Our Last Days in Tucumcari

Last Sunday friends, Richard and Frances, came by the hotel and we all piled into DA TOAD and we drove out to Rich and Fran’s ranch. They have 160 acres that are being planted by a sharecropper who farms about 10,000 acres. We drove DA TOAD all around the property and walked to the only building – a boxcar.  The boxcar is inhabited by 2 barn owls.

		Richard & Frances’ Ranch VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

We were treated to lunch at the Russell Truck Stop about 10 miles from the ranch.  It was good lunch, but the free museum inside the truck stop was real interesting. There were cars including a 69 Corvette and 4 Shelby Mustangs, collectibles – lots and lots of stuff, and history.

We then drove back to Tucumcari to sit in on another practice session of the Blue Grass Bank, Old Gray Cats. They were just great and we are sorry we will not be here for their performance.

Later that evening we went to Denny’s with Rich and Frances, Robby and Carol. We laughed and carried on so I thought they may ask us to take it outside. We’ll miss these great friends.

Monday we did some caching and had some unsettling and conflicting information from the insurance company.  It was later resolved and it was agreed the shop had to tear down the engine to examine the piston and rod on the number 1 cylinder. That lead us to Tuesday.

Good news. The insurance company agreed to pay for the parts and labor to replace the head, head gasket, and rod.  There are a number of things they will not pay for. They will pay for the oil but not the oil filter. What’s the logic there?  They started on the repair. After that news we went Geocaching. We had placed a geocache near the truck repair shop and needed the agreement of our friends, Rich and Frances, to maintain it for us. We decided to drive into Logan and get some caches and talk with Frances and Richard. We discovered a cache just next door to Rich and Frances’ house and they didn’t even know it was there. On our way out of Logan we placed another cache and picked up 2 more before eating dinner.

This is the saga of our dinner experience last night.  It was quite an experience getting dinner and desert in Tucumcari. We went to a Chinese Buffet only to find the buffet was only served at lunch. OK, no problem, we like Chinese food ordered off the menu. I ordered Hot & Sour soup and Crab Rangoon and Tom ordered Shrimp and Snow Peas. The family of the waitress came in and sat down next to us (we were the only 2 tables in the room). I was served my soup and rangoons and the waitress’ family was served shrimp, fried rice, and several other dishes. Tom was then served chicken and snow peas. He asked for shrimp instead of chicken. I ate my entire dinner; the table next to us with the waitresses sitting down with them ate most of their dinner. Tom was served his shrimp and snow peas about 25 minutes later.

We were going to stop at McDonalds for a couple of pumpkin pies. When we got there about 6 cars were in the drive thru so we walked in to the front counter. On the other side of the store a Greyhound bus had unloaded it’s passengers, about 50, for a dinner break at Mickey D’s and we couldn’t even see the counter, so we got back in the car and drove across the street to KFC for Apple Pie where no one was at the drive thru. We ordered, drove to the window, our money was taken and then we were told they were going to put the pies in the fryer right then and it would only be a few minutes. We waited about 10 minutes and the drive thru window opened and we were told the cook dropped our pies on the floor and they were cooking another batch… could we drive forward so the car behind us could receive their order. (timing is everything) Another 10 minutes and we had our pies and were heading back to the hotel room. So that’s how we spent a week in Tucumcari yesterday.

This morning we went to the free breakfast again that is served at the motel. Mary, the hostess, is there each morning to greet us; the variety of breakfast choices is terrific. Fruits, yogurt, eggs, sausages, biscuits and gravy, green chili potatoes, Belgium waffles, bagels and cream cheese, and sweet rolls.

Then we drove over to the repair shop and checked out the progress on DA PAD. 

We then went to check out some more geocaches.  We drove west on old Route 66 to 5 mile park.  This has been abandoned for many years and the main building burned down in 2010.  This was originally an Olympic size pool and is now beyond repair. This is typical of the result of the highway passing a thriving town by.

This is a recap of our caching time in Tucumcari: found-26, placed-2. 

Looks like we will be loading all the cat stuff, clothes, and technology back into DA PAD and we will be on the road to Albuquerque tomorrow. Hurray!