Breaking Road Trip Rules

After our overnight stay in Oklahoma City, we began the longest day of driving on our 2016 cross-county US road trip. The drive from Oklahoma City to Albuquerque is about 8 hours. We broke 2 of our road trip rules on this trip. We only stayed 1 night in both Oklahoma City and Albuquerque and we drove longer than 5 hours in one day! Sometimes you have to make exceptions to get where you’re going! We decided to make these exceptions because we knew we’d be back to Albuquerque soon. Also, there wasn’t much else along this long stretch of I-40 that we wanted to see.

Cadillac Ranch

Amarillo, Texas is about halfway to Albuquerque so we stopped there for lunch. After a quick lunch, we continued on the road. Right outside town I spotted a serious roadside attraction that I knew we needed to stop and see. We got off the interstate at the next exit and made a U-turn back to Cadillac Ranch. We’ve stopped at some impressive roadside attractions during all of our road trips, and most of them are spur-of-the-moment stops like this one! Thankfully Todd was able to maneuver the camper off of I-40 and to the service road parking area. Once he arrived, we all walked over to check out these Cadillacs in the dirt.

Cadillac Ranch was created in 1974 by the art group Ant Farm. It’s a series of older Cadillacs half-buried nose-down in a corn field near Amarillo, Texas. The Cadillacs are buried at the same angle of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. Located on private land belonging to a local millionaire, the Cadillacs were moved from their original location in 1997 to accommodate the growing community of Amarillo. The new site is easily visible from I-40, and the many daily visitors add their own touch to the art with spray paint.

Leaving our mark at Cadillac Ranch

While visiting, we also added our touch to the art display with some spray paint left behind by other visitors. It was quite warm in the open dirt field, so we stayed just long enough to leave our mark, take a quick flight with Daddy, and snap a picture or two.

Then, we continued our drive west toward Albuquerque.

Albuquerque

The drive into New Mexico slowly changes from the flat plains of West Texas to the gorgeous mountains as you inch closer to Albuquerque. We arrived in Albuquerque in the early evening and settled into our campground for our quick evening stay. Albuquerque is an awesome city, and while we didn’t stay long on this visit, look for more posts in the future on all the fun we had visiting later! Morning arrived and we packed up the camper for our next stop on the road trip – Mesa Verde National Park!

Details:

Cadillac Ranch

Campground: Kirtland Air Force Base FamCamp

Food: Cotsco Food Court