WATCH: Route 66, Part IV New Mexico

From Tucumari to Gallup

I’ve been from Tucson to Tucumcari, Tehapachi to Tonopah…and the first person who gets the reference wins a congratulatory e-mail from me!

I’ve also been from Adrian, Texas and the Midpoint of Route 66, as you saw in last week’s episode, right over the border some 60 miles into what is every Route 66 aficionado’s favorite desert town, Tucumcari.

The photographer Robbie Green and I talked about in this week’s LIVE show, the one place he’d want to be transported to, if he could.

Tucumarci is an ode to the way Route 66 used to be, with amazing, creative neon signs that begged people to get off the road and stay awhile.

We explore Tucumcari and then some in the latest installment of the Route 66 centennial series, from Tucumcari to Santa Rosa, Santa Fe, Albuquerque and Gallup, the only New Mexico city to get included in the classic song. This is the one where we meet some great locals, including Dustin, who has that rarest of breeds, a still-standing and thriving Albuquerque luggage store (remember those?) where he still makes suitcases upstairs by hand, and Bernice of Gallup, who’s got the skinny on the great native American local jewelry.

If you’ve been watching the series, you’ve seen the landscape change, from the open, rolling fields of Illinois, Missouri and Kansas to the prairies of Oklahoma and Texas, and now to the stunning red rocks and mesas of New Mexico.

I hope you’ll tune in and check it out—the series concludes next week as we cross into Arizona and close at the Santa Monica Pier, the end of the 2,448 trail.

And ICYMI: the first three installments: