Road Trip Day 2

Albuquerque to Little Rock

Well, today was our big driving day. We had the greatest distance to travel and more stops to make than any other day that we have planned. Driving to Little Rock, AR from Albuquerque, NM takes a little less than 13 hours, which would be tolerable if you left early, stopped as little as possible and arrived at reasonably early hour. None of those things applied, we left after breakfast made many stops and didn't get into our room until around 2am. But after I spent the good half of the day pushing us along our schedule, I decided to relax and enjoy our road trip.

We began our day stopping at a couple of old Route 66 towns (the kind of towns that didn't get mentioned in the song). A few hours past Albuquerque was the little town of Santa Rosa, which used to boast over 4,000 hotel rooms, all brilliantly advertised in neon lights. These days Santa Rosa is the type of town where people leave their cars running while they run into the pharmacy or say a cheerful good morning to a couple of tourists taking pictures of their decaying city.

After Santa Rosa we visited Glenrio, NM (or maybe it was in Texas) that was located right on the border of the state. This town was less of a town and more an aged relic of American history. We saw buildings that used to be a gas station, post office and general store, that are now possible hideouts for crazy drifters waiting to stab unsuspecting tourists (obviously I wasn't very comfortable here and I wouldn't let Annie get very close to the buildings). But we stopped took some photos and quickly went along our way.

Stop number three was the famous Cadillac Ranch. You may not know it by name, but you have most certainly seen images or heard references to it in movies or in TV. It is an art installation piece created by a collaboration of artists in 1974. Essentially, its a bunch of cars buried in the middle of a cow pasture. Over time it has had so many layers of graffiti that the spray paint has become a part of the art itself.




Today's lunch stop came courtesy not of Guy Fieri, but from the Travel channel show "Man v. Food" where the host travels to restaurants taking food challenges. The first episode we saw featured a stop at the "Big Texan Steakhouse" in Amarillo, where they boast a "free 72 oz steak". The steak, however is only free if you can eat it, along with a baked potato and salad in under an hour, otherwise you pay $72 for the meal.This place is as big of a tourist trap as any place in the world, but we enjoyed our humble 8oz steaks and the old west atmosphere.



About 30 miles outside of Amarillo is the largest cross in the western hemisphere in Groom, Texas. I don't know what to say about it except that it was really big.


After Groom, we stopped at a random exit to fill up our gas tank and stumbled upon a lesser known attraction that we remember seeing on a website a few months ago. We never looked up where to find it or even knew which state it was in, but there it was right off the exit that we had taken to top off our tank before we drove to Oklahoma City. The attraction I am referring to is called "Bug Ranch", a poorly executed copy of Cadillac Ranch featuring VW bugs. Needless to say, we were very happy to see it.



We pushed through the endless waste land of northern Texas to get to Oklahoma City before dark. We really wanted to see the Oklahoma City Bombing memorial and we knew that as soon as the sun went down we wouldn't get very many good pictures.

The monument was amazing and very well created. Where the building once stood they put a plot of grass with a series of chairs symbolizing all of the victims of the attack.


Across from the chairs was a large Elm tree known as the "Survivor Tree". It was planted in the original parking lot and survived two buildings collapsing. We know this tree from its appearance in the movie "Elizabethtown".

The OKC bombing memorial was a really beautiful monument and although we were really behind schedule, we were very glad that we stopped.

The day seemed to drag on forever and the final 4 hour stretch from Oklahoma City to Little Rock seemed extra long. The roads were wet, dark and crowded with aggressive truck drivers that wove in and out of gaps seemingly too small for their large trailers. We arrived at our hotel a little after 1:30am and I have never been so anxious to jump into bed.

Day 3 is our relaxed day. We only have 5 hours of driving between Little Rock and Nashville, with a stop to Memphis and Graceland.

Brett