2023 EB Day 8 - Neon Lights

Our morning was spent checking out the sites around Santa Fe.

From the Miracle Staircase built without nails inside Loretto Chapel, to the lure of soft leather clothes from the Istanbul Bazar, the gorgeous New Mexico capital had something for everyone.

It might have been a short lived part of R66 for 11 years until 1937... but this place grabs your attention.

There was plenty packed into the half day on the road back down the Santa Fe Trail to the i40 and Santa Rosa. At her highest she is 7500 feet as the i25 cuts a path through the mountains.

Signs of the past littered the main street of Santa Rosa, the once proud neons unlikely to light up the night sky any time soon.

The private car collection assembled by Bozo and his family is a favourite, an eclectic selection of wheels from across the ages of time and people.

The drive to our overnight in Tucumcari was on and off, over and under the dual lane highway that overlaid the old mother road...

...and leads us to places like Cuervo, literally split in two by the new thoroughfare. There's sign of life... but only just.

Newkirk is much the same.

The bright lights of Tucumcari's famous neons beckon but we divert into the Mesalands Dinosaur Museum for an immersion into a very different part of America's past.

Axel is an expert and a passionate one at that so we got a detailed presentation and special insight into the 'real' displays of fossils out the back where years of painstaking work is carried out.

Checking into the Blue Swallow, the neons that glow 24/7 were a taste of what should come once day turned to night. New owners Robert and Dawn continuing the passion of this famous resting place, just as the previous owners had done.

Dinner at Dels down the road finished before it started when a lightening strike took out the town's power.... and never returned.

And with it any chance of witnessing the bright lights we'd come here to see. It did bring new friendships though, with others travelling America's Main Street, brought together in a themed garage without anything else to do than share our stories and adventures - still a pleasant and enriching way to light up the evening.