Day 6: From Amarillo, TX to Las Vegas, NM

1620 miles driven so far

A new day, and we were quite looking forward to try some Texas-shaped waffles, as we had seen last night such as waffle maker in the breakfast room. However, several attempts were unsuccessful and we ended up messing with Texas.

After breakfast we spent a bit of time looking for things to do in Amarillo before hitting the road. Finally, we visited the Historic route 66 district: a street lined with antique shops, diners, restaurants, etc, with vintage decoration. Actually it was an empty street with closed businesses and not many people around even considering it was a Saturday.

We then started the day's journey that would take us to another state an another time zone: Las Vegas in New Mexico (not the same Las Vegas you are thinking about).

Our first stop was very close to Amarillo and very unusual: the Cadillac Ranch.  A public art installation consisting in several Cadillacs half-buried in the ground. They are covered in graffiti and actually people are encouraged to add their own contributions. We were lucky and found a discarded spray so we had some fun decorating the cars.

Back on the road, our next stop was a very special one: We had reached the middle point of Route 66! We have actually made more miles than those shown on the sign, but that's due to our deviation from the Route.  From now on it's a countdown to California.

The landscape continued changing to become more deserted, and you could drive many many miles without seeing a house, an animal or a tree, just the endless road and the traffic on it and ranches at both sides.

Many of the few buildings and towns that we came across with were abandoned or in ruins, although there were still a few Route 66 related places.

Without realizing it the road had very slowly taken as higher and higher as we started to reach the mountains near Las Vegas. We are now at 2000m over sea level (from about 1000m in Amarillo). 

We finally reached Las Vegas, which is a town built in the old Spanish colonial style, featuring a plaza an a few building that mix several styles: colonial, mexican, indian, western,...

Today we have gone from moving around stereotypical Texas cowboys to arriving at a completely Hispanic zone were you can hear more Spanish than English: quite a change!

This is all for today from New Mexico, folks.