Road tripping the $15K Tesla: Pt.3

First post in the series is --HERE-- good place to start. 

Day 8:  FINALLY, headed east again.

Starting out at the Kingman Route66 Museum and Visitor Center. This is built into the old powerhouse that (1907 onward) powered the town and surrounding area.

If you look close, a BUNCH of Tesla SuperChargers on the left.

They did a really good job on this Museum. One of the rare times when the entrance fee was worthwhile. They cover the history of the area beginning around 1520, the initial, what would become Rt66 surveying in the mid-1800's, construction of the roads, and quite a section about the dust-bowl migration.

1934(?) farm truck that actually made the migration.

The traffic increased from 1930 on and there's much coverage of the stores, infrastructure and attractions that grew up with it until the decline began in the 60's and 70's.
There's also a fairly extensive Electric Vehicle history exhibit and some coverage of the actual powerhouse history. A very good start for the day and (so we're told) the best museum about Rt66 in the world. We'll see.

Heading out on a very original, mostly unrestored section of the road through Peach Springs there's miles&miles of

Uh yeah, more of that. Some group put up replicas of maybe a dozen of the the BurmaShave sign-sets that were common in the 20's and 30's along about 40 miles of the road. Pretty amusing. There was one outcrop of the very red soil/rocks common in the Grand Canyon, but there was more traffic than we cared to deal with so no picture.

Once the road, previously about 4500-5000 feet altitude, started the climb to Flagstaff (~7000 ft.) the rocks and the vegetation changed markedly. It starts to look almost exactly like the areas around Sisters and Bend OR.

Lots of pine forest, Looks like Ponderosa Pine to us. The Flagstaff area, which we had given almost no thought to before, other than knowing it as the location of the Lowell Observatory, turns out to be really nice. One of the surprises of the trip so far. 

It was a short day, even with all the Rt66 side trips, on account of laundry to do.
Still ran through most of the battery due to elevation gain and 80MPH stretches.
It's nice that EV's don't drop-off performance-wise like other vehicles do at high elevations.
                       Wish we could say the same about human lungs - etc.

The Wyndham Hotels phone app popped up a deal on a Baymont by Wyndham in Flagstaff. $76.

Large, nicely if not luxuriously appointed and clean and quiet. Those last two are what Motel 6 lacked the night before 

Day 8 totals: 192 miles, 228Wh/mi. 45 KWh. Not home of the cheap charging: $21. Darn those first world problems.

Day 9:

Flagstaff old town wasn't much, and our intrepid explorers failed to note that The Lowell Observatory

would be open in the evening, even when laundry was done. Like in the dark. To see stars. Duh.

So going there in the daytime didn't actually work all that well because they don't open until noon, having been up half the night.

So this delightful shot of the Observatory itself (the education center is left of this, unshown) is as close as we got to any of it. Bummer Dude!

After a short moment of silence to recover from this immense oversight, we continued on.
The mother road quickly drops down out of the pine forest and we're back in rather dull sagebrush country.

Yes, the scale is confusing. Those bushes are about 2 ft. high.

There are occasional breaks in the flat desert and red rock formations begin to appear. This one is about half way to Winslow at a rest stop. There were little critters running around the rocks but they're too fast for our photo finger.

Although few fine sights were to be had. The town's big draw is a restored Harvey House now known as La Posada (which is also the train station)  and some of the historical memorabilia and rooms are carried over from the WWII re-establishment of the Harvey House system. They were also famous for their treatment and promotion of Women during periods (1876-1948) where that wasn't necessarily common.

Moving right along, there's a different kind of architecture leaving town:

This may be the third Wigwam cottages motel we've seen on the trip. Certainly the nicest. It's difficult to see here but they have restored period cars dotted around and other period bric-a-brack.
In keeping with the themes of the trip, we'd probably have stayed in one if it had happened to be the right part of the day.  Oh well...

Heading for Gallup, the scenery began to change. Thank goodness.

Interesting rock formations and colors

It looks redder in person. We had to tour Gallup of course. The song, after all...
     Not a whole lot there. Lunch, their Dennys was actually open.            ...It was pretty good too. 

Later, some charging in the mighty metropolis of Milan after crossing the continental divide. The divide doesn't look like much here, More dramatic north in the Rockies.

This is the first pull-in charging station we've seen, the 'normal' ones are all back-in. 
Somehow this is supposed to help with the non-Tesla cars that are now using the Superchargers. Mainly Ford, Hyundai/Kia and Rivian at this point. If they back in? Maybe they use the charger on the 'wrong' side? Hmmm, that still uses up two stalls. Not sure how this is supposed to work. 

The "Genuine Indian Trading Post' was closed. We were devastated.

The rest of the day took us down through the 'old' pre-1937 version of Rt66 to Los Lunas, a MUCH bigger town than one might expect. It looks like Amazon and a couple other big distributors have opened large warehousing/sorting operations here and the town is booming.

We had our first glimpse of The Rio Grande, and in fact we crossed it again heading north. Apparently shifts in the river and new bridges north of here cause the road traffic to be re-routed after '37. This was, from Milan eastward by far the nicest section of roadbed we've seen for any section of 'real' Route 66  Kudos to New Mexico roads folks.

Night in Albuquerque, in a Hotel named, somewhat appropriately: Querque and yes it is somewhat quirky. Not too bad, and the reviews were much less awful than many others in the area, especially the under $100 ones we frequent. $79 ain't bad at all, which is good because it was a LONG day.

Day 9 totals: 398 Miles, 218 Wh/mi. 89 KWh.   
First part of the day, much high speed and up to the divide was around 248wh/mi.
Later part, slower and down from the divide was 149wh/mi. the lowest leg we've seen.

Day 10: Amarillo by Evening

Late evening it turns out. This time of year Arizona is on Pacific time, so only the 300 miles of New Mexico are the Mountain Time sandwich between that and Texas, which of course has it's own time zone. Oops, no it's Central Time. Pretty sure they've thought about having their own time zone though. Everything's bigger in Texas, especially egos. Oddly enough most folks are really nice.

The day started really well, mostly because the Quirky bed was unusually (for a motel) comfortable.
The usual "GF Need Not Apply" breakfast nook, and we're off to '66' through old downtown, which wasn't much and are on the old road toward Santa Fe, where brunch awaits.

We couldn't figure out what these trees are that line the Rio Grande, mostly near the river.

This is what ten bucks gets you at Dennys, or $8.50 w/discount card.

...and not just here in "The Land of Enchantment' this meal was pretty common throughout the trip.

We may not be giant fans of Albuquerque, but Santa Fe seems really nice, It's up into the pine forest somewhat like Flagstaff, except with a SW Native bent. We kinda prefer Flagstaff, but maybe that's because it reminds so much of Bend/Sisters OR. 

The guide book led us astray twice in Santa Fe, so more time was spent sorting the route than exploring. Of course that is a form of exploration, just not of the parts of town you might want to see.

There were dark clouds on the horizon as we started up toward Santa Fe, and by the time we left it was getting darker and darker.
Awww, reminds one of home...

Next charging stop was in mighty Las Vegas, NM. Before starting out we had no ideas there was such a place. Nice little town on the Pecos, just a bit off '66, but hey they had chargers.

On the way there though was the highlight of the day. The Pecos Pueblo National Monument. Worth a visit!

This is a bit of the 1690's church restored. Wall is the original church boundary

The Pecos Pueblo was basically the biggest thing in the (almost state-sized) area from roughly 1300AD on, although the people had lived in the area for several hundred years at that point. Parts of it still exist but are going through archaeological excavation, off the photo to the left. It was huge - town sized.
Trade was big with both the plains natives and the coastal tribes. The Spaniards started to intrude around 1540 and built a big church (with native, shall we say 'uncompensated' labor) and tensions built over the decades. Finally things came to a head in 1680, the various pueblos banded together and threw out the Spaniards and their hangers-on. The only native revolt against European powers to have succeeded. 

Envoys from the Spanish Regional Governor eventually bore fruit and the Spanish were allowed to build a much smaller church, on 'best behavior' over a decade later. 
The Pueblo was right on the Santa Fe Trail and was for years involved in trade between Santa Fe - West and Missouri on the East. The Pueblo population declined over the century's, mostly gone by the late 1800's

We were running out of time, so Santa Rosa got short shift and then we got lost getting out of town, so that didn't help. As we got closer and closer to the Texas border the sky got darker and darker and pretty soon it was black overhead with just the faintest hint of light at the horizon in every direction. Then the clouds opened up with the most intense downpour we've ever been in. The rain was hitting so hard it actually looked like milky foam on the road. Going over 50 was crazy. Then the lightning started up and stayed to entertain us every 20-30 seconds the whole 110 miles into Amarillo.
Good thing EVs are waterproof.

There must be an absolutely awesome wind farm(s) in the area. By that time it was completely dark, but you could see the flashing red light at the top of each one, literally by the hundreds stretching off in every direction for about half of that stretch.

Just as Albuquerque had hotel prices ten bucks above the average (so far) so Amarillo has prices $10 lower. An nearly three star level Baymont for $52/night? Amazing.

Day 10 Stats: 317 miles 245 Wh/mi. (remember the rain/storm) 79 KWh.

Alas, there is a Part 4 Here.