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Route 66 Blue Hole Detour

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Dogs, Favorite Places, Journeys, Lakes, Nature, tagged , , , , , , , on May 11, 2012| 3 Comments »

 “Misunderstanding is my cornerstone. It’s everyone’s, come to think of it. Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet.” – Barbara Kingsolver

What I Didn’t See

 

Looking across the deceptive shallow waters. — Photo by Pat Bean

There was only one thing left to do in Santa Rosa after my canine traveling companion, Pepper, and I left the Route 66 Auto Museum. Pay a visit to the Blue Hole.

Roadside signs advertising it had been tantalizing me for miles.

I found the attraction just a few blocks off Santa Rosa’s main Route 66 drag. I wasn’t impressed, seeing not at all what the hullabaloo was about. The Blue Hole looked like nothing more than a small, natural swimming hole that had been fancied up a bit.

Even the fancy diving pier didn’t clue me in. — Pat Bean

Pepper and I saw nary a soul as we walked all the way around it, which took about 10 minutes, before getting back on the road and heading to Albuquerque.

It was only later, when I did my usual curious-to-learn-more internet search, that I discovered why I should have paid the Blue Hole more attention. It was sort of like meeting a mild-mannered reporter named Clark never knowing that a Superman lay beneath.

What Pepper and I didn’t see was the 80-foot wide, 240-foot deep artesian well below the surface, its waters so crystal clear that scuba divers come for all over to dive in it.

There’s also a grate down there, blocking the hazardous entrance to some underwater caves that back in 1976 took the lives of two divers

There’s a lesson here. A familiar one. Never judge a book by its cover – or a pond by only what you can see.

Bean’s Pat: Pretty in Purple http://tinyurl.com/bqrz9vc If you’ve never seen a purple gallinule, then here’s your opportunity. And if you’ve seen one, I’m sure you’ll want another look.

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Santa Rosa, New Mexico: Route 66 Auto Museum

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Favorite Places, Journeys, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , on May 10, 2012| 14 Comments »

“Reckless automobile driving arouses the suspicion that much of the horse sense of the good old days was possessed by the horse.” – Unknown

High up on a pole, this bright yellow vehicle advertises the Route 66 Auto Museum. — Photo by Pat Bean

Running Board Back in Time

After a night spent at the Santa Rosa RV Campground, where you can order a western-style barbecue dinner be delivered to your motorhome, I decided to check out the town’s Route 66 Auto Museum.

The running board on this old vehicle took me back in time. — Photo by Pat Bean

One of the spiffy, polished cars on display here had a running board. Not writing it down in my notebook at the time,, and not being a car buff, I can’t recall the make of the car, just as I can’t remember the make of the old car with the running board that my dad owned.

While my dad’s car never looked anything at all like the flashy, polished-to-a-reflective-shine, ivory-colored car on display at the museum, the sight of the running board sent a jolt of memory through my body. I clearly remembered standing on just such a running board many years ago.

The thrill of that brief moment, when I was about 6 years old, was relieved in all its Technicolor excitement. I remembered holding onto the car door for dear life as my dad drove his car down the driveway of my grandmother’s home.

My dad would probably get arrested for child endangerment today.

Route 66 heydays: When Elvis was hot, wild and young. — Photo by Pat Bean

Of course so would I.

The first cars I drove didn’t come equipped with seat belts. I remember once driving to the store, holding a baby on my lap with one hand, and with a death grip on the steering wheel with the other hand.

I also remember frequently flinging my right hand out to keep a child sitting next to me from doing a death plunge into the windshield when I had to stop suddenly. Back in the 1950s, a lot of moms were expert at this maneuver.

Thankfully I survived, and so did all my kids.

The upside is that my canine traveling companion, Pepper, who occupies the passenger seat of my RV today, gets the benefits of my youthful right-hand-flinging practice.

Bean’s Pat: My Life is a Scream: http://tinyurl.com/6vrdpbl A hilarious take on Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” selling for $120 million dollars.

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Traveling West on Route 66 With Pepper

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Dogs, Travel, tagged , , , , , on May 9, 2012| 35 Comments »

 

This is how Pepper spends much of her time as we drive Route 66, her chin on the co-pilot arm rest staring at me. I actually snapped this picture as I drove down a lonely stretch of the road. Any guesses about what she is thinking? — Photo by Pat Bean

The Dog

I lie belly-up
In the sunshine, happier than
You ever will be.

Today I sniffed
Many dog butts—I celebrate
By kissing your face.

I sound the alarm!
Paperboy—come to kill us all —
Look! Look! Look! Look! Look!

… Sleeping here, my chin
On your foot—no greater bliss—well,
Maybe catching cats.

Look in my eyes and
Deny it. No human could
Love you as much I do.

I came across the poem above and it made me laugh. I don’t know who wrote it. Do you?

Bean’s Pat: Joy http://jmgoyder.com/2012/05/06/joy/  Very true words. I loved this blogger’s thoughts.

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Tucumcari Historical Museum

Posted in Favorite Places, Travel, tagged , , , on May 9, 2012| 9 Comments »

History is representational, while time is abstract; both of these artifices may be found in museums, where they span everybody’s own vacancy.” – Robert Smithson

I remember paying only three cents to mail a letter. Does anybody else? — Photo by Pat Bean

The Good Old Days? Or Not?

When you get to be an old broad like me, historical museums let you relive your life. That was especially true of the recent morning I spent at the Tucumcari Historical Museum.

The telephone switchboard on display took me back in time to the late 1950s. I had worked one of those machines when I was a Western Union operator back in the 1950s, after teaching myself to type on a manual typewriter like the one that sat nearby the switchboard.

First Tucumcari bathtub the sign said. Thankfully this was an item that was before my time. Not only was this bathtub child size, you had to heat the water that went in it. As I said, everything wasn’t the good old days. — Photo by Pat Bean

The treadle sewing machine on display looked exactly like the one my grandmother used, like the one I put a needle through my finger with when I was five years old. .

And then there was the stamp vending machine. Remember when stamps only cost a penny for a postcard and three cents for a first-class letter?

The television set on exhibit, however, looked a lot bigger than the first one in our home. I was 15 when we got it, so essentially I grew up without one. That’s hard for my grandkids to believe.

Some say those were the good old days. I’m not so sure. I think, like all of life, we get some good mixed in with the bad, whatever year it is.

Bean’s Pat: Oliver’s Story http://tinyurl.com/7c5gc99 This story goes far beyond one lost bird

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Route 66 in Tucumcari, New Mexico

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Dogs, Favorite Places, Journeys, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , on May 7, 2012| 2 Comments »

 “If you come to a fork in the road, take it.” Yogi Berra

Cactus Motor Lodge

Tucumcari, New Mexico, is a city full of Route 66 memories.

Until you take a closer look. — Photo by Pat Bean

One of those is the old Cactus Motor Lodge where I stayed this past week. Not in the lodge itself, but on the property where it once stood.

While the former well-used motel rooms, some with their own auto garages, sit vacant and ghostly, the grounds have been turned into a landscaped RV park. While I was there, it was popular with both travelers and western kingbirds, the latter an especially nice touch for this avid birdwatcher. The gray flycatchers with their bright yellow belllies were all over the place.

The historic stone lodge, once neatly trimmed with bright orange and yellow paint, was built in the 1930s. Its office was converted from an old dance hall, where gambling was conducted illegally in the basement, according to some unsubstantiated information I turned up on the internet.

The dance hall supposedly had an escape tunnel, which was most likely cemented in when a swimming pool was built at the lodge in the 1950s. At least that was the guess of new owners who looked for the tunnel, but couldn’t find it.

Memories from Route 66’s past, when gas was only 39 cents a gallon, seeped into my thoughts as I walked my canine traveling companion, Pepper, around and around and around the property. She’s a young dog with a gazillion tons of energy and I’m an old broad who needs to keep walking.

We’re the perfect pair of wanderers. And Route 66 is providing us with plenty of colorful opportunities to wander off the beaten track.

Bean’s Pat: This Man’s Journey http://tinyurl.com/7wkhksa A different take on the photo challenge.  Perhaps we all need to unfocus a bit.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Unfocused

Posted in Travel, Uncategorized, Weekly Photo Challenge, tagged , , , , on May 6, 2012| 4 Comments »

“Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of ordinary.” – Cecil Beaton

Unfocused or  Focused: That is the Question

The sun reflecting through a colored glass canopy at the Albuquerque Zoo repeated itself on the sidewalk. I thought the reflections looked a bit unfocused. But then again perhaps not and I just chose to break the rules. What do you think? — Photo by Pat Bean

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Route 66

Posted in Journeys, Travel, tagged , , , , , on May 5, 2012| 12 Comments »

 “It is better to fill your head with useless knowledge than no knowledge at all.” – Jim Hinckley, author of “Route 66 Backroads: Your Guide to Scenic Side Trips & Adventures from the Mother Road.”

 

Remains of The First Inn in Texas, named for its border location. Of course it was also the last inn, too. — Photo by Pat Bean

 

Glenrio, Texas/New Mexico

The old diner — Photo by Pat Bean

Once thriving with business, Glenrio today is a ghost town, its deserted buildings crumbling memories of brighter days that are fast disappearing with time.

Straddling the border between Texas and New Mexico, the town was given life by the railroad and outlying farmers and ranchers. It’s name means river valley, but oddly the description belies its arid location.

At the turn of the 20th century, Glenrio already had a post office, hotel, hardware store, land office, several grocery stores and a newspaper.

It also had, according to “Legends of America,” gas stations – but only on the Texas side of town because New Mexico’s gas tax was higher. New Mexico got the bars, however, because the Texas side of the town was in a dry county.

In 1938, when Route 66 was born, Glenrio, located midway between Amarillo, Texas, and Tucumcari, New Mexico, on the highway, boomed. It was also picked as one of the movie locations for John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath.”

Route 66 casualty — Photo by Pat Bean

The prosperity tumbled when its railroad station was closed. But it was only when Interstate 40 replaced Route 66 in 1973, and bypassed Glenrio, that the town died.

I saw no other humans when Pepper and I took the detour to visit the ghost town. It was sad, yet I was fascinated by the decay, trying to imagine the vacant-eyed buildings filled with activity as I knew they once had been.

There was the diner where travelers stopped to eat, and the motel where they slept.

Were those passers-by on their way to Disneyland in California, or to grandfather’s funeral in Oklahoma? Perhaps they were excited about seeing the Grand Canyon in Arizona for the first time, or seeing a new grandchild in Texas?

They might even have been just traveling one-way, perhaps to the big city of Chicago for a new job.

I wandered and wondered, but the crumbling ruins didn’t answer.

Even Route 66 to the west of Glenrio has returned to the earth. When maintaining its pavement got too expensive, New Mexico county workers removed it. I back-tracked to the interstateand exited at the next paved section of 66 still remaining. — Photo by Pat Bean

Perhaps I wondered because I was one of those travelers who had passed through Glenrio in 1950s. I was traveling with an aunt and uncle as a teenage baby-sitter for their young daughter. We were headed to Sequoia National Park.

It was the first time I had ever been out of Texas, and the first time I ever saw mountains. I haven’t been the same since.

Bean’s Pat: Wistfully Wandering http://tinyurl.com/7qzhv8r Say happy birthday. This blogger’s post turned a year old today. Let her take you to Chicago, where Route 66 begins.

 

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Route 66

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Favorite Places, Journeys, Travel, tagged , , , , , , on May 4, 2012| 12 Comments »

 Buz Murdock: They make a pretty good map for cars don’t they? But what do they make for guys like me who turn left instead of right?

George Maharis as Buz and Martin Milner as Tod in a scene from the 1960s’ TV series, Route 66, I don’t think I missed an episode back then when my wanderlust life was still only a dream. — Wikipedia photo

Tod Stiles: We have to know we’re lost before we can find ourselves Buz. That sort of map you make up as you go along.

– Dialog from the 1960-64 TV series “Route 66

Driving Down Memory Lane

After days of plotting and replotting my route west, which is part of the fun of travel, I finally decided to follow Route 66 from Amarillo, Texas to Flagstaff, Arizona. Not much of the old Mother Highway remains, but the bits and pieces of it that do have been glamorized.

The chicken that sits in front of a Mexican restaurant in Vega. I found it the most interesting thing in this tiny remnant of a town. — Photo by Pat Bean

Trying to stay on as much of the original Route 66 as possible kept me off Interstate 40, which supplanted 66, at least some of the time. Often it was just driving the frontage road, but since I hate freeways and roaring semis, I enjoyed the slower pace.

Where the route across Texas’ Panhandle got interesting were the little towns 66 took me though, like Vega and Adrian. A few businesses during the route’s heydays still survived but there were many more dilapidated ruins of those that hadn’t.

I stopped in Vega just long enough to photograph a wooden chicken in front of a Mexican restaurant. But in Adrian, I stayed long enough to have lunch at the Midpoint Cafe.

In continuous operation since 1928, the cafe gets its name from its geological location, that being the midpoint of Route 66 between Chicago and Los Angeles. According to a sign in front of the restaurant, it was 1,139 miles to either city.

The Midpoint Sign directly across the street from the Midpoint Cafe, which offered an excellent lunch break for me. — Photo by Pat Bean

My reward for stopping in Adrian was a piece of the restaurant’s signature ugly crust chocolate pie. It came topped with ice cream. Thankfully my RV has a freezer, because it was enough for two desserts – and I wasn’t about to leave a bite of its scrumptiousness behind.

I ate the second piece the next morning for breakfast. I simply scraped off the remaining ice cream, plopped the leftover pie in the microwave oven for half a minute, then put the ice cream back on top.

Come journey with me tomorrow and I’ll take you through the ghost town of Glenrio.

Bean’s Pat: Another Header http://anotherheader.wordpress.com/2012/04/25/page-arizona/ Page, Arizona. This blog is a good example of how you need to get off the beaten path to really see what’s out there. Antelope Canyon, is especially a fantastic experience no one should miss. It easily makes my unending list of favorite places.

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Cadillac Ranch

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Art, Favorite Places, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 1, 2012| 13 Comments »

 “We always had Packards, until the war, when they stopped making them; then we had a Cadillac.” June Carter Cash

From the front -- Photo by Pat Bean

Adventures With Pepper

You can’t visit Amarillo and not take a little detour off of Interstate 40 to Cadillac Ranch. It just wouldn’t be, well Texan.

It’s not exactly a ranch, just a large field minus the cows. There’s not even a ranch house, just 10 half-buried old Cadillacs with psychedelic paint jobs, courtesy of whomever visits with a spray paint can. The color décor is constantly changing.

The Cadillacs are what Texas millionaire Stanley Marsh, who planted them back in 1973, calls an art installation.

And from the rear -- Photo by Pat Bean

I like it. It’s fun art. And the installation tells a story, part of which is the heydays of automobiles and Historical Route 66, which Interstate 40 replaced.

Back in the 1970s, I briefly owned an old Cadillac. It was a 1965 model if I recall correctly. I needed a car and back then, when the cost of gas started escalating, the Cadillac was the cheapest thing on the lot.

That old Cadillac was smooth running, but a big old gas guzzler and quite expensive to repair. It wasn’t long before the Cadillac was replaced with a used VW Bug, which cost more but was cheaper in the long run. .

According to Wikipedia, the eccentric millionaire Stanley probably paid only about $200 for each of his Cadillacs, which he picked up at junkyards before giving them a half-butted burial.

You just gotta love Texans.

Bean’s Pat: 400 Days ’til 40 http://tinurl/7fvkjjn You are never too old to live your dreams

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Flowers, Phalaropes and Nasties

Posted in Adventures With Pepper, Birds, Dogs, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 1, 2012| 14 Comments »

 “Some people are always grumbling because roses have thorns; I am thankful that thorns have roses.” – Alphonse Karr

While I watched the red-necked phalaropes in the pond ..... -- Photo by Pat Bean

Adventures with Pepper

Pepper played around in the buttercups -- Photo by Pat Bean

The roadsides between Wichita Falls and Amarillo were strewn with wildflowers in abundance this past week. While Texas’ glorious spring bluebonnets have already disappeared, purple penstemons, golden coreopsis, scarlet Indian paintbrush, and white prickly poppy blossoms stood in nicely.

And then when Pepper and I pulled into a fancy rest stop, complete with a sign near the entrance to the information center that warned visitors to be aware of rattlesnakes, there was a large field of buttercups. I feel sorry for anyone who doesn’t thrill at such a sight.

Beyond the flowers, there was a small pond with a dozen or so phalaropes doing their thing.

And the Texas nasties got her. -- Photo by Pat Bean

Phalaropes swim in circles to stir up the water and bring up their dinner. I’ve seen thousands of them do this on the Great Salt Lake in Utah, where they fill up on brine shrimp eggs before continuing their migration.

There were only about a dozen, however, on this small pond.

While I watched these small birds, Pepper decided to explore the buttercups. When I looked around, she was having a blast bounding among them. Watching her made me laugh out loud – well until she tired and came back to stand beside me.

It took me half an hour of picking and brushing and cutting of hair before Pepper wasn’t as prickly as a cactus. That sign that warned about snakes should have also mentioned Texas’ nasty burs.

Bean’s Pat: Peter Pan http://tinyurl.com/84j3cf9 How many of you have actually read J.M. Barrie’s book? I love the quotes.

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