From Tucumcari, NM to Holbrook, AZ: A Saucerful of Secrets

Ever since I first saw Close Encounters Of The Third Kind something has bugged me about the whole UFO thing. Why is it that most supposed alien encounters occur at night and in profoundly underpopulated places?

© Simon Poulter 2013

Surely if extra-terrestrials had the technological ability to travel the vast distances of space, they wouldn't spend their time here hovering over farmland where the only likelihood of contact is with someone named Bubba.

No, they'd be above Times Square, or the Champs-Élysées, or Shanghai, trying to figure out what all those scurrying creatures and flashing bright lights were all about. However, 66 years ago something is believed to have happened in rural New Mexico, which until recently, was one of the main reasons tourists came to this huge, hot and thinly populated state. 

In July 1947, almost two years after the end of World War Two, America was trying to get back to normal again. Despite the economy growing again, the country wasn't entirely settled.

During the summer of 1947 there had been a flurry of sightings of so-called 'Unidentified Flying Objects', "disks" flying through the sky. Some were happy to believe that these were nothing more than experimental aircraft, captured from the Germans and being put through their paces over less populated parts of the US where no one would see them. Post-Hiroshima and Nagasaki, south-western states like Nevada and New Mexico were also becoming important development locations for the American nuclear weapons program. The defeat of Nazism had only, it appeared, given way to the Communist threat. Defence secrecy remained of paramount importance.

© Simon Poulter 2013

In the first week of July, a big thunderstorm over southern New Mexico sent rancher W. "Mack" Brazel out to check his sheep on a farm some 100 miles northwest of Roswell.

He came across what appeared to be metal debris scattered over a wide area. On closer inspection, he was baffled by the unusual properties of the debris. Then he came across a long and shallow trench that had been gouged into the earth.

Showing the debris to a neighbour, who thought he might have in his hand the wreckage of an alien spacecraft - which I'm sure would be everyone's first reaction... - Brazel was advised to inform the county sheriff as, that summer, there had been a number of UFO reports in the United States.

After informing the sheriff, a report of the incident was passed on to an intelligence officer based at the military airbase in Roswell. And thus began a story that soon became the subject of conspiracy theories and counter theories, allegations of cover-ups, of alien autopsies, and, of all the grainy, out-of-focus and possibly faked photographic claims of UFOs over America, the closest we've ever come to the possibility of ET using earth as a convenience stop.

In the spirit of that supposed 1947 visit by little grey men, I have taken a day off from Route 66 and have driven south to see Roswell for myself. I am told not to expect too much, and to be honest, not too much is what I found. The drive from Tucumcari takes almost three hours and is entirely cross-country. In the space of three hours I probably saw no more than 20 vehicles coming in the opposite direction. Rural New Mexico really does have nothing to offer the tourist, whether they arrive by car or flying saucer.

© Simon Poulter 2013

Roswell itself is the largest town in southern New Mexico. It's a bustling community, with the town's UFO-related tourism industry putting money into the local economy that it might otherwise struggle to earn.

As you arrive, you notice little green men everywhere, though thankfully just gimmicks attached to motels and fast food outlets to remind you of what the town is famous for.

Inside the "International UFO Museum & Research Center"the whole Roswell Incident saga is played out, with all sorts of exhibits telling the story of the original find, the official response to it, and the theories about what really did happen, along with a broader collection of items about the history of the UFO phenomenon.

There is a sense of tongues being firmly in cheeks about the whole place, but if it brings people almost 100 miles out of their way to see it, hats off to Roswell for making a buck.

This, then, neatly brings me to the other thing about New Mexico: Breaking Bad. Until it appeared in 2008, the closest thing Albuquerque came to international recognition was being mentioned in Prefab Sprout's The King Of Rock'n'Roll ("Hot dog, jumping frog, Albuquerque!"), and hosting the International Hot Air Balloon Fiesta. But now, thanks to the exploits of high school chemistry teacher-turned crystal-meth kingpin Walt White, tourists are flocking to the city in their droves.

Breaking Bad has joined The Sopranos, The Wire and Mad Men on the list of greatest TV shows ever, the sort of series people will close the curtains for and lock themselves indoors to spend entire weekends working their way through DVD box sets.

And quite rightly too: while mainstream Hollywood focuses on pumping out superhero franchise after superhero franchise, television has been getting on with gathering together the best writing and the most original storytelling. Breaking Bad is firmly in that camp.

Like The Sopranos and The Wire, it is, however, baffling as a tourist boost. The location of Satriale's Pork Store or the Western District of Baltimore are hardly high on the bucket list of world wonders. Albuquerque - where Breaking Bad has been filmed in its entirety - is in the same camp, but has become an unwitting star.

It is, says Bryan Cranston, who plays White, "a sound, solid place that not many people have related to. They’ve seen Los Angeles, they’ve seen New York, but that haven’t really seen Albuquerque and New Mexico."

"People want to come here and see the actual locations where the filming is taking place," Dale Lockett of the Albuquerque Convention & Visitors Bureau recently told International Business Times. Despite the city being "less than thrilled" by Breaking Bad's premise of drug dealing and all the unpleasantness that comes with it, the city is now recognising that there are tourist dollars to be made. IBT reports that tourism in New Mexico has been growing over the last three years, with Breaking Bad cited as a major reason.

Thus, you can now take part in guided tours of the show's filming locations, including the White family home and the burrito restaurant Twisters, which provides the real location for Los Pollos Hermanos. Troublingly, you can also find a donut store selling 'Blue Sky Donuts', named after Walt White's bespoke drug, and a brand of bath salts called - wait for it - Bathing Bad.

Route 66, just to return to the premise of my trip, runs straight through Albuquerque, though it's debatable which is the better draw for tourists. Some of the filming locations for Breaking Bad are somewhat more salubrious.

At the point 66 becomes Albuquerque's Central Avenue, you drive for a good mile past endless RV dealerships. This, for those who know Breaking Bad, is highly ironic, given the pivotal plot role Walt White and Jesse Pinkman's RV plays in the series.

© Simon Poulter 2013

For almost 18 miles, Central Avenue/US 66 takes you past more RV dealers, tyre shops, low-end motels and a large number of society's rejects baking in the intense heat.

Eventually you drive through the district of Nob Hill, a once depressed area that has been revitalised by residents, local businesses and community organisations, with restaurants, art and culture on offer.

66 then continues, past the vast University of New Mexico campus, and into the Old Town of Albuquerque, where Route 66-themed diners and burger joints start to appear again.

The run through Albuquerque may not have been the most photogenic, or aesthetically rewarding, but there is a clear effort by the city to merchandise its importance as a key waypoint in the Root 66's journey west.

New Mexico doesn't have the same going for it as neighbouring Arizona, with the Grand Canyon being the daddy of all tourist attractions, quite frankly, anywhere, and what I've seen of it has been mostly semi-desert scrub. But you can see how the journey on Route 66 keeps evolving.

Out of Chicago and into Illinois it was lush, green farmland; Missouri - thick green forests; Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas - vast open prairies. In New Mexico, the scenery becomes more jagged, dryer and less hospitable, and as Route 66 enters Arizona, and you notice signs at rest stops warning the traveller to be on the look out for poisonous snakes and scorpions, it's clear that the long but final leg of the journey through the high desert to California is about to begin.

© Simon Poulter 2013

Tomorrow: Raising Arizona

From Shamrock, TX to Tucumcari, NM: High Plains Drifter

After yesterday's deluge, the Lone Star State's weather is behaving itself again as I trudge out of Shamrock to make the briefest of runs across the Texas Panhandle into New Mexico.

Route 66 exists in places alongside I-40, but so close it may as well be its hard shoulder. And after last night's torrential rains, common sense - plus a little namby-pamby tourist wobbliness - takes charge and I forgo America's Highway for...er...one of America's highways.

Texas is, after California and probably even before California, the state I would wager most non-Americans think of when they think of the United States. It's the state generations of Western fans grew up with, even though most cowboy movies were filmed on backlots around Los Angeles, or up in Lone Pine in the Sierra Nevada mountains (where I will be soon). That, though, is Hollywood's story: the film industry expanded in California because it had an agreeable climate and access to countryside that could be anywhere in the West.

Texas, on the other hand, prospered through, mainly, cows. They're everywhere, so it's understandable that people still think of Texas as cowboy country. It has the most farms in the US, and produces more livestock, in particular cattle, than anywhere else in the nation. Which is why most restaurants in the state will be serving variations of cooked dead cow.

Long before the cows, of course, were the dinosaurs, who roamed freely across the southern plains of before eventually turning into the more recent boon to the Texan economy, oil. It's at this point I must declare a tiny, but personal revelation: after many years visiting and driving through the US, I have never before noticed the Sinclair Oil company, which operates filling stations in 22 states in the American heartland between the Mississippi River and California. The reason I mention this now, is that driving on Route 66 has brought me in to close proximity to Sinclair's logo - a brontosaurus.

At first thought, this seemed to me a little like McDonalds replacing its golden arches with the outline of a cow, or KFC removing Colonel Sanders' visage and putting an actual chicken in its place. But, thanks to the wonders of the Internet, I have now learned that Sinclair's logo is in fact educational and is, perhaps, the only example of a corporate logo having such value.

It evidently dates back to the Chicago World's Fair of 1933 where Sinclair sponsored a two-tonne animatronic brontosaurus that explained the role dinosaurs played in the formation of petroleum. This led to Sinclair selling toy brontosaurs (and, later, giant inflatable dinosaurs) at its filling stations as promotional gimmicks. The dino proved so popular that Sinclair eventually made it part of its logo, becoming yet another familiar visual fixture along highways like Route 66.

Oil, though, has added considerably to the Texan economy, and the state does possess roughly a third of the entire US oil reserve. This does lead to the misconception, perpetuated by Supertramp, that everyone's a millionaire here.

I would beg to differ, but with the vehicle of choice in Texas being, apparently, a sizeable V8 pickup truck, fuel is either dirt cheap or there's money abroad to pay for it. In Texas, pickups are utilitarian vehicles. In Afghanistan, Syria and Somalia they carry AK-47-toting thugs or large machine guns mounted on the back. Without wishing to make any correlation, a lot of such vehicles in Texas do carry gun racks. Even the police drive pickups.

Guns remain a Texan sub-culture: contrary to popular disbelief, people don't walk around with holstered 9mm pistols at their hips, and there are tight(ish) laws governing the ownership and concealment of guns.

Nevertheless, it is somewhat ironic that on the front door of the Texas Book Depository in Dallas - from the sixth floor of which Lee Harvey Oswald shot President Kennedy - there is a sign saying "No Smoking, No Firearms, No Photography". In that order.

Trying to encapsulate Texas in this tin shack of a blog is never going to do a state this vast any justice, especially as Route 66 just cuts a straight line across the top of the Panhandle. But it's worth noting that it is the state more people are moving to than anywhere else in the country.

Recent figures from the US Census Bureau showed that five of the 10 fastest-growing cities over the last couple of years were in Texas, with Houston the country's second fastest after New York. Employment has been the main factor swelling the Texan population, with the still booming oil and gas industry, as well as military-related industries drawing people in to reasonably well paid jobs. And once there, people find a relatively low cost of living - including no personal state income taxes.

Culturally, Texas is cooler than some might expect it to be. Austin is one of America's hippest cities, and another one of the state's fastest growing towns, with a thriving, college-fuelled music scene and the annual SXSW festival to its credit.

In fact, the state's contribution to popular music is wider than you might think - ZZ Top (whose Texan blues-boogie has been accompanying on my ride west), Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, T-Bone Walker, Albert Collins, Lightnin' Hopkins, Lead Belly, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Scott Joplin, Kenny Rogers, Willie Nelson, Don Williams, George Strait, Jim Reeves, Waylon Jennings, T-Bone Burnett, Edgar Winter, Johnny Winter, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Steve Miller and Janis Joplin are or were all Texas-born.

Texas does have, however, one questionable mark hanging over it: earlier this year the state - which has the highest rate of legal executions in the US (more than 500 since 1982) - announced that it was running out of the drug pentobarbital used in lethal injections. With 11 inmates put to death so far this year, and a further five to come, supplies have become scarce due to drug companies objecting to their products being used for capital punishment. Despite the shortage, the state said it was "confident" that it would be able to continue with the deaths, despite the shortage. Now there's a thought.

But, back to the road. Less than an hour's drive from Shamrock along I-40/Route 66 is Amarillo. Let's, first, get the business of that song out of the way: Neil Sedaka's cheesy hit - made even bigger by British crooner Tony Christie - put the city on the map for no other reason than "Amarillo" was the only place name Sedaka could find to rhyme with "pillow". Thus, Sweet Marie could have been waiting anywhere else.

It's unlikely, too, that Marie would have chosen Amarillo in any case. It's a bustling, functional town, providing the economic hub of the Panhandle, and work, such as at the 15-year-old Bell Helicopter factory, which produces aircraft for the US military on a site adjacent to Amarillo's "international" airport. Frankly, though, there isn't much to keep anyone in Amarillo, beyond hotels and shopping.

© Simon Poulter 2013

On the western edges, however, is a bizarre photo opportunity - the Cadillac Ranch. In 1974 local millionaire philanthropist Stanley Marsh III commissioned a collective of artists to create a piece of art by burying 10 Cadillacs nose down in the mud as a symbolic representation of the marque's evolution.

Like most artistic obscurities, it's hard to truly understand the concept, though there is something decidedly Storm Thorgerson about the entire scene. It has, though, become a minor landmark on Route 66, with visitors encouraged to apply their own spray paint signature to the vertical car corpses. Unfortunately, this also leaves the area around the exhibit littered with discarded spray cans.

© Simon Poulter 2013

While still in Texas I reach the exact midpoint of the entire journey at the small community of Adrian. With 1,139 miles to Santa Monica, or 1,139 miles the other direction to Chicago, it's a significant landmark on the trip, deep in the heart of farmland and, it would appear, the world's largest collection of wind turbines.

© Simon Poulter 2013

Adrian is another must-do photo opportunity, and its Midpoint Cafe is a delightfully kitsch throwback to the era of cars with fins, and before the fast food chains and franchises took over.

Food at the Midpoint Cafe is excellent, the coffee beats Starbucks into a crocked hat, the decor is authentically tasteful, and it has free WiFi and a gift shop. All in all, a stop you shouldn't miss.

There has been no shortage of the perfectly acceptable kitsch and nostalgic along the road since leaving Chicago. Some attractions have been accidental - run-down empty shells of businesses that, during the road's heyday, would have thrived.

Where, however, the attractions are still going strong is because they've been invested in. Which brings me to my resting place for the night, just 40 miles over the New Mexico border in Tucumcari.

In an area first populated 10,000 years ago, with dinosaurs abundant millions of years beforehand, Tucumcari has had a long history, particularly during the tribal era when the area was the hunting domain of the Apache, Comanche and other tribes (nearby Tucumcari Mountain is one of those classic flat-top desert erections directors of Western movies would have Indian warriors looking out from before attacking a wagon train...).

The town started to grow at the beginning of the 20th century when the Chicago, Rock Island and Union Pacific Railroad turned Tucumcari into a major town. Route 66 brought even more business Tucumcari's way. Today, however, it's the nostalgia for 66 which turns the town's commercial axles.

© Simon Poulter 2013

66 itself runs through the town, still lined with vintage-looking motels replete with traditional flashing neon signs. Don't be put off by this: at the charming Blue Swallow Motel, owners Kevin and Nancy put the extra effort into making this a very special stopover indeed, and well worth avoiding the chain motels further back up the road as you come off the interstate.

From the stunning sign out front, to the charming and perfectly maintained period detail in each of its 12 rooms, to the provision of free bottles of water and even an individual garage to park your car next to your room, the Blue Swallow Motel is a treat and a simple, but absolute highlight of the trip so far.

And there's history to it. Opened in 1941 - a brave move then as wartime rationing was limiting cross-country travel - it was taken over in the 1950s by Lillian Redman, bought for her by fiancé Floyd as an engagement gift. Lillian had lived in Tucumcari since 1923, and originally moved to New Mexico with her family in 1915 in a covered wagon. The story goes that Lillian walked alongside the wagon. As a tribute, Room 6 of the hotel is now the Lillian Redman Suite, complete with open bathtub and a cute writing desk - where this post is being written - which contains a model of a covered wagon that has been turned into a desk lamp.

Unlike the other anonymous hotels I've stayed in, this is the first stop along the way where other guests gather in front of their doors to compare notes of their own road trips along Route 66. Some are doing it for the nostalgia, others for the more relaxed pace. Others, like me, just to say they've done it.

Tomorrow:  A Saucer Full Of Secrets