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By Root 727 0

had a reputation as being “too tough for women or churches. – or so the town’s tourism posters claim. Visit the Navajo County Historical Museum inside the 1898 county courthouse, a gracefully aging heap of bricks whose Perry Mason–era courtroom still hosts hearings. Downstairs, curator Steve and his Chihuahua named Peewee preside over an amiably eclectic collection of Wild West memorabilia. A creepy highlight is the old county jail whose windowless cells were still in use until 1976. Devotees of Route 66 schlockabilia will love to snooze in one of the 15 concrete teepees at Wigwam Motel. Each room is outfitted with restored 1950s hickory log-pole furniture and retro TVs.

About 25 miles east of Holbrook (the turnoff is at mile marker 311), just before the New Mexican border, is one of the most bizarre attractions just off the highway. The Petrified Forest National Park is filled with fragmented, fossilized 225-million-year-old logs scattered over a vast area of semidesert grassland. Many logs are huge – up to 6ft in diameter – and at least one spans a ravine to form a natural bridge. The trees arrived via major floods, only to be buried beneath silica-rich volcanic ash before they could decompose. Groundwater dissolved the silica, carried it through the logs and crystallized into solid, sparkly quartz mashed up with iron, carbon, manganese and other minerals. Uplift and erosion eventually exposed the logs.

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STRETCH YOUR LEGS: GALLUP MURAL WALK

Take a walk around Gallup – begin at City Hall on the corner of W Aztec Ave and S 2nd St – and experience her 126-year-old story through art. Many buildings around this old Route 66 town double as canvases, sporting giant murals, both abstract and realist, that memorialize special events in Gallup’s roller-coaster history. The city’s mural painting tradition started in the 1930s as part of President Franklin D Roosevelt’s Great Depression Work Projects Administration (WPA) program.

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Cross the state line and stop in Gallup, the mother town on New Mexico’s portion of the Mother Road. Settled in the 1881 railway days, Gallup had her heyday during the road-tripping 1950s, a decade she never seems to have left. Even today many of the dilapidated old hotels, pawn shops and billboards mixed in with today’s galleries and Native American handicraft stores have not changed since the Eisenhower administration. Just outside the Navajo Nation, modern day Gallup is an interesting mix of Anglos and Native Americans. And it’s not unusual to hear people speaking Navajo on their cell phones while buying groceries at the local Walmart. All roads in downtown Gallup dead-end onto Route 66, which runs uninterrupted through town. The historic district is lined with about 20 renovated light red sandstone buildings, including the beautifully restored El Morro Theater. Completed in 1926 – the same year as the highway – it is a grand old Spanish Colonial–style theater hosting Saturday movies, children’s programs and live theatre and dance.

Route 66 gallops across the Continental Divide (7275ft) east of Gallup, then hauls itself across 140 miles of big country space to Albuquerque. If you need to catch up on time, this is a good stretch to do it. The speed limit here is 80 mph, making it easy to cover a lot of ground quickly. Spend the night in Albuquerque and head out early the next morning. Route 66 through the eastern half of New Mexico is much more exciting than the western portion. Tiny Santa Rosa, 120 miles east of Albuquerque, is home to one of the USA’s top 10 dive spots, as in scuba. How can that be? It’s thanks to the bell-shaped, 81ft-deep Blue Hole. Fed by a natural spring flowing at 3000 gallons a minute, the water in the 81ft hole is both very clear and relatively warm (it stays a constant 64°F year-round). Platforms for diving are suspended about 25ft down. You can rent equipment, but diving here is strictly do-it-yourself (no tours). You will need to show proof of PADI or NAUI certification to get the required diving permit – sold next to the hole.

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