Day 12

They try to convince you the 40 is route 66 but it appears that the original 66 runs alongside it in some places. Geoff had a plan! We drove on the original road alongside the 40. It was lovely, no trucks and only a handful of other cars. That was until we came to ‘road closed’, but we were not far from our destination, which was Cadillac Ranch. Cadillac Ranch is an art installation of 10 Cadillacs planted nose down in the group. It was installed in 1974. Only a few of the iconic tail fins remain but it has become somewhere where visitors come, complete with their spray paint cans. You can smell the paint as you approach it! It has been said that it is similar to Stonehenge but I don’t think that holds water. It is a very There were quite a number of visitors there today, and interestingly only one other man had a ‘proper’ camera, everyone else popping away with their phones. That is the way of the world.

We passed through a time zone this afternoon on entering Texas so we are only 6 hours behind the UK now. There are horrendous tornadoes in East Texas with hailstones up to 3 inches in diameter. Scary stuff. They have a national warning system here. It often goes off when a child disappears or when there is a disaster. It has gone off twice since we have been here. Once when the train full of petroleum crashed in Albuquerque and once when a child disappeared. It goes off very loud on everything you have - iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch etc. very disconcerting.

Spent some time this afternoon in Barnes and Noble, my favourite US bookshop. I love to browse around what they have in the new releases. A lot are not prominent in the UK but you can find them. I am afraid I rarely buy books in the US as they are astronomically expensive.

We have had two days with quite high mileage so may have a bit of a rest now and hang about town tomorrow.