Amarillo - New Mexico

 Our first stop after leaving Amarillo was the famous Cadillac Ranch:

The artist is an eccentric millionaire, who can afford to keep this site non-commercial.  He actually encourages people to paint graffiti on them.  (Texas feels otherwise; see below.) Too bad people litter the empty spray cans.

 

Strangely enough, the other couple visiting the site were also English, from a town 10 minutes away from Terry & Elfrida's home town!

Just before leaving Texas, we passed the famous MidPoint Cafe (Home of the Ugly Crust Pie):

I asked the waitress/owner why the crusts were ugly (hard to tell under all that ice cream) and she blushed, saying that it was her grandmothers pie recipe; that she got the taste and texture right but could never get the crusts to turn out as beautifully, so she called it ugly crust and moved on.

The cafe is so-named for a reason:

A 1920's vintage gas station in Vega, TX:

 

 

We passed through the ghost town of Glen Rio (population 1, a strange old lady guarded by about 20 junk yard dogs) to cross into New Mexico. 

Tucumcari, New Mexico was famous for its fabulous collection of neon-signed businesses, mostly defunct but the signs remained.  Unfortunately, a bad storm in 2007 took many of them down.  There are still a few good ones around:

 

We would have stayed at the famous Blue Swallow Motel (where next to your motel room is a garage for your car!) but the place is closed for the owners' annual vacation.

The motel adjacent to the Blue Swallow has not fared as well:
 

Meanwhile, the award for Best-Reuse-of-a-Retro-Sign goes to:

Leaving Tucumcari, we took some of the earlier alignments of Route 66, including one that turned into a single-lane dirt track that passed under the Interstate.  (Note the faded RT66 logo behind the vegetation on the lower right.)

The old Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific railroad (known affectionately as the "Cri and Pee") has now been superseded by the Burlington-Northern-Santa Fe.  Terry got the engineer to blow his horn for us.  

Windmill water pumps like this are found all over the west:

We saw this sign roadside on the way to Santa Rosa: