Ah, I slept like a rock last night. I forgot to take any melatonin, but it didnt matter, I didnt need it. My dad on the other hand mantains he slept on a rock. Apparently the beds in this place are not so good sooo Hammocks for the WIN!
I dont remember if the hotel offered free breakfast or not, but either way there was a cracker barrel litterly just down the road and slept in and went to the cracker barrel for breakfast.
And here is a shipment comming in. Hopefully that means that there will be plenty of food for us!
Inside I saw this sign which just reminded me about "Tough Shoe Laces" from Phineas and Ferb
After that "hard" night, Dad figured he would catch a short nap while we waited for our breakfast. He was really exosted. We had a typically excelent cracker barrel breakfast. And then we hit the road. I drove and Dad slept so I dont really have that many photos from this drive. After a while we stopped at the Navajo & Hopi Indian Trading Post. This place is litterly in the middle of no where. I belive we are passing back through the Grey Zone again today.
After this Dad spend a while awake and taking photos for me, we saw a few interesting rock formations but other than that this entire place looks like Eastern Montana.
We stopped at the Navajo Travel Plaza on Route 66 in Gallop NM for gas and a walk about. We found this nice gas station that also sells Jewlery And Fireworks. Apparently Historic Route 66 only exists for about a block in every single town on Highway 40.
After this we got back on highway 40 heading for Albuquerque NM. This highway is wonderfull, speed limit something like 75, but not a single person is doing less than 80.
That is until Road Construction!
This stupid thing backed up traffic for several miles. And the sad part is, there is no stop in the construction zone, just 1 lane going 65.
After that construction we encountered Albuquerque, and I do say encountered. We stopped at the edge of town to switch drivers and find resturants. There aren't any. And when I say there aren't any, I mean there aren't any we wante to eat at. The city only has Mexican food, or salad bars, and questionable sushi joints. We managed to find one Italian resturant that had potential and we headed that way. This town has a good sense for color.
However, this sign here sums up most of Albuquerque for you
Lots of fragrance, no common scense.
oh, and here are those strange sideways stop lights they taught you about in driver's ed.
We finnaly found the Italian spot and parked next to this car that has had its window smashed out. And it must have happened while it was parked here because there is infact glass shards on the drivers seat, gear shift, and running board. Something tells me it hasnt moved recently.
So at the Italian spot we discovered.... that they are closed? Sure they look open, and the hours sign says they should be open, and Google says the should be open. But guess what? They aren't open. At this point we just wanted food and we didnt care what, so I did a quick skim of the map again and found a Ramen shop. Lets just go there!
Turns out that was a medium ok choice. We stopped in a ramen shop in Seatle and where rather impressed. This shop fell a bit short of that lofty mark. However, the appitizer was good.
sorry its such a bad picture, I didnt realize it was that far out of focus
Yah, overall impression of Albuquerque: Not impressed. The town is a hippy town for sure. A bit like a cross between Missoula and Portland that was dropped in glitter powder as a baby.
Fortunatly, we escaped fine with no plans of returning.
We then drove to the La Quinta in Roswell NM. Its nice enough, but its not clean. I was going to go for a quick dip in the pool, but there was a visible oil skim on the surface, and alge on the bottom of the pool. The hot tub was not much better and even featured a floating fly.
We found out a few interesting things about this area. An "alien" ship crashed in this town prompting them to make an area 51 museum, despide area 51 being in AZ. Appart from that, we are within 100 miles of the Trinity Test, the first above ground nuke test in WWII. So this town's major export is infact.... Tourism. well, that and cows
There is however, plenty of room and a soft bed. I set up my hammock and headed for bed. On the way I did a quick swing past the wifi to upload the photos from today... and found this.
Now what you cant see in these images is a small check box that says "agree" for the terms of the service. You can not log on to the wifi. This is the same for both Dad and me, and apparently the cleaning staff too. I tried from my laptop aswell, there the box was visible, buuuuut, it still does not work. I can officialy say that BluePrint RF network services have been added to my Blacklist.
Day 4