Route 66 - Day 7, Amarillo, TX to Moriarty, NM

[Martin Hash]

Big Texan Steak Ranch.JPG

I’ve always wanted to live in Texas, for a year anyway. I like the atmosphere, I like the culture, I like the cowboy hats. In fact, though we usually stay at the cheapest motel we can find, in Texas we just had to stay at The Big Texan Steak Ranch because it’s one of those places with bull’s horns mounted on the front of limousines, pinball machines, and free 72 ounce steak if you can eat it all. Of course, we had to order steak for dinner, because, you know, it's Texas. We had steak for breakfast too because, you know it's Texas. I told my wife, Gwynne, we should come back in the Spring for gyrocopter lessons; I even made plans, and although she hasn’t said yes yet, she hasn’t said no.

Free 72 Oz Steak.JPG

Whether people start at the Chicago end or Los Angeles end of Route 66, the midway point is 1139 miles in each direction. At the Midway Point in Adrian, Texas there wasn’t much to see: an abandoned Phillips 66 gas station and a couple tiny gift shops. That might seem anticlimactic to some people but I thought it was perfect and certainly fit my mental image of what halfway along a grueling, eccentric, old mid-Americana highway would be like.

Old Phillips 66 Station.JPG

The Texas-New Mexico border added another State to our list. Scenery didn’t change much but people wore ball caps rather than cowboy hats. The aura & mystique just isn’t like Texas. It also seemed like long drives with nothing to see but ghost towns. These became more and more common, many of which used to be Route 66 tourist attractions, most looked gloriously tacky. Apparently, driving Route 66 was a much bigger attraction than it is now; back in a time of innocence, landlines, and big automobiles pulling trailers.