Day Eight - Amarillo, TX to Santa Fe, NM

After stuffing myself with Prime Rib and waddling out of the Big Texan Steak House, I hit the trail again to the Cadillac Ranch....

What a disappointment! Only 10 Cadillacs in the Graveyard and they were covered in graffiti and being examined by a bunch of soccer mums with their kids in tow....

Straight back on the Route for me with Neil Young's "After The Gold Rush" playing in the car. Probably a sin to play a Canadian country/folk rock artist in the South West - particularly with the inflammatory Southern Man featuring on the album.... But it is a classic and suited the mood perfectly.

With 400 miles of Oklahoma empty, open and above all flat plains behind me, the Texas Panhandle was really more of the same in terms of scenery. Heading out of Amarillo I had become slightly bored with BIG OPEN SPACE so I knuckled down to belting through to New Mexico and plugged in The Dixie Chicks for another listen to what is fast becoming my favourite record of the trip.

In no time I was in New Mexico and the scenery started to change slowly into something massively beautiful. The beginning of the Wild West and suddenly there were hills and then mountains, wilder vegetation, and the earth changed from mud to a terracotta coloured dirt that provides great contrast with the pantheon of greens that map the topography of this part of the world.

The first town I went through is the first after the Texas state line - Tucumcari.

If you ever ride Route 66, stop here. It's main street has the best collection of original motels and diners I have seen so far and really captures the glorious past of Route 66 albeit in a slightly faded way.

The motel with the best neon is The Blue Swallow - which was so cool, I almost decided to stop there for the night - but Santa Fe was calling me. A '57 Chevy was parked outside. Immaculate in white and turquoise. Several photos of both motel and car were taken.

The rest of the town is more of the same - a real blast from the past which requires only a tiny amount of imagination to go back 50 years in just a mile or two.

I was dying for a Starbucks at this point - mid afternoon drowsiness no doubt not helped by consuming a cow and two devil chillies at lunchtime....

So I consulted Janice (my omniscient GPS SatNav system) and found that the nearest Starbucks was 200 miles away.... Obviously Seattle's finest hasn't penetrated the Wild West....

Next stop Santa Rosa and the Route 66 Automobile Museum. This place is a jewel. Run by an old guy who loves classic cars, the museum houses around 35 cars from 1947 through to 1973 including several original vintage Mustangs, 3 Corvettes, a number of BelAirs and a magnificent Thunderbird as well as an original Woody from New Mexico with the plate "El Woody".... All in beautiful condition and several for sale. I didn't quite have the money for the $40,000 1970 Camaro so left empty handed save for a couple more Route 66 T-shirts to add to my rapidly growing collection.

The guy told me that he sells a lot of cars to "walk-ins" - I.e. People who just come in, fall in love with oneof these immaculate beauties and then buy it. He sold two classics to a couple of guys from Ireland a month ago apparently. His only complaint was that he would sell far more cars but the wives stop their menfolk from blowing the family savings on a dream car that will require the sale of a kidney to maintain thereafter. I suggested he bans women from the museum and he looked at me wistfully as though the same thought had crossed his mind a thousand times....

After leaving Santa Rosa - having refuelled with gas and found something vaguely resembling coffee - I faced a dilemna...

Pre or Post 1937.... Before 1937 Route 66 followed a path up to Santa Fe after Santa Rosa and then went down through the canyons to Los Lunas before heading back up to Gallup. Post 1937 and they'd built a direct route through from Santa Rosa to Albuquerque and then onto Gallup. In those times the change would have saved at least four hours of travel through New Mexico - which is already the longest stretch of the eight states of Route 66 at 487 miles beating both Arizona and Oklahoma which are also in the 400s.

I elected to go for Pre 1937 and headed up to Santa Fe. What a great decision. The scenery is beautiful as you rise up into the low mountains from Clines Corner and pass Eldorado among other small towns.

My accompaniment for this leg was David Bowie in his Ziggy Stardust incarnation from the timeless album "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars" (1972). This is another record I would take to my desert island. It is beyond words. Totally awesome and Bowie at his weirdest and creative best. Zeitgeist certainly, but it still sounds great today and will always sound great to me.

Voted by Time magazine as one of the top 100 albums of all time it also has a connection with New Mexico....

In 2003, in Roswell, New Mexico, a ritual was held and a special laser beam sent four songs from the album into deep outer space - celebrating the fact that Ziggy Stardust had come from planet Mars to save the earth....

The lyrics from the songs on the album, heavily fuelled by heroin, just hit you in the face... I always loved the following line from the first track "Five Years" - which predicts the earth's destruction in five years time:

"Think I saw you in an ice-cream parlour
Drinking milk shakes cold and long,
Smiling and waving and looking so fine....
Don't think you knew you were in this song..."

Wonderful.

Anyway - back to New Mexico as opposed to Mars...

This really is a beautiful place. Lots of space, lots of great fresh air with none of the stagnant humidity of southern Oklahoma and Texas and stunning landscapes. I passed through the valley before Santa Fe as the sun was just starting to set and it was lovely.

Sheryl Crow joined me again for this last stage of today's journey and sang me into the La Quinta Inn with her excellent version of the classic "The First Cut is the Deepest". Her music is also clicking just right on Route 66....

La Quinta is a good deal nicer than the [End of Our] Days Inn that I stayed in last night. A little more expensive at $89 but very pleasant.

There are a bunch of Harley riders staying here who are also doing the "Route".

I have to say that seeing their gorgeous Roadkings - the original 50's style roadster Harley - I am jealous and wish that I was doing this trip on a bike. BUT, the car has its advantages - particularly when it rains, as it did several times today - and of course in terms of music which is such a key ingredient for my Road Trip....

A nice dinner at The Flying Tortilla - a TexMex restaurant about 20 feet from the motel. Big fat fajitas with sizzling beef and vegetables with salsa, cheese, tomatoes, sour cream and guacamole....plus a salad. All for 18$. Great value is a common feature when dining out in the US - as are the enormous portions.

Tomorrow I will eat not a single cow (promise!) - I will simply admire them as I pass them in their fields.

This is perhaps the first state that has made me want to stop the car in the middle of the road and get out and take photographs....which I did several times.

I am really enjoying the road and getting deep into the folklore, the history and the mindset that goes with Route 66. This trip is like therapy - just me, my Mustang and my music plus the open road across America.

Magic.