Route 66 - Day 8, Moriarty to Gallup, NM

[Martin Hash]

Driving through the desert for hours can be entertaining, or not, depending on how exhausted you are from days of stopping every 20 minutes to snap photos and buy chotskies. Of all the places, who would have guessed we’d be in a 2-hour traffic jam on a Sunday in New Mexico in the middle of nowhere. Hundreds of trucks, thousands of cars idling on an immense piece of asphalt out in the middle of the desert. It did put me in the mood to visit some automobile museums, of which there are dozens along Route 66, which has got to be what car collectors think heaven is like. The very next exit off the highway had a car museum with an Edsel fitted with a shovel and backhoe. That's how you know it's Route 66.

Edsel Backhoe.JPG

Missions built by the Spanish in the Americas centuries ago to convert the indigenous people to Catholicism I can understand. It's kind of sad but assimilation always has that air about it. They also say something about the commitment of the religious people who operated the missions, as well as the local converts who would abandon their own way of life for foreign mysticism. I guess it's the same as Westerners who are attracted to Buddhism or some other esoterica partly because it's exotic and promises hidden knowledge. These feelings actually keep me from entering the buildings but I do look through the door occasionally.

San Jose Mission.JPG

If I ever knew what a Continental Divide was, probably as a kid in Science class, that information has been so completely pushed from my brain by incoming data that I don't even remember it, but five decades later I have relearned that the Continental Divide is where the rain water, via the rivers, flows into either the Atlantic or the Pacific. If you just learned this information by reading this, I recommend you keep it to yourself and instead tell people you learned it in Fifth grade.

Continental Divide.JPG

[TheReal_ND]

Pick up some saddle blankets. They have a deal for a bundle of ten I suggest getting the bundle I use them hoes all the time