To drive once on the famous route 66 was always a dream to me. I had to look on different maps to finally find the original route. The problem here is that most part of the old route runs along the Interstate 40 (I-40) Motorway.
It was not really like I thought it would be. But you can feel a little bit the freedom of the “mother road”, if you ignore the 6 lane interstate with all the trucks just a few meters away. 😉
After a detour visiting the old town Santa Fe (by the way, the capital of New Mexico, founded in 1610 with the full name: La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asís) with his Spanish Pueblo look buildings my path led me back to the mother road.
After a lot of different small towns like Edgewood and Moriarty I visited in Santa Rosa the famous Route 66 Auto Museum and the Blue Hole (a 24m deep spring with constant 18°C and an inflow of 11’000 litre fresh water per minute, mostly used for scuba dive trainings).
My path continued to Tucumcari, Glenrio (on the border of NM/TX) and the exact midpoint of the Route 66 in Adrian. Near Amarillo I stopped at the well-known Cadillac Ranch (a public art installation) and in Shamrock at the U-Drop Inn (known from the Pixar animated movie “Cars”).
Overview of the route:
- Grants
- Albuquerque
- Santa Fe
- Los Cerrillos
- Madrid
- Golden
- Edgewood
- Moriarty
- Santa Rosa
- Tucumcari
- Glenrio
- Adrian
- Vega
- Amarillo
- Shamrock
