We awoke at around 4:00 in the morning, not because we wanted to, but because the religious broadcast blaring in the next room woke us up. We could have notified the front desk, but we’d be listening to the TV next door, waiting in anticipation for someone to knock on their door, likely with little result, as it seemed apparent that they were sleeping through the racket. Thirty minutes later, we filling our tank next door at the gas station, with the clerk offering Caroline a free coffee [This gas station had the most complicated and diverse offering of hot and cold coffee drinks I had ever seen. The clerk watched me stumbling through the steps to fill my cup and probably thought I was in desperate need of wake-up energy – Caroline]. Hardly a half-hour down the road from where we spent the night in Muskogee, Oklahoma, I felt as though I was passing out in the persistent rain, and so I pulled off Interstate 40 at OK-150 before turning into a parking lot at a small hotel with the hopes of getting a 10-minute nap in the darkness. But wouldn’t you know, it was now about 5:00, and there was a guy sitting outside his room having a smoke. He seemed to be watching us, but I was likely just being paranoid, right? After a few minutes, he went into his room, came back out, got in his car, and drove up to ours. “Are you okay?” he asked. I assured him that everything was fine, just a bit tired. “My door’s unlocked; feel free to go get some sleep. I’m going to the gas station.” That was that, and tired or not, we were driving away while he was still in the gas station.
With the darkness and heavy cloud cover dumping rain, things felt fragile and a bit precarious which made for some difficult driving . Once the sky started to brighten, it felt like the day was beginning and that helped me stay awake, though the rain continued to fall off and on.
While you may not be able to gather exactly where this was, there’s a short stretch of rainbow coming out of the tree just right of center. It was still raining when we entered Texas, after nearly four hours of driving.
You’d think you could see it from here, but it’s not that big. I’m not talking about Texas; I’m referring to Buc-ee’s. We stopped. We regretted it. We left. The shock of it all stymied me from taking a photo. It wasn’t some kind of grandeur that left my jaw agape and unable to compose myself; it was the human dissonance. [For non-American readers: Buc-ee’s is a chain of insanely large travel centers (combination gas station and convenience store) which feature 24/7 bakery, barbecue, and fudge counters and a large merchandise department in case you feel like a rhinestone-studded and/or Buc-ee’s themed garment or other type of souvenir. Not to forget the world’s largest toilets – Caroline]
The heaviness of a morning that began on the wrong foot, stepped into the weird, and dipped into a hillbilly Disneyland that we left in the rearview mirror as the sun and familiarity of the Southwest were approaching.
We’ve eaten here at Kix on 66 before. But that won’t be replayed today, because the place burned down since our visit back in 2023; I got a photo of Caroline sitting in a booth, but then last year on April 4th, this happened. The owners did reopen down the street; the new location is called SideKix on 66. We are in the town of Tucumcari, New Mexico.
Iconic Route 66, The Mother Road, running from Chicago, Illinois, to Santa Monica, California, is celebrating its 100th birthday this year. It’s a road for the history books and draws the nostalgic from far and wide, but economically, many places struggle to survive.
While it might make for great roadside Americana, there is something sad and tragic about the lost and forgotten dreams of those who once saw promise in a superhighway cutting across the United States. Back in 1952, Pearl and Dugan Barnett must have felt the spark as they opened the Ranch House Café here in Tucumcari. By 1981, the dream was interrupted as Interstate 40 made the small towns along Route 66 irrelevant. With travelers racing by, collapse was inevitable.
There are still bright spots in Tucumcari, such as the Mexican Restaurant La Cita and this place, Lowe’s Market with the greatest selection of green chili we’ve ever seen. We left with eight different varieties.
After more than eight hours on Interstate 40, we turned off on US-54 in the direction of Vaughn, New Mexico.
If you followed the previous days of our road trip into the Middle of America, you’d know that the skies of the Southwest are simply different, in a grand way.
A burst of heavy rain to our southeast had me keeping my fingers crossed that this mess was not coming our way. I had enough rain across Oklahoma to last me until the monsoons get underway in Phoenix.
Not on Route 66, this small town has nonetheless suffered the slings and arrows of a shifting world of travel. At the beginning of the 20th century, Vaughn was at the intersection of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway and the Southern Pacific Railroad, but by the 1950s the industry had finished transitioning from steam engines to diesel. This meant that the reason for Vaughn’s existence was becoming obsolete. The Harvey House and Restaurant that helped serve rail travelers were no longer going to receive passengers. A relatively prosperous town of 1,300 shrank to less than 300 today. The large depot, a roundhouse for servicing locomotives, and the staff required for running those operations are long gone.
By 1972, the Santa Fe Railway stopped using Vaughn as a crew exchange point. The curtain was closing on this outpost.
Inside the old gas station was this Aladdin Vending Machine with candy and gum still inside. At .50 cents per item, those Snickers and Butterfingers are likely over 30 years old based on the last time they sold for those prices.
Only this year, after 177 years of production, Schlitz Beer joined the ranks of disappearing brands. I wonder how much longer this old sign will stand here before someone comes along and claims the relic?
The Skyline Motel is a thing of the past; how long before everything else in Vaughn fades out of existence?
Not being a beer drinker myself, I had to check if Hamm’s was still being produced. Sure enough, it’s available, but its bear mascot has been retired after the United States decided that cartoon characters representing beer and cigarette sales were too appealing to children.
It seems that this is our fourth time traveling through Encino, New Mexico, not that this is some accomplishment, but maybe it is. The first time was back in 2005, when I took a photo of the other side of this sign; it reads, “Encino Motel. New Menagement (sic).”
It is precisely views such as this that have enamored us with the landscapes of these parts.
This stretch of desert near Silo, New Mexico, has many places where salt flats exist, remnants of ancient lakes and a history of shifting salt and gypsum. I suppose the earth’s natural history sets the stage for human history, where we shift settlements and purpose, changing the landscape with our own ebb and flow.
We’ve been to Mountainair, New Mexico, on previous trips to visit the old mission churches in the area, which are mostly ruins now. While the area was at least a part-time home to the Tiwa and Tompiro-speaking people who were mining salt for trade, it was colonized by Spanish explorers, and within 100 years, the area was depopulated. Then in 1903, the town of Mountainair was founded in anticipation of the arrival of the Santa Fe Railway. By 1910 and through the 1940s, this was the Pinto Bean Capital of the World, but then a 10-year drought decimated that claim to fame. In the late 1960s, passenger rail stopped, further reducing the economic activity of this town. For some, Interstate 40 was bringing modernization; for others, the end of livelihoods. Many people would likely argue that the AI Highway is currently doing something similar.
We’ve reached Socorro, New Mexico, our destination for the day. This brings us within 375 miles of home.
The El Camino Family Restaurant is an all-time favorite of ours. The name of the town, Socorro, shows up on my blog no less than 36 times, and the oldest photo of this sign is a tiny, less-than-one-megapixel photo, taken with an early digital camera in 1999. I’m not certain that either of us realized that we’ve been visiting this place for at least 27 years.
During that time, we’ve rarely strayed from the dishes that became instant classics to both of us. For Caroline, it was the chile rellenos in green chile, while for me, it’s been the steak tampico, also smothered in green chile. As for the hotels and motels in Socorro, they are either overpriced or dumps with nothing in between, but that doesn’t really matter as we’re here for the food.
