Since the days of Coronado, New Mexico has been a popular destination offering extremes between peaceful isolation to busy city strips, and from small Spanish communities with rustic chapels, to majestic adobe missions. Route 66 encounters distant peaks, craggy cliffs, multi-hued mesas and tree covered mountain slopes in its nearly 400 mile traverse across the state.
Today's journey took me north along the pre 1937 portion of 66 through Glorieta ( famous for the Baptist Conference), up over the Glorieta Pass (the highest point on 66 at 7500 feet), and into downtown Santa Fe.
After parking the GS I decided to spend several hours taking in the excellent galleries and museums as well as doing a little shopping for my girls. 'GUY ALERT', this is NOT a place to bring your spouses. The narrow streets house many boutiques, wine shops, jewelry stores, street vendors, excellent art galleries and leather goods vendors to name a few. This is a mecca for shopping and the streets were crowded. With interesting Spanish architecture and narrow pedestrian friendly streets I thoroughly enjoyed myself visiting the galleries.
Late this afternoon I headed south to Albuquerque and stopped in at Sandia BMW for an oil and filter change on the GS. The service was excellent and they had me back on the road within an hour.
Tonight I have stopped just on the western outskirts of Albuquerque waiting for John to catch up with me from his three day journey from Portland. Tomorrow we head west to Arizona as a gang. All two of us.
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| I have clocked 6000 kilometers since departing Vancouver. |
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| Glorieta |
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| Remnants of days gone by. |
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| Remove a few vehicles and you could be back in the fifties. |
Great photos of the old gas stations. If I may request...could you get some shots of scraggly dogs. They seems to belong to most gas stations. And you could improve that laurence head shot with a bandido type pencil thin mustache...I expect you already had this in mind and we'll be seeing it soon enough.
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Ralf Janus
Thanks for a wonderful share. Your article has proved your hard work and experience you have got in this field. Brilliant .i love it reading. best bikes for kids
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