Route 66 and I-40

Remember those road trips back in the day?  Before the bland anonymity of interstate highways and cookie cutter hotels?

Back in the late 50s or early 60s, we took a family trip to Key West, Florida, to spend Christmas with our cousins:  Cary and Bill Howard, and their children Betsy and Susan, Woody not yet born.

We loaded up our 1950 Chevy, without air conditioning or radio, with a back seat that we could, and did,  get lost in, topping out with a speed of 65, though the roads most likely kept us to 50 or 55.  For this was before interstate highways, and US 1 would have been our route shot to Key West.  My strongest memory is of staying in a motel, my first, and it had a bed with "Magic Fingers."  For my very tired parents, my begging for a quarter to put in the bed and then wriggling around on its wonderful vibrations must have been road trip hell....but what a memory for a little girl.

Today, I speed down a smooth (usually) highway, so well-marked that I couldn't get lost if I drove it blind.... And driving interstates is driving blind:  We see nothing expect the white line, mesmerized by the nothingness that envelops us, as we listen to Sirius XM or tunes on our IPod.  We are hermetically sealed in a pod of glass and plastic and tin, against the world.

Yet, between Albuquerque and Flagstaff, I dipped again into that older world of our road trip to Key West, this time in Gallup, New Mexico, and a few smaller, decaying towns on Route 66 .

Gallup is perhaps more fortunate than other bypassed Route 66 towns, and it has done some sprucing up in the past 20 years, attempting to acknowledge its Native American neighbors and influence.

I think this pot is modeled on those from Acoma Pueblo; it stands about 5 feet tall, too large for me to steal.  Acoma Pueblo, the Sky City, is astonishing.  If you have a bucket list, add Acoma.

And a famous old hotel still opens it doors for customers, the El Rancho.  It is one of several hotels along Route 66 that touts its history of catering to the many  movie stars who shot films in the vast openness of the American West.

Unfortunately, with the exception of the cookie cutter motels where I-40 and Route 66 meet, much of Gallup looks like this:

Back in the day, it might have been quite nice.  Now it's deserted and boarded up.  Even though Route 66 is a mere shadow of its heyday, the streets are still wide....four lanes here in Gallup and in many other towns.  Town on the left, street in the middle, and the railroad on the right.  The railroad is about the only enterprise that brings steady income to Gallup and other Rte. 66 towns.  And I do love taking RR photos!

Burlington Northern and Santa Fe

Remember all those kitschy, ticky tacky places we begged and begged our parents to take us to, as we drove to Grandmother's or Aunt Vivian's?  Rock City....Live Alligators.....Tweetsie Railroad???  The road west has its own kitsch:

The blue dinosaur is especially attractive, I think.  Unfortunately, they did not seem to be associated with a commercial venture, so I was deprived of the opportunity to spend money.   However,  a
Gen -U-Wine tourist trap shortly presented itself:

Complete with:

The skeletal figure appears to be more Pueblo Indian than the Apache of Geronimo, but perhaps the artist was taking artistic license.  In fact, Geronimo seems to have confined his activities to what is now southern Arizona and southern New Mexico, so putting him in northern New Mexico may be more artistic license.   Or rather...commercial license, as the name Geronimo is familiar to most of us baby boomers.

Mickey D's does not call to me. Nor does Taco Bell or Arby's or Denny's or other eateries of their ilk.  Yet such are the sine qua non of the interstate.  Not only do they not call to me, they won't let me bring in the canines, even in carrying cases.  So BAH to their sterility and cardboard food.  Here's where I dined that day, with the canines in the seat across from mine:

Cool, comfortable, good food.  No complaints about the canines.  What more could I ask for, along the fabled Route 66..... Except a glimpse of the Corvette and those two dreamy guys.  Step back into youth.     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw1tiNGQ4wI

Helsinki High Point

Before I get on the train to St. Petersburg, a few more words about Helsinki.  My stay there, though I accomplished almost nothing I'd intended, was delightful.  When I returned after my Russian sojourn, I experienced the high point of being in this very pleasant city:  Hannah.  I'd "met" her on an online board I've frequented for several years, and somehow discovered she's Finnish.  I emailed her to ask for suggestions, and if we could get together.   O my goodness, what an enjoyable visit I had with her, over  Finnish beer that I would have risked smuggling home.  And she, in a generous gesture of hospitality, gifted me with two packages of chocolate, which I am even now doling out, sparingly, only to myself.  So Hannah, thank you for everything!  Now farewell to Helsinki....

Back in the day, getting from one place in the former Yugoslavia to another was a matter of going down to the bus station in whichever small village in which we found ourselves and asking around until someone said that he thought the bus to next small village left at suchandsuch a time, but it wouldn't leave if the driver didn't think it contained suffiicient passengers to make the trip worth his while.  And if we wanted to go to large town on the other side of next small village, we had to first go to next small village, and catch another bus to large town....maybe that day...maybe the next.  No such thing as a long distance Greyhound going from Riejka to Zadar...not that we would have chosen something so crass, as we wanted to be in the villages and travel locally.  Not so in my AARP years.  I wanted fast and clean....and a prepaid ticket bought from America from the VR/Allegro web site, paid for with my Amex card and printed on my own little printer.  Moving into my senior years isn't all about arthritis and memory loss.... Now where was I???

And that's what I got!  Except the seat faced backwards and I discovered that riding backwards is....unpleasant.  Fortunately, empty seats were available, so after official formalities, I moved.  Many thanks to the retired home economics teacher from Finland who took this photo.  She and several friends were on a tour to St. Petersburg.  In fact, her mother had been born in a part of Finland that is now part of Russia.   Tours run frequently between Helsinki and St. Petersburg, and if three days or less, do not require a Russian visa.  Speaking of which, I do need to explain the wretchedly expensive process of obtaining the required Russian visa....