Desperately Seeking Cell Service in the Southwest!

Tucumcari, NM / Albuquerque, NM / Flagstaff, AZ

We learned Tucumcari is the home of the space shuttle that English business magnate Richard Branson (Virgin Airlines) is building to take tourists to space for $100,000. Maybe we'll do that next visit! It certainly explained all the huge, unidentifiable parts we saw being trucked in. We got an early start with a solid breakfast in our hotel where we met a couple who was traveling from Florida to Seattle for a wedding.

Before we hit the highway, we made our way over to the gas station to fill up and clean our windshield.  If we didn't mention this before, this is something that any traveler should know when driving cross country... your windshield will be covered by suicidal insects who think nothing of crashing headfirst into glass.  We spent a good 20 minutes at the gas station with the Squeegee trying to get all the marks off the windshield.    

We picked up a hitchhiker at the gas station...a fly. We opened all the windows on the highway to get him out but the sheer force of the wind drove him into hiding only to resurface once we closed the windows. Then he would buzz around frantically and we would open the windows once again. We did this a few times before both sides waved white flags and agreed to ride peacefully together to Albuquerque.

Totem pole w/southwestern motif  next to adobe-edged freeway

As we approached the city, the scrub brush and rocky hills of Tucumcari gave way to boulders and plateaus accompanied by signs of falling rocks. Then we saw adobe structures with rounded edges and artistic freeway interchanges. Regular gray cement for the freeways was not enough. Instead many of them were pinkish adobe with a turquoise trim and the pedestrian overpasses were often decorated with ornate balustrades. So quaint! (So was the fact that Verizon doesn't have good/any service in the city so our phones basically became paperweights.)






We decided to explore an area called Old Town Albuquerque and see all the different sights there.  Albuquerque was founded in 1706 by then New Mexico's governor Francisco Cuervo y Valdes (no relation to Jose Cuervo) and Old Town was the first part of the city which expanded outwards from there. The church, school and boutique shops feature the original architecture and there are lots of opportunities to shop for pottery, jewelry, and artwork. Each block had its own market tucked within a courtyard with hidden paths, gardens and patios.  Clay found a quaint spot for us to eat called Bebe's Cafe on the map.  We had trouble finding it though; we walked down San Felipe looking for the building number 206 1/2, passed 208 and landed on 204.  When we looked at the map again, we saw that the cafe was located down one of the pathways through Patio Market. 

View of garden courtyard from Bebe's Cafe

Bebe's offered organic food and we both ordered sandwiches and salads - the latter which we were thrilled to have after crossing through the plains with limited vegetables save those we brought with us in our cooler. The arugula tasted more fresh than any we had ever had and we spent time savoring our meal and the hibiscus iced tea we ordered. The waitress was not only the waitress but the cashier and the chef too. And the small cafe was pretty busy so it took her a while. She was so thankful that we were patient that she added to our order. While we ate we watched huge bumblebees amble about the wildflowers and a hummingbird flit by, stop in mid-air and zoom off. When we finished we sat for a moment and then headed out into the heat to check out San Felipe de Neri Church and the school a block away though the latter is no longer in use for its original purpose. Construction began on San Felipe de Neri the very same year Albuquerque was founded and it is one of the first buildings in the city and is listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.

San Felipe de Neri Church

Love this wall with its sloped edges and real tree limbs

We shopped around a bit but the heat made it difficult to focus so we hopped back into the car, blasted the A/C and continued on our way. Our plan had been to decide in Albuquerque how much further we could drive and book our hotel for the night then. Unfortunately three cell phones with no service, and no major areas with phone/internet service expected before our last stop for the night, put a kink in that plan. So we drove to Flagstaff, Arizona and arrived in the evening on the Saturday of Labor Day Weekend in the nearest city to the Grand Canyon tourist attraction without reservations. Bad idea!

So we did the reasonable thing. We headed for an area we figured would have internet service while we figured things out. The mall! While we were pulling into the parking lot Julayne said if the mall had a Sears she had been there before. It did indeed have a Sears. Julayne had passed through in 2007 on the way to a weeklong stay in the Navajo Nation; Flagstaff is also the nearest city to that as well. She was able to direct us to massage chairs where we got massages while checking for near non-existent room availability. After some time (the 15 minute chair massages had since ended) we found a room (it was the last one in that particular hotel) and booked it. Since we still had an hour before the mall closed Julayne headed to Motherhood Maternity to pick up some fall maternity clothes and then we headed to the hotel.