Day 10

A short drive to our final destination so we took us to the middle point of Route 66 (not that we’re going right to the end on Santa Monica pier). A nice breakfast at the Midpoint Cafe in Adrian, Texas where Jane ordered pancakes which turned out to be large enough to land a plane on, and I had - spoiler - a cheeseburger (which was excellent).

A walk around the little bit of Adrian close to the cafe and snapped some of the rusted buildings.

Glenrio, a ghost town, falls across both Texas and New Mexico. There wasn’t much to see though someone had built a new “smoke shop” that looked quite cool. Getting into state number seven and a new timezone Mountain Daylight Time.

Passed through San Jon, another ghost town.

Into Tucamari that we enjoyed so much last time. We visited the Tucamari Historical Museum which had a curiously large amount of things. A plane, fossils, farm machinery, telephone equivalent, etc.

Here’s a flag with just 48 stars, so before Alaska and Hawaii joined.

We actually got to the motel at a decent time. Check in was 3pm so we went to the cafe across the road and had some nice food, and coffee (and the owner kept saying the coffee was free so we just tipped the cost of the coffee). At 3pm we went to see if the motel was open for check-in and the Basil Fawlty-esque guy beyond the desk just seemed apoplectic with rage saying “people who check in aggressively early.” His hands were shaking with rage. It was somewhat odd. Hotel is nice though.

An early evening walk to see the Blue Swallow Motel with its neon.

Day 9

Is there a better museum name than “Devil’s Rope Museum”? That’s rhetorical. No, not there isn’t. I picked up a leaflet that says; “Are you interested in the exciting hobby of Antique Barbed Wire, Fence Tolls, Hammers, Pliers, and odd Combination Tools? Then the Antique Barbed Wire Society is for you!” If you’re interested I’ll pass the details on.

The Leaning Tower of Texas. “ Ralph Britten, who owned the local Tower Fuel Stop, decided to buy it cheap as an eye-grabber for his business. But he didn't paint "Tower Fuel Stop" on it, he painted "Britten USA," and he purposefully placed it at a slant to draw attention.”

A lot of the radio is Christian based and someone uttered; “I never saw someone speaking in tongues in a night sponsored honky tonk” which you don’t really get much back at home. The first two things we heard were for a test to see if your horse might be predisposed to athritis and then the latest oil prices. It did feel very Texan.

We were down to a quarter of a tank of gas so were looking for a gas station and passed quite a few abandoned ones. We pulled in to what we thought was also just a relic and wandered to over to a group of guys chatting round a truck to ask where we could fill up. They said it wasn’t a relic and we could fill up here. No pre-pay necessary. I picked a pump and nothing seemed to happen, so I put the nozzle back and tried a different one. Nope. The guy came out from the shop and pressed some (definitely hidden away) button and it worked. Post fuelling we were looking at what needed to type into the GPS for our next stop and the guy came back out, tapped on the window and gave us a handful of pens. So if you need fuel then go and get it from Groom Fuel (806) 248 7586.

Through McLean with it’s mix of nice new homes, abandoned buildings and a tiny Phillips 66 station, built to service and fuel cars and opened in 1929, and now restored.

There were a few things to see in Amarillo. “Combine City” which is supposed to be a Cadillac Ranch type thing for combine harvesters, but was quite disappointing. The bad photo does it justice.

And then the slightly better Ozymandias of the Plains. The plaque reads;

In 1819 while on their horseback trek over the Great Plains of New Spain, Percy Bysshe Shelley and his wife Mary Wollstonecraft (author of "Frankenstein") came across these ruins. Here Shelley penned these immortal lines:

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

In Groom, Texas we saw the second largest cross in the State. It’s nineteen stories tall. I had a fleeting chat about American not being founded as a Christian nation on the grounds that the founding fathers were mostly deists, not Christians. I was directed to someone who started on about some conspiracy theory about England being run by the Rothschilds.

Our final two stops were the Second Amendment Cowboy (a Big Thing), and then Cadillac Ranch where we did a bit of spraying on the Cadillacs.

We ended up at our motel in Vega. Tomorrow we’ll get into New Mexico and a new timezone.

Day 8

We woke up and put the Weather channel on. The weather will continue to be… sunny.

A trip to Walmart to pick up such exciting things as a toothbrush and some cheese.

Then the first real stop of the day was to Pops, to get a Big Thing (tm). The 66ft soda bottle that lights up with LED lights overnight. It’s quite the home of diabetes sugary drinks.

Then off to the Arcadia Round Barn. From their website.

The Arcadia Round Barn is 60 feet (18 meters) in diameter and 43 feet (13 meters) tall.

Why is it round?

Odor's son, Ralph, provided the answer to the question in a 1981 interview:

"At that time, there was a lot of tornadoes. My father figured if they had something round, it would hit and go around it instead of through it."

In the early 20th century, round barns were touted to be "cyclone-proof", but there is no scientific evidence to support the belief.

Picked up our first proper ghost town in Texola, just on the Oklahoma (though you’d think by the name it would be in Texas.) Ghost town or not there were a few people living there. And, according to the sign, the deserved to be there. I wasn’t sure whether that was a nice sentiment in a “you are were you’re supposed to be” kind of way, or “it’s what you deserve” type thing.

We crossed the border into Texas and pulled into our motel for the night by about 730. Only $40, and if it was good enough for Elvis who stayed there then I’m sure it’ll do for us.

Beer and Pizza for tea (well, a Margarita with most of the World’ salt supply round the edge for Jane.)