trip down 66: The Blarney Stone, The Big Texan, and The Blue Swallow

(Mason) Today we finished Oklahoma, started (and finished) Texas, and started into New Mexico.
We started our day after a pretty sleepless night at the Knights Inn. For breakfast, we decided to try the Continental breakfast that they had laid out there, which wasn’t very sustaining for our hunger so we knew it would be an early lunch.
After we left there we went through Oklahoma City, which is where we saw our second state capitol building on our trip.

From there we went to the Oklahoma Route 66 museum in Clinton, which had some really interesting cars and gas station equipment from the 50’s.

After the museum we made a stop in Shamrock, Texas to see a piece of the actual Blarney stone. After Sean kissed the stone and I almost burned my hand off by touching it, it was back on the road again.

After driving down the highway for a while, we began to see signs that told of a free 72oz steak 75 (or however many) miles ahead. Now we knew what theses signs meant, but it was still funny to see them. They were advertising the free 72 oz steak offered at the Big Texan Steak Ranch. The only catch is that you have to eat the whole thing (plus two sides) in under an hour

After that we took a stop at the famous Cadillac Ranch in Amarillo. It was really cool to see all the different years of Cadillac, but was also a bit depressing to see all those nice cars ruined the way that they were.

After our brief stay there we began to close in on the Texas/New Mexico state border. The only problem (which we didn’t realize until we arrived at the border) was that our gas guage was close to empty, and there were likely no gas stations for miles. What a great way to enter a new state (we thought). Then we met a man named Steve Largent who along with his wife was the only person who lived the ghost town of Glenrio (the town that was right on the border). He was extremely hospitable and offered to give us the rest of the gas that he had (about a gallon) so that we could make it to the next town. Maybe Sean kissing the Blarney Stone wasn't the worst idea. The best part too was that when we went to pay him he basically said to pay it forward.

After thanking him several times we hit the road again. This time on to Tucumcari New Mexico which was where the Blue Swallow motel was located, and this was where we stayed for the night.