Ron hadn’t driven my new car yet, and I hadn’t had a chance to see what kind of mpgs I could coax out of it on two-lane highways, so we took it to Mom and Dad’s today and spent the afternoon hanging out with the kids. Here are a few photos:
Grandma helped Ollie fill the hole with water before planting a tree.Hazel helped Papa push the dirt up around hers. I love this picture. Projects like this are how I turned into a hippie.Jamie is getting the hang of using the back of the rake to shove dirt around the trunk of the tree.Hazel and her daddy played Frisbee.Frisbee!Hazel tie-dyed that T-shirt during my last visit. It turned out really well.The boys wanted to show off their new bunk bed before we left. Hazel is now trying to convince her parents to get her one. There appears to be a little monster under the lower bunk. 🙂
For the record, the mileage meter was showing about 18 mpg when we left town. I’d driven about 20 miles on that tank — all of it in town, which is full of hills and stoplights. It’s about 60 miles to Mom and Dad’s house, and it was showing 28.4 mpg when we got home, so I’m guessing on a long road trip, we could get at least 30 mpg if we did a little hypermiling. I’ll probably drive the Dreamcar in town when the roads are clear and reserve the Subaru for weekend lumberyard runs and days when there’s ice in the weather forecast. I really enjoy driving a station wagon, so it will be a nice treat to offset the general crappiness of having to get out of bed on winter mornings.
I spent today helping with a Friends of the Mother Road project at Henry’s Ra66it Ranch on Route 66 in Staunton, Ill. I forgot to take pictures, but we spent most of the afternoon pulling and chopping weeds from around the historic signs and vehicles — including Bob Waldmire‘s old VW Type 3 Squareback — and then met at Weezy’s in Hamel for an early dinner and a discussion about possible future projects.
I came home sunburned, sore and scratched-up, with bug bites on my arms, cockleburs in my hair, and an alarming quantity of goldenrod pollen in my sinuses.
If you know me very well, you know this means I feel better tonight than I have in ages.
I’m not myself when I’m not in the middle of planning, funding or executing a preservation project. This one wasn’t terribly flashy or fancy, but I had a good time getting tired and sweaty and dirty with old friends, which I hadn’t done since our sign-painting project at the Boots Motel over Labor Day weekend in 2012.
I should know better than to go so long between Route 66 preservation projects. I’m happiest when I’m helping the road I love, and I get out of sorts when I go too long without that satisfaction.
I worked on my road today. All is right in my world.
We just got back Monday evening from a much-needed vacation, and I’ve been covering a murder trial all week, so I just got a hand free to start Photoshopping some images.
We left as soon as we finished up at the copy desk in the wee hours of the morning Aug. 10 and drove straight through to Tucumcari, because I hadn’t been out there in 20 months, hadn’t had a proper vacation in two years, and simply could not be bothered with such niceties as sleep until I got a lungful of high desert air.
We’d been on the road somewhere around 12 hours when we rolled through Erick, Okla., on Route 66 and passed a familiar rust-covered sign standing sentinel over a pasture near Texola:
I’ve always loved this sign between Erick and Texola, Okla.
At Vega, Texas, I insisted on stopping for a photo op with the mascot for Rooster’s Mexican restaurant. If you’re a fan of The Bloggess, you know why this was important.
Knock-knock.
As soon as we reached New Mexico, I insisted on stopping at Russell’s Travel Center in Endee so I could pick up one of their awesome green chile burritos before we went on to Tucumcari. Do I even have to tell you where we stayed?
Home.
Despite having been up for 38 hours — and on the road for a good 18 of them — I woke up at 6:30 the next morning, feeling more refreshed than I had at any point in the past two years. Once Ron got up, we loaded the car, grabbed breakfast at Kix on 66 (green chile breakfast burrito) and headed for Santa Rosa.
Santa Rosa, N.M. Photo by Ron.
We visited the Rudolfo Anaya monument, where I sat under a tree, quietly playing Bob Dylan covers and singing to myself. We also wandered down the park trail, trying out the outdoor exercise equipment the city has put in since my last visit. (I was, of course, inspired to add “build outdoor gym in backyard” to my to-do list for my next creative outburst.) After Santa Rosa, we took the old alignment of 66 up to Santa Fe, making a short detour to Las Vegas, N.M., to see Allan Affeldt’s latest project — an old Harvey House called La Castaneda that he recently acquired and plans to restore. We spent some time poking around the interesting little shops downtown, which I highly recommend.
La Castaneda.
We got an order of green chile cheese fries — which I’d been craving for two solid years — at El Parasol in Santa Fe before heading to Albuquerque, where I broke my green chile streak with a trip to the Dog House for a (red) chili dog. We stayed at the Monterey Non-Smokers’ Motel, which was comfortable as always, and grabbed green chile breakfast burritos at the Frontier Restaurant before heading out of town.
Owl Rock, west of Albuquerque, N.M.
In Gallup, we went to Aurelia’s Diner, where I consumed what might be the greatest thing ever invented: a “green parfait,” which is a parfait glass full of mashed potatoes layered with green chile stew and topped with shredded cheddar. GLORY.
We’ll pick up this saga there tomorrow, assuming I can shake free to work up a few more photos. I’ve got tons of images from Amboy Crater to share.
Red Fork Hippie 