Ok, TX Panhandle, NM & Route 66

While driving Highway 40 through Oklahoma City, the Texas Panhandle and Albuquerque, New Mexico, we would periodically take the time to jump off of the highway and head into old towns in order to follow old Route 66 or 'The Mother Road', "Main Street of America" or "Will Rogers Highway". Completed in 1926, it was the only highway which linked the east to the west, running all the way from Illinois to California.

 

Route 66 served as a major path for those who migrated west, especially during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, and it supported the economies of the communities through which the road passed. People doing business along the route became prosperous due to the growing popularity of the highway, and those same people later fought to keep the highway alive in the face of the growing threat of being bypassed by the new Interstate Highway System.
Route 66 underwent many improvements and realignments over its lifetime, and it was officially removed from the United States Highway System on June 27, 1985,^[4] after it had been replaced in its entirety by the Interstate Highway System. Portions of the road that passed through Illinois, Missouri, New Mexico, and Arizona have been designated a National Scenic Byway of the name "Historic Route 66", which is returning to some maps.^[5][6] Several states have adopted significant bypassed sections of the former US 66 into the state road network as State Route 66.

Somewhere in Texas, we pulled off to make lunch. During a quick hike, the kids found this railroad

And our first up-close sight of a cactus

Roadside Lunch Stop

 

Despite cramped quarters, Grant stays cheerful ( well to be honest partially because his Daddy bribed him with a fishing pole from Goodwill as payment to sit in the back with the little girls! :-) )

 

A View of an old windmill off of Route 66 in New Mexico, just outside of Albuquerque

Flash flooding the day before had washed out this section of train track. Through parts of New Mexico and Arizona there were monsoon warnings while we travelled through

A relic from the past on Old Route 66

This deserted farmhouse looked awfully lonely out there in the desert

We stayed the night at this RV park just east of Albuquerque and located up in the mountains,.  That night we experienced a wind and rain storm unlike any we had experienced in the Pacific Northwest. The hosts husband called her from home where he told her their home had been barraged with 4 inches of hail in the storm! It really surprised us because it had been 85 degrees outside!

We loved this old New Mexico pueblo village, located on old Route 66

Continental Divide-

The Continental Divide of the Americas, also called the Great Divide, separates the watersheds of the Pacific Ocean from those of the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. It runs from the Seward Peninsula in Alaska, through western Canada along the crest of the Rocky Mountains, including through Glacier National Park, Yellowstone National Park, and Rocky Mountain National Park to New Mexico. From there, it follows the crest of Mexico's Sierra Madre Occidental and extends to the tip of South America. It is crossed by the Panama Canal and by the two outlets of Isa Lake in Yellowstone National Park.

Stormy Clouds- We were blessed to not have had to experience a lot of poor weather while driving.  Many times we were warned to expect 'monsoonal' weather but managed to escape it for the most part.

 

WELCOME TO ARIZONA! Sedona and Grand Canyon here we come!