The Mother Road To Independence

We are stranded in Santa Rosa, NM. We've been here since Saturday. This little New Mexico town is located along the famous Route 66. As you can see from the melange of signs below, the Historic Route 66 sign is dead center. There is not much going on in this town. The main drag, Will Rogers Boulevard is lined with abandoned gas stations and little motels that must have been bustling businesses in the heydey of this historic roadway. Route 66 started in Chicago and ran all the way to Los Angeles. Along the way hitting St. Louis, Joplin, Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Amarillo, Santa Rosa (here we are!), Albuquerque, Gallup, Winslow, Flagstaff, Kingman, San Bernadino and Los Angeles. It's mostly been replaced by the Interstates but there are many places that remember the day when it was the busiest route to the West Coast.

While here in Santa Rosa, we visited the famous "Blue Hole", an 81 foot deep artesian well that is so blue, you'd think it was a pool. The water is a constant 61 degrees, which although refreshing, was FREEZING. Apparently, from the information in this area, people around here consider Santa Rosa the "Diving Capitol of the Southwest" all because of this blue hole. It seems that it's cold water temperature, depth and clarity make this artesian well a scuba diver's dream. I'm not sure about "diving capitol", but I guess it does see its share of scuba divers.In this picture, if you look along the top of the wall, you can see Ed in mid-air, diving into the depths of this natural spring. We both jumped into the water together the first time. I am not that adventurous, so I had to hold Ed's hand as we flew off the rock. It was WAY too high for me.
After we were done at the Blue Hole, we scoured the town for sunscreen and blow up pool toys, but since the ONLY store (and I seriously mean ONLY store) in town was Family Dollar, we didn't have much luck. Ed had a great idea to go to a Texaco Station that sold tires, where he bought two inner tubes that he blew up with the airhose on the truck. We wound up floating the afternoon away at Santa Rosa Lake. Here is a picture of where we took our inner tubes to float in the sun for a few hours. We had the entire inlet to ourselves. Everything you see in the foreground of the picture, right before the land pinches in after the tower, is where we were. It was great fun and we both got some great color. The weather was GORGEOUS - sunny and not too hot with a great breeze. I didn't need sunscreen after all.Exhausted from all the paddling, we retreated back to the hotel room to rest before the fireworks display started. We thought we'd get a pizza so we could sit and have dinner while watching the show, but 10 minutes after we ordered the pizza the entire town went black - NO power. We heard that a tornado hit a power grid in Texas, but all we knew was that we were sitting in a town with no power anywhere. So, we had no food and now the only thing we had to do was watch fireworks. Here are a few of the shots we got.

We didn't have any dinner since all the places in town were without power and couldn't serve anything anyway. So, after the fireworks show, we headed back to the hotel to wait out the blackout. The power came back on around 11:30 but we were too tired to go out to eat and it was way too late, so we just conked out.

Our little detour to Santa Rosa turned out to be quite a nice relaxing weekend. We had a lot of fun and I think we're ready to get back to work. Talk about Independence Day. With a job like trucking, we have Independence EVERY day!

On a side note.....here are some pictures Vicki sent from their Fourth of July celebration. Can you SEE why I love this family???