further adventures on route 66.

today we left tucumcari far behind us. it may well be a nice place somehow, but we found a bad corner of it to curl up into and were happy to depart. not long after departing new mexico (a state that some bathroom graffiti proclaimed to be 'the most depressing state ever'), we rolled into big old texas...well a little bit of texas, anyway. i started to feel back on track when we found cadillac ranch, a place that nancy had told us to visit when we told her our itinerary from santa fe.



cadillac ranch (just west of amarillo) is a privately owned ranch with ten old caddies set into the ground...well, you can see for yourself. they are all covered in spray paint now; but nancy told us of her first encounter with the ranch before the cars were turned to canvases. aitor and i agreed we might have liked it better then. as impressive as the installation of the cars is (and it is) there was something disappointing in the fact that since the graffiti is encouraged it is therefore being added to by people who wouldn't normally take such risks. mostly it was nerds. and some babies. aitor demonstrates the stance of a nerd spray painting:



as we were leaving, a whole mini van full of little children were disembarking and getting to pick out their own cans of spray paint.



on the way to oklahoma city, we decided to do some route 66 tourism. this website is a great resource for such things, should you ever find yourself interested. to this end, we made a little stop in mclean, texas. actually, we went through a lot of small towns. some were really sad with their once glowing strips atrophied now that the buzz of the interstate is a mile or two away. mclean was full of route 66 stuff. we visited a weirdly "restored" old phillips 66 station (it is kind of restored to look like a playground). this was listed as one of mclean's big attractions and it kind of fizzled for us. but i did see a bunny.



the other attraction promoted on all kinds of lead-up signage was the devil's rope museum. we couldn't figure out what that could mean. until...



we were heart broken to find it closed! we smudged up the windows trying to peer inside. there was a whole map of texas with soil samples from every county! information about barbed wire clubs! a whole postcard wall! their website also offers insight into this magnificent icon of the american west and its historical significance. they also help with appraisals. appraisals! we couldn't believe we had just stumbled upon this amazing institution and were forced to leave it unexplored. oh, to find our way back to mclean. until then, we will just have to dream...