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Weirdly enough I-40 running from Eastern NM into Albuquerque is one of my favorite stretches on the American interstate system, but I wouldn't try to make fans of anybody else but myself.

Granted I'm usually arriving from the Kansas/Oklahoma panhandle direction on Highway 54 through Guymon OK/Stratford TX/Dalhart TX to Logan NM/Tucumcari NM along I-40. But that few hour stretch from Oklahoma's panhandle into NM makes for a lively entrance into what always feels like the first sense of the American West starting at Tucumcari NM. Before NM, the panhandle towns are as Texas as you can imagine, too dusty for much vegetation, high school district football championship years painted on the water towers, Marty Robbins still airing on the country stations, and the main streets smelling like cattle from the many livestock trailers passing through from the surrounding stockyards. And the stockyards themselves, though a sad sight at times, are patrolled by actual cowboys on horseback - blue jeans, cowboy hats, lassos, the whole look.

Crossing the state border into NM the brush lands really pick up, the desert is high enough for light snowfall, and nearing Tucumcari two rugged, uniquely Western sights emerge: 1. Canadian River Railroad Bridge Logan NM & 2. Tucumcari Mountain, I-40s easternmost Mesa (first Mesa witnessed going West).

The interstate town of Tucumcari itself still boasts the colorful motels of its Route 66 yesteryears, where many old Westerns were filmed. And beyond Tucumcari begins the true West as far as the eye can see, the horizon extending from ten or twelve miles away to thirty or forty.

A few pictures from my time passing through:

A remote Catholic Church in Nara Visa NM about a mile from border of Texas panhandle:



Classic Route 66 hotels along Highway 54 through Tucumcari:

What was Phil's grudge?

He was eyeballs deep in gambling debt.

I think from that far out, I'd kick it.

He looks really skinny.