

One day hundreds of customers, the next there was nobody.

The towns that were cut in half or only received one exit were the first to die - usually within the first month. The towns that had a few exits, or if they were lucky, a “business loop,” might have been able to hold on for a year or so.

Some towns did better than others, such as Santa Rosa, the town I entered after following an old stretch of 1920’s Route 66. It’s still thriving, thanks in part to the business loop and Route 66 nostalgia. But even now it’s not even a shadow of what it used to be.

I stopped at a Chinese Restaurant that was converted from a gas station/convenience store that was probably built in the 80’s. The waitress, Jade, was extremely helpful. She made sure that nothing I ate contained or came in contact with meat. She even made sure that they fried it in different oil. Why can’t every Chinese place have a Jade?

Her accent was very mid-western. I asked if she was from Wisconsin, but no, she was originally from New England, but left it 13 years ago. Whatever accent she has now is from New Mexico. Bill at the Blue Swallow has what I thought was a mid-western accent. But maybe this is simply how people around here talk.

Santa Rosa was supposed to be my stop for the night. But it was only a little past noon. There’s no way I could stop this early. My next stop was Santa Fe. Getting there meant skipping a day on my increasingly annoying schedule.

It was here, from thoughts I had this morning, to make some changes. I’ll explain those changes later as they’re not very important right now.

Right now, the important thing is to explain to you that Route 66, until 1937, inexplicably hung a right and headed north to Santa Fe. From Santa Fe, it went due-south to Albuquerque. After 1937, it went straight to Albuquerque.

The “straight to Albuquerque” Route 66 is gone. It’s 90% interstate now. Who wants that? However, the Santa Fe Loop is still interstate-free (though hardly intact thanks to New Mexico’s weird fascination with destroying things.

From Santa Rosa, I crossed the Pecos River where a Historical Marker used to tell about the explorer Coronado who, in 1541, camped at this spot for four days while his crew built the first bridge over the Pecos River.

Pre-1937 Route 66 began to head north at this point. That section is gone. Most of it is a dirt road on private property. Now, you have to take the interstate for ten miles or more and catch US Route 84 North. Old 66 will eventually reconnect with it.

US 84 is a nice road. It’s wide and very desolate. This is the only stretch of Route 66 that wasn’t bypassed by an interstate. True, it was bypassed by itself before there were interstates, but still, this counts for something.

Old 66 rejoins at the town of Dilia, 17 miles from the interstate. From here to Santa Fe, it’s mostly and sort of the original route.

There are several towns along this stretch, but nothing that catches your eye. A few old shacks dot the landscape and off in the distance (the distance to where I was headed) the peaks of the mountains were capped with snow. I would climb nearly 3,000 feet before reaching my destination.

I don’t believe there is a gas station until you reach Romeoville, the northern-most town along this section. From here, 66 dipped south and then northwest, following the old Sante Fe Trail. There are signs for that along the road, however the road that is signed Santa Fe Trail and Historic 66 is really only a vague idea of where the road was.

Mostly, the road has been abandoned and this wide two-lane, a nice road in its own right, has replaced it.

Interstate 25 was now a near constant adversary, also gobbling up what little was left of the original Santa Fe Trail and Route 66.

Each town along this stretch would offer glimpses into the past in the form of old sections of road, usually dead ending at a bridge or gate. Here, you could get a feel for not only how it felt to drive 66 in the 30’s, but how it felt to ride the old Santa Fe Trail in the 1800’s. These sections were all too brief.

Probably by accident the old Route and Trail west from the town of Burnal was intact for nearly four miles, reattaching itself to the “main road” after tunneling under the interstate. How New Mexico failed to obliterate this section is beyond me.

This four mile stretch is rough. Very rough. And it’s used fairly heavily by the locals. There is even a new post office along this dirt road. A train station (now a private residence) is there too. This area used to be important.

Very important. Starvation Peak looms over your shoulder through this length of washboard road. Legend has it that in the 1600’s, a detachment of Spanish soldiers sought refuge on this peak, but being surrounded by Natives, sought death by starvation rather than torture at the hands of the “savages.”

While the next town of San Jose gave me a dead end, it was worth it in that it ended at a still-intact 1921 bridge. This bridge served the road before it was Route 66. Sadly, it’s out of commission.

San Jose, like most towns around here, feels more like a commune than a town. The towns are all built around their church. Usually it’s at the center of town. The houses, all looking fairly similar, all seem to face the church. There are no mansions and really no slums. Everyone in these towns seems to be, economically, equal. When I would enter these towns, I would feel like I was trespassing. It’s not that I didn’t feel welcomed, I did. Every time I would see a local, they would wave and smile at me. But still, there was a feeling of being on someone else’s land, which is definitely not a feeling I get from most small towns. However, it is a feeling I get when on a commune. You feel welcomed, but you know that it’s not your place. It was fascinating.

After San Jose, the interstate curved away from Route 66. This is always a nice thing. And it’s through here that the Pacos Ruins and Glorietta Pass Battlefield (The Gettysburg of the West) reside. I stopped at the Pacos Ruins last year and they’re wonderful. If you get the chance, please stop. Glorietta Battlefield is all on private property or buried under the interstate. You’d think that New Mexico would care a bit more about its only Civil War Battlefield.

Glorietta Pass is the highest elevation on Route 66. It’s 7,525 feet above sea level.

I had to hop on the interstate for a handful of miles and that brought me to Canoncito. And that is where the KOA is and so that is where I am.

Tomorrow, I’ll be in Albuquerque.

Here are my photos from today.

Miles today: 192
Miles total: 3057