2023 EB Day 7 - The Great Divide

A car boot breakfast beside a wigwam isn't the norm, even for our tours but a sixties Impala provided the perfect platform to kick off the seventh day on the road.

The drive east was a mixture of the old and new highway...

...weaving under and over the interstate checking out early routes at various points.

In Sanders we spied a pony truss bridge, built pre 66 in 1923 but incorporated into the first alignment three years later.

One dirt alignment led to another bridge at Houck straddling a deep gulley.

This wet spring season has provided water and green surrounds we've not seen before at this time of year.

El Rancho Hotel in Gallup was a base for many movie stars during the halcyon days of westerns, so it's a must see nostalgia fix.

Remnants of other long since abandoned motels tell a story of an era that has moved in a different direction.

Prewitt is also a place where time continues to change things up.

Gone is Swap Meet 66... nails, the only evidence of the hundreds of licence plates that once adorned the outside walls to lure in travelers...

...and discarded books highlight just what this once popular motoring stop offered.

Grants is a photo op and more evidence of a once thriving town...

...neons, so prevalent and eye catching, the only indication of the past.

The Continental Divide is the point in America where rivers either flow east or west. It's the highest point on Route 66 at over 7000 feet.

The undulations and curves that motivated the straighter and faster interstate are cool to drive... an enjoyable sensation over the bland modern alternative .

On the outskirts of Albuquerque, another disused example of construction employed to bridge rivers and ravines.

The road to the day's end through a spaghetti junction of freeways lands in Santa Fe, the adobe capital of USA.