Route 66 - Day Five - Albuquerque, NM to Holbrook, AZ

We woke and got the bugs of one province and seven states washed off the car. On to Old Town.

I was disappointed with Old Town: very touristy, and the one place I wanted to stop in (the Rattlesnake Museum) was closed. San Felipe de Nevi was a nice church, though.


From there, we took off to Acoma Pueblo (aka Sky City), and stopped at the Rio Puerco Bridge on the way. It was an old Route 66 decommissioned one-lane bridge in the middle of the I-40. Still looks impressive.

So Sky City is the oldest permanently inhabited North American settlement (since 1150), and was down a side road that had big 'ROAD CLOSED' signs all over it. We pulled up to one, and one of the native road workers waved us through. He also said something to me, but could not understand the accent at all.

I'm usually pretty good with thick accents, and this is probably the third time in my life I heard something spoken which I knew was English, but just couldn't figure it out.

Anyway, he waved us through, and we weaved through some big roadwork machinery to get to Sky City. I wanted to ask if they serve vodka at Skyy City, but that joke doesn't really work when spoken...

Sky City: fantastic! The sun was crazy hot, though, and despite Ivan reminding me to put on sunscreen, which I did, I got burned. Which drained my energy levels a fair amount.





Another thing that drained my energy levels was was the climb down. We got a tour bus up, and the option to climb down a natural staircase. Four of us (me, Iv, and two women) took up the challenge; the rest went down on the bus.

A couple of things I should have considered:

• my ankles don't bend that well
• I am very scared of heights
• IT'S A FREAKIN' STEEP MESA

Before, during, and after

I made it down successfully, but sat down a couple times and scooted on my ass. This was not like climbing a church tower...

From here, we broke a cardinal rule: we went to McDonald's, rather than a diner on the way. It was about 2:30, and we had looked for the Uranium Cafe in Grants, but couldn't find it, and instead of driving on any further, we gave up and got some chicken McNuggets. Come to think of it, that was my last meal on this day. I guess the steak in Amarillo is still in my system, keeping me full...

We then took Highway 53 to the El Malpais National Park to see the ice cave and the & Bandera Volcano. The volcano was a 20 minute hike up the mountain, which further tired me out, since it was still about 30C out. But it was beautiful. Another half hour down to the ice cave had me exhausted, but at least the ice cave gave me some respite from the heat...you could feel the cold air after taking four or five steps towards it.



Finally, we raced the sun to get to Painted Desert & Petrified Forest National Park, but it was too late. So we hopped it to Holbrook, where the Wigwam Inn awaited us. Our first real Route 66 motel!



Definitely worth staying at (except for the A/C unit in our room that didn't work)! We were in tepee #12; all tepees have classic cars parked outside, too.

Nik informed me that teepee #1 was where Oprah & Gail stayed. There, the similarity between them and Ivan & me end. Goodnight, folks!