We could often see Route 66 running parallel to the Interstate. Any time we could get onto the actual Mother Road was good. We tried. And in New Mexico, we had opportunity several times.
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New Mexico welcomed us with a rainbow and kept it in front of us all the way to Grants, when the sun set behind us. 
We finally located the KOA, difficult to find off the road with no streetlights. Morning brought rain. We used the rainy morning to catch up on laundry. When the rain stopped, we took the original Mother Road in to the little town of Grants, New Mexico.
It was a cute little town that celebrated their location on Route 66. Other than the town square with the neon arch, we didn’t find it offered much. We moved on.
There was a supermoon that night when we settled in at the Pajarito Rest Area. It was sweet to know that our family in Michigan was seeing the same – beautiful moon we saw. And it was strange to think that all those who had traveled this route in the past had looked up at the same moon in different stages. We’re all connected – in space and in some strange way, throughout time.
We loved New Mexico. Layered plateaus and dry grasslands surrounded us. The next morning we took the original Route into the town of Tucumcari. The town is named for the mountain nearby. Tucumcari is a Comanche word meaning to lie in wait.
There are still a few places in Tucumcari that hold memories of Route 66. Those are the places we wanted to see. So we parked the pickup and trailer on a side street and walked a bit. The neatest piece of history we saw was the Blue Swallow Motel. It was an old motor court. I loved everything about it! And it appeared to be in good original condition. I can just imagine the neon signs at night! The owner keeps two old cars parked in front. It really makes you feel like you’ve stepped back to the 40’s or 50’s. The air is “refrigerated,” they advertise! And each room has a TV! Each room offers a little “garage.”
It was fun to see original gas pumps – and prices!
We got coffee and breads at a shop owned by an older couple. We wondered how they could stay in business. The town had little traffic and like Winslow, Arizona, was run down. We were the only tourists in sight. It was disappointing. Didn’t the entire country care about Historic Route 66 with all the stories, music, and celebrities? Evidence of old businesses, long closed, dotted the few downtown blocks. We kept looking for those two guys we had seen along the Route the day before – you know, the ones in the Blue Convertible Corvette?
Where is everyone?
Life is like that. You spend your early years hearing “Get Your Kicks on Route 66” and “Take it Easy,” and watching television shows like the Route 66 series with George Maharis and Martin Milner. Then in your later years, you “plan to motor west . . . take the highway that is best,” all the time hoping for glimpses from the past! And you get a bit of a sense of what was. You bask in it for awhile. And you’re thankful for what you saw – and heard – and learned. That might be the key – what you learned. The past teaches us. We learn from it, but we can’t live in it any longer.
Ron and I talked here in Tucumcari, as we had talked back in Winslow. We talked about sending the kids pictures of these special spots we had visited on this Route – the spots we had learned about and imagined when we were young. But we realized that our kids wouldn’t understand the special meaning these locations had within us. It was our time – to reflect upon the past – to live in the past, if only for a short time. So we moved on. As we left Tucumcari, New Mexico, and drove on into Texas, we kept looking – for Buz Murdock and Tod Stiles in that Blue Convertible Corvette. We were sure we’d see them again along the Route.
Click here to read the next post, At the Cross – Route 66, Chapter 5
Have you read the earlier Chapters of Route 66?