Wandering West Travel Day 2
What a day! Today we put some miles behind us, traveling 493 miles from Allenreed, TX to Gallup, NM. We had a few bumps in the road today but nothing that we couldn’t overcome.
The day started out great, several of our crew got up at 6 am and went for a morning run to get ready for a long day on the road. Our plan was to leave by 8 am and put some miles on. All was going as planned until Johnny went to get some water from the back of his truck and saw a pair of cable cutters sitting on the tailgate. Low and behold someone had cut the cable to our bikes and taken Johnny’s Trek bike. I mean, for real, they just straight-up took the bike!! Whoever it was worked quickly and didn’t look around for anything else thank goodness. There were two Yeti coolers, bags full of tent camping gear, and 4 other bikes in the back of the truck. We had also forgotten to lock the truck and had left camera equipment, tablets, and Johnny’s wallet in it. I’m so grateful the lowdown, dirty thieves just grabbed the bike. Also, all our travel partners had their trucks loaded with bikes that were, thank goodness, not touched. Our guess is due to the way our truck was sitting it was the easiest to see and easiest to get to from the road.
So, down one bike but we gained a pair of cable cutters; we were on the road by 8:30 am. Not too bad for so much drama that early in the morning. Our first stop was only an hour away at Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo, TX. I’d heard about this place, seen it on several travel vlogs, and kept coming across it on my Route 66 research so we just had to stop and check it out. It was so fun! All the kids went to town spray painting those Cadillacs. We let them have their fun for about 30 minutes then loaded everyone up to start the next long leg of the trip.
A few hours later we found ourselves pulling into Tucumcari, NM just in time to have lunch at Del’s Restaurant. This place is another place on Route 66 that came highly recommended by Kevin’s brother (one of our travel partners) and it is good enough that it made it into the Moon Route 66 Road Trip book that I’ve been using for some research. It most certainly did not disappoint. Also, the town of Tucumcari was pretty cool itself. It was one of the towns that had its heyday before I-40 came along. All the old motels and gas stations stand vacant. There are murals about Route 66 all over the strip we drove down. Great stop and I’d highly recommend Del’s for a bite to eat.
Our next goal was to get as many hours of driving in as we could until our drivers just had to stop. They decided that would be here in Gallup, NM at USA RV Park. Now, I can’t say that the trip here was trouble-free. RV travel has its drawbacks and one of those is the constant worry about a tires. Well, about 45 minutes from our campground the McCain’s had a tire go flat. Thank goodness for our TPMS (tire pressure monitoring systems) because it alerted them and we were able to get pulled over quickly before any kind of blowout or damage could happen. Roughly 30 minutes later, after changing a tire on the side of I-40 we were back on the road and ready to get parked for the night.
Tonight we find ourselves at a busy but fun little campground in Gallup, NM. It has a pool, playground, small mini-golf area, gift shop, and a little snack bar where we able to have a great dinner of pulled pork sandwiches.
Tomorrow….the Grand Canyon!!!