Tucumcari - the mom and pop place

Today we drove our shortest journey. It’s only 120 miles between our last stop at the Big Texan Steak Ranch to Our current reside - the imfamous Blue Swallow Motel. We stopped off on the way to see a weird and wonderful sight on route 66. 10 old cadillacs buried up to their windscreens in a field. Each one decorated in grafitti of passing viewers. As weird as Stonehenge but not quite as spiritual! We did wonder why someone would want to bury 10 cars...... maybe he was one a spiritual journey of his own. The Big Texan a Large all singing all dancing steak ranch and the blue swallow a small ‘mom and pop’ run motel on old 66. We were greeted by our hosts Bill and Terri who assured us that the whole town [all 7 blocks of it] was run by mom and pop businesses. Bill told us us how the big chains had tried to come in but the mom’s and pop’s had run them out of town! . So we went out for lunch [to a mom and pop place of course] and wandered around in the 100º heat for about an hour before we decided that we might melt. Spent the afternoon chilling and looking forward to the al fresco drinks with Bill and Terri and some other route 66 guests we had been invited to. However, a major thunderstorm hit Tucumcari. It was kind of scary! rain was like we’d never seen, thunder and lightening clapping and lighting the sky every 5 seconds. Needless to say the drinks were off! Finally about 2 hours alter the storm passed And we headed out to take a photo of the famous neon sign [below] Just as Dan took it so the whole town went dark! a power cut! the next two hours were complete darkness....... certainly a day and evening we will never forget. lots of fun in a place we love. K and D. x