Route 66 Road Trip Day 5 - Albuquerque, NM

Spring Break 2012 Route 66 Road Trip

Day 5 - Albuquerque, NM

Monday Morning, Day 5 of our Route 66 Road Trip.  We had landed in Albuquerque (ABQ), New Mexico for a few days, visiting with our son and daughter-in-law and seeing the sights, particularly those associated with Route 66.  We did take the opportunity to sleep in this morning, making it a lazy morning after being up early and on the road the other four days.  The girls and their dad and I played a game of Junior Trivia Pursuit, and had lots of laughs.  The girls beat us!! 

We had stayed at a Route 66 icon motel in Tucumcari (Blue Swallow…see Day 3-4), and now we were going to eat lunch in a Route 66 Diner, an icon in ABQ.  We drove by a Giant Alert! first…a lumber jack on top of a Vietnamese restaurant.  I was also fascinated with the adobe type houses we passed as drove into downtown ABQ.

We were meeting our ABQ son for lunch at the Route 66 Diner, and had a little time to spare, so we drove around the town a bit, and snapped a few pictures.  The Kimo Theatre on Central, the main drag of town, also Route 66, was built in 1927 and is a showplace still today.  It is done in Pueblo Deco style.  We didn't have time for a tour, but I’m sure it would have been something to behold. 

The Route 66 Diner was very impressive…all that it was talked up to be.  This was a hamburger and malt joint right out of Happy Days.  They had quite a variety on the menu, and we all selected what we wanted, but for sure we all had malts!!  To get a feel for the décor, I have to insert quite a few pictures here.  Enjoy!!

Don’t you just love that counter!!  The only thing that I thought was missing was individual juke boxes on each table where you could insert your coin and pick your tune.  The big juke box worked, but I remember the table top juke boxes.  Anyway, lots of cool stuff in this diner, and great food besides!

After lunch we went over to the University of New Mexico campus for a little walk.  Sandia Mountain kept looming in the background…what a sight to behold! 

Oldest granddaughter was more interested in the pond, the ducks and birds, and the plants in the portion of the campus we were on.  She took lots of pictures of nature for her scrapbook.  I am including one of cactus plants…very pretty.

We spent the afternoon at the Museum of Natural History.  I am not much of a museum person, and since this one promoted evolution, I was anxious to move on.  I kept thinking how I wish I could take the girls to the Creation Museum near Cincinnati, to give them the other side of the coin…the truth in which I believe…God created the earth, animals, humans, and has given man a creative mind and abilities.  So…here are a few pictures from the museum…they did have good displays.

  

  

  

It was time to go back home and order pizza for supper.  Then we watched the Disney “Cars” movie for the second time, now that we had traveled some of Route 66.  It was fun to point out the different scenes or items that we could recognize from our trip thus far.  After the girls were in bed, Grandpa was left to babysit while the rest of us took a Route 66 Cruise at night to see the neon lights along Central.  We did quite a bit of driving around, as the traffic was not busy downtown at night as it was during the day.  I loved the colorful lights!

This ends Day 5 of our Spring Break 2012 Route 66 Road Trip.  As the lights fade away, catch some winks, and come back next time for Day 6 – a trip to the Capital City of Santa Fe, New Mexico.