Route 66
Tucumcari, New Mexico
August 30, 2017
I remembered Tucumcari from my truck-driving days. It's just shy of 1,000 miles from Los Angeles, which means that if you want, with the help of crossing time zones, you can make it all the way home in a single, marathon day. Which I sometimes did, driving two step vans, one tow-barred to the other, across the Great American desert without air conditioning or radio, in a big metal box on wheels. That was 1980.
Today, the local business community is making a valiant effort to restore and promote the town as a sort of lost Brigadoon of mid-century motels and diners celebrating Historic Route 66. It's worth the stop, more interesting than the standard chain hotels along the Interstate a few miles south.
