New Mexico and Texas

After Flagstaff and Metor Crater we continued to drop in elevation as we moved on into New Mexico. The land is still semi-arid and it is difficult to imagine how its inhabitants earn a living.





It does has many beautiful sights such as these painted cliffs. There's even a bleak beauty to all the sagebrush. Roger grew up to the "Sagebrush Trail" broadcast every evening in the 1950's from Buffalo, New York. In his small town, kids would gather at the Scott's house, where one of the town's two TVs was located, to watch Tom Mix and Hop Along Cassidy in adventures too real to be imagined by some Hollywood script writer. In 1963, posted as a young naval officer to the Pacific coast, he got to drive his mighty Mini (all 850 cc of it) across the northern USA. When he first saw sagebrush blowing across the highway he stopped the car, got out and chased some down to mail back to Ontario.

A lunch on Route 66 in New Mexico and then on into the valley that enfolds Albuquerque. We find a campground that promises a quiet retreat, just on the east end of the city. Of course, it is behind a wall beside the freeway. But it is now 6 PM, dark and getting cold. Why does KOA have to so frequently overstate its amenities in their catalogue? So far, only San Francisco North (Petaluma) has lived up to its self-description. Ah well, it has electricity so we take it, rope off our site and go off in search of supper. A Denny’s gets our attention and the seniors’ menu has a turkey dinner. Yes!!! We have missed Canadian Thanksgiving so we’ll celebrate it together in a restaurant. Turns out that the picture in the menu was worth more than the proverbial thousand words, at least for the commercial wellness of the restaurant. The two beautiful thick slices of turkey breast, metamorph into deli slices of cold turkey that had been re-warmed in a frying pan. Gee, it's not only KOA that overstates and under-delivers.

In the AM it has stopped raining, there is a sunrise, the freeway traffic is a steady hum as those non-retired folks head off to work. Our usual breakfast is followed by a hot shower, and it on up out of the valley and on our way to the Texas Panhandle.

Moving from New Mexico to Texas the land becomes somewhat less arid, we see more grass, albeit dry and many more cattle. The panhandle is not that wide so we won’t be spending much time there. We pick Amarillo as our destination and give KOA another chance since this one is advertised as “having no interstate noise – just the sound of happy campers strolling the well-kept grounds, admiring the collection of Western metal art …” Now that was all accurate and the owners were nice people and very helpful. But the ad did not mention that, while it was 4 km north of the I-40, the campground was beside the Amarillo airport and about 1/3rd of a kilometre from the major two track railroad that up until now has been much closer to and paralleling I-40. The typical train is at least 110 cars of double-decker containers. It turns out that they run regularly through the night. It is soooo much fun dreaming of trains.

These pictures were taken the next morning at the level crossing we had heard all night - 120 train cars with double-decked containers - at least that took 240 trucks off the highway, so maybe our lost sleep was a small price to pay.

Wonder of wonders, while they tell us it has been 80 Fahrenheit all day, during the night the cold front catches up with us once again – more rain and just above freezing by morning. A young guy from southern Texas in Amarillo for work tells us that he’s bought coats every time he’s come to Amarillo because it always turns cold. Well I guess that he had to buy another coat cause it was sure cold.

Who would ever expect to find a touch of Ireland in Texas? There actually is a place called Shamrock, so we diverted to Route 66 to check it out. Pretty little town of 2000, but the accents when we stopped in the general store had no Irish lilt to them. “Y’all come back, ya hear.” Much of the town is unchanged since the heyday of Route 66. The "Magnolia" gas brand was a new one for both of us.




Even though Shamrock doesn’t pose as a historic town it is more interesting than some of those that do. Five churches that we counted in our short drive, so that works out to 400 people per church and many untouched buildings from the 1940’s, 50’s and earlier.