We Finally Went West, and Saw Some of Route 66

Posted in Living Thrifty, Our Travels on September 17, 2017 Last Updated on September 17, 2017

Our business had been preventing us from heading further west in our adventures, but, we finally worked out what was needed and it was time to adventure along.

We headed out of Florida for the winter, and made our way along the coast, stopping at a few overnight spots found in our previous trips. We were anxious to see new places, and covered ground quickly until Texas.

In both and Texas and New Mexico, we found that quite a few of their towns have free RV parking and some, like the Waylon Jennings RV Park and a spot in the town of Levelland, Texas have both power and water hook-ups – for free! Some other areas, like San Jon, New Mexico offer free overnight parking with no hookups.

As you may know, we’re big fans of roadside attractions and there are plenty of neat things to see around Albuquerque,  New Mexico.

One of the coolest, was a local architect who built a custom ‘bug’ house for himself, complete with dinosaur guards. Additions were also made for a few of his neighbors as well. You can check out the story on Roadside America.

Then, it was on to Tinkertown Museum in Sandia Park, New Mexico. This was a really fun stop along our path and is a must see for anyone traveling through the area. As they say on their website’s gallery page, “Capturing the feel of Tinkertown with a few photos is near impossible. It’s the kind of magical place that needs to be experienced first hand.” We do, however, have a video for you of one of their animated, singing machines. Tinkertown is great, admission is ridiculously inexpensive, you should stop in.

This video originally had the music from the machine playing but, apparently, the song being played was I Want To Be A Cowboys Sweetheart by Patsy Montana. Because of this, SME filed a copyright claim “On behalf of: Columbia Nashville” and were going to run ads on the video, with all proceeds going to them. We have edited the video to remove the song, they take enough money from the little guys.

We stopped by a few other neat attractions in New Mexico, then headed towards Arizona.

Arizona was a lot of fun, and probably the best time we had on this trip – mainly because it was a lot of relaxing down time. We met some cool people, stayed at an Abandoned KOA at Two Guns Ghost Town, and visited Quartzsite, where we enjoyed two of the boondocking locations. After our little break, we started heading further west.

We made it to California and, in planning where to go, discovered that everything we heard was true. California is not very RV friendly, especially to those who boondock and overnight in free spots. We did find a few areas in the desert, near the border that allowed boondocking. Our van managed to get us stuck in the sand at one point, making us long for 4WD.

We spent most of the time making our way along towards a Facebook acquaintance we were going to meet in person, with a little driving along the coast. Along the way we did visit a few neat stops including the Sequoia National Forest, which made for a nice drive, and to see more Roadside America goodness.

After leaving our acquaintance’s area, we found that California doesn’t see a problem with having thick branches right against the road, in public parking spaces. During this, we also learned we  should have stuck with Progressive Insurance (just not their Roadside).

Bright side, the parking was for an awesome beach, that made for a great walk along the California Coast.

One of the best parts of the west, and one of the things we reminisce about the most… In N Out Burger. Get the fries monster style.

And that was our trip to the California Coast. It was definitely an adventure, encouraged us to buy a new tow vehicle, and gave us great times we’ll never forget.