Started early this morning and the frustration started early. I was following Route 66 and New Mexico’s signage is not good. I missed 2 turns I should have made and had to backtrack. The signage is significantly worse than Illinois or Missouri.
I did get on one section that is a frontage road for the Interstate 40. The road itself was hardly 2 lanes wide, no shoulders and weeds growing in the pavement cracks at the edge of the road. I was fairly certain I was on the correct road. I approached an area where I was supposed to cross I-40 to the North frontage road and as I approached I realized it was underground and a pickup truck pulling a horse trailer came out of the tunnel. The Tunnel was maybe 15′ wide and 14′ or 15′ high. The tunnel sloped down slightly and then up and at the low spot there was some water puddling. A pretty strange crossing, except further down the road I saw more tunnels and realized these were for storm waster to cross the Interstate when necessary. One of the installations had 5 tunnels side by side.
Because the the signage issue, we drove on I-40 to the exit to go to Santa Fe. The road to Santa Fe, Hwy 84, was only a 2 lane road but very good pavement and the speed limit was 65 mph. About 35 miles up the road you could take a fork to the right and go to Las Vegas, NM.
We drove around Santa Fe for awhile and did see a Historic Route 66 sign. The weather up to this point was good with lots of sun. As we drove south on I-25 toward Albuquerque, I could see rain clouds in the west, quite distance off.
We drove thru Albuquerque and again lost the road after we had seen the Route 66 signs. I almost ended up at the city dump, but I turned around. We went back and got on I-40 West and ended up in Grants, NM about an hour or so down the road. As we approached Grants we ran into a little rain. We were on the edge of the dark clouds. As I registered at the motel, it was raining pretty good but we were able to get a 1st floor room with a door that openned to the parking lot so I could park right in front of the room. At the room it really started to pour but there is about a 4′ walk in front of the rooms with a roof over it so it was not to far to get out of the rain.
The big surprise is when I sat down to move the pictures from my phone to the computer. All I had was about 5 road pictures. My phone takes a picture while holding the button. You have to hold it for a few seconds and the it will start taking several pictures as long as you hold the button. I thought I was doing pretty good and saw a 1 and released the button, but I did not get the picture. Probably about 8 or 10 photos did not show up. The landscape ones I can probably get tomorrow before we leave New Mexico
The 1st 2 pictures are along Route 66.
The above picture is in Western New Mexico.