Yet another 7am/8am day today. Hit our Drury's Inn free breakfast at 6.40am and it was fairly quiet. They had cereals, oatmeal, sausage patties, breakfast potatoes, scrambled egg, biscuits, gravy as well as toast and bagels, pastries, yoghurts, coffee and fruit juice, you get the picture.

Then we boarded the bus to head for our first stop at Cadillac Ranch. This is our hotel as we left.

Seems we'd had a storm overnight - I never noticed - so when we arrived at the site of Cadillac Ranch we could see the Cadillac shells planted in the middle of a field, standing on end, mostly surrounded by a pool of water. Eek!

Well, some things shouldn't hold you back and a little mud is one of those things! Of course, I don't have to walk in it! Heehee (poor humans!) There's a barbed wire fence along the roadline with just a small kissing gate that you have to squeeze through. Someone had placed some wood over the mud but it was still tricky to negotiate. As we saw folks come out with a LOT of mud on their feet, some of our party (who had been brave enough to leave the bus) turned around - to be fair, one of them had very nice white trainers on! I have no such qualms where my assistant is concerned so into the mud we went. Di and Beth tried climbing through the gate rather than walking through it, but this put them on the wrong side of the water that ran through the field. They found the narrowest spot and tried to cross but it was a little muddier than expected. Still, they stayed upright and managed to get some of the excess off as they approached the cars.

Here you are encouraged to spray paint the cars as you see fit - Beth had bought some cans of paint for us to use. Once at the cars, folks rolled up their trouser legs and got stuck in! Well, some did - Reluctant assistant Dave and I did! Of course, I tagged "TGT" on the car. I thought it was inspired! Dave tagged "Glassboys" who are the Stourbridge Town Football Club supporters, so they are finally famous. It was a bit muddy and messy but very cool too! Folks leave spray cans behind for the next guys too.

We headed back to the bus, but before that we had to get back through that pesky gate! Well, we made it without me - or Di - falling into the mud so that's good. Then we spent five minutes scraping off as much mud as possible before getting back on the bus. Paul, of course, looked as clean as when he started! How does THAT work?

We continued on our journey to stop at Adrian, Texas. This is the mid-point of Route 66 and there is a café here. I got my photo taken sitting on the road midpoint, and at the sign.

We went inside to check out the gift shop - small but some nice magnets and stuff, some of it a little expensive but some was okay. I met this lovely Route 66 chap in there. It was a very busy place. Back outside I checked out all the motorbikes.

There was another little shop alongside the cafe (owned by the lady who used to own the cafe) and she sold various gifts and stuff. Including the little chap in the picture below - I never saw a stuffie armadillo before and this guy was cute.

Our next stop was at Russell's Travel Center, which is a truck stop but with a great looking diner and a fabulous free car museum. We skipped the food and headed into the museum to look at the cars.

He has a selection of cars in here - sadly all behind bars - including some motorbikes. They had several Harley Davidsons and some others. There was even a 1927 Model T Ford - didn't know they came in blue!

Even better they have quite a lot of Ted-size cars, but they said not to touch! What's that about?

We only had thirty minutes so we practically had to fly around the exhibits, and there were a lot of them, but I had to stop at the huge Coca Cola polar bear! They had some lovely cars.

We found even more little cars! What a big selection. I just love the horses with the wagon.

Found another little polar bear chap in a car, but I really want the plane!

We found a few standees to take photos with - Elvis, a creepy Yoda and Roy Rogers!!

Soon we were on the road again. We got pulled into a weigh station - we were worried, because of our shopping and eating but we seemed to pass through fine!

Our next stop was Tucumcari, New Mexico - at TeePee Curios. It's really just a tourist shop, with various tourist tat and t-shirts, but they had Route 66 designs on bags that were a good price. Di nearly bought a backpack but it only had one main section and we need a separate Frank section for his comfort! He doesn't like to squish in with the laptop. Thirty minutes here and we were back on Route 66.

Well, we weren't on the road long - we made another quick photo stop to get a picture of this Route 66 marker.

Then we were back on the bus and headed to our lunch stop. As we travelled, we overtook a freight train. Our lunch stop was at a truck stop with an attached Carl's Jr fast food burger place. I got some criss cross fries.

After lunch we travelled to Santa Rosa and the Route 66 Auto Museum, Santa Rosa, New Mexico. We only had a short stay there (thirty-five minutes) and there were quite a few cars on display. Outside was a yellow cab and an old tow truck.

I got to work getting you some photos...and I may have sneaked into one of those little cars too! They even had a freaky full-size wicker motorbike.

Thought I'd start you off with a full-size 1968 Chevrolet Corvette convertible. Nice, eh? In the middle is a 1957 Cadillac. The shiny silver car is a 1950 Ford Business Coupe (this one was for sale for $24,000).

The 1931 Auburn, below left, is asking $45,000. Think I'll skip it. I really liked the 1935 La Salle, below centre, but at $42,000 I had to leave it behind. The car below right is more Theo's speed!

I found another Corvette, this one (below left) is a 25th Anniversary Limited Edition 1978 pace car. The weird-looking pickup is a 1947 Chevrolet Coe. Below right is a 1929 Ford Rumble Seat Roadster.

Below left is a Datsun 280z. After about twenty minutes, it seemed the rest of the group were done with the cars and had moved to the gift shop, or were taking pictures in the seats made to look lke they were part of the back of a car. Well we took our time to check out all the cars. They were great to see, though the displays and information were a bit lacking. We found this great card (below centre) in the gift shop - those bears look real, don't they? Of course Colin and I had to get the obligatory photo.

Back outside the sun had finally come out so I took another picture of the yellow cab, a bizarre car with diggers on front and back and an old pick up truck.

We reboarded the bus and set off for the last leg of the day which would take us to Alburquerque, New Mexico, specifically Old Town. We passed the Alvarado Transportation Center (below left), where trains and buses all come together to distribute people around the city of Albuquerque. The Library Bar and Grill is funny, with these book spines on the roof, advertising Tequila Mockingbird and The Wrath of Grapes. The building (below right) is a café.

We arrived at Old Town Alburquerque expecting a walking tour - not a long one, but that's what the itinerary said. No one else seemed concerned when we were dropped off the bus for about 45 minutes. We took a look at the square.

With little to do we popped into the Vistor Information office to see what we could do tomorrow - we had plans but didn't want to miss something good! We got a couple of recommendations for dinner and set off to wander the small Old Town area. They have a bandstand with a plaque commemorating the Civil War Skirmish of Albuquerque in 1862. Another plaque states that in 1706 the Villa of Albuquerque was founded, named after the Spanish Viceroy and Duke of Albuquerque. Overhead we spotted what we think is a Boeing V-22 Osprey - although it flies like a plane in the air, it is able to rotate the propellor engines for vertical take off and landing like a helicopter. Neat eh? I need one of these!

We continued our random meander of Old Town Albuquerque, looking at adobe two-storey buildings, some scary-looking cacti and another building with a lot of chillis hanging on the walls outside.

When the bus came to pick us up we asked Beth about the walking tour and she knew nothing at all about it. We showed her our printed itinerary (sent to us a couple of weeks before departure, but from our experience with the hotel in Chicago we knew this could have errors). We also pointed to the website and printed brochure which both said we'd get a walking tour. She agreed to look into it and get back to us. As I say, no one else mentioned it at all but you know me...I read and re-read the itinerary and we'd put off a walking tour for the next day as we thought one was included.

We set off for our hotel the Best Western Plus Rio Grande Inn Hotel . On arrival we headed to our room. It was big with two beds, free Wi-Fi, flat screen TV with extra channels, fridge, coffee-maker, iron, ironing board, and a table and chairs with room for the laptops. Not bad at all. Sadly, no kickbacks, however.

There was also a free shuttle availble to take us into Old Town but as it wasn't far we decided to walk. In hindsight we'd have been better staying for dinner at the hotel. We headed first to one of the restaurants that had been recommended by the guys at the Visitor Information but when we looked the place seemed totally empty which didn't bode well. We went to another restaurant and it was the worst thing we ever did! The Hacienda Restaurant seemed busy and with locals, which is usually a good sign, but not this time. First they had no wine (on the menu), and of the several choices of beer on the menu they had one. Should have run off there and then but by the time we found this out we'd ordered dinner. It was slow to arrive and not particularly hot. The staff were friendly enough (not great but not bad) so we stayed, but it was one of the worst Mexican meals we've had.

There was a live band playing in the bandstand as we headed back to the hotel but we just stayed to listen to a couple of songs.

We returned to the hotel and our waiting beers that had cooled in our nice fridge.

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