Two nights in Albuquerque. Surely we can do something …
And we did! We headed for the old part of town. The original centre of town pre-dates the rest of the USA by some considerable degree. Way before 1776. Lots of adobe buildings, craft shops, jewellery and all sorts. You can watch the craftsmen make the stuff in the street. No chinese importada! Fascinating. The had a brilliant group of musicians, playing pan pipes. Live, off-the-cuff performance. Highest quality. L loves that kind of music. Emotional stuff – brings a tear to the eye.
Bought a few trinkets. A good day.
This song title is kind of obvious, but the performer is about as strange as it gets. A mis-spelled duke in a 12 minute performance by a sauerkraut breakfast eater.
Next clue is easy. Not the old country by the man in black.
We enjoyed our visit to Albuquerque. We even back-tracked a few miles to see the wild-life centre. L finally managed to see a black bear! It would have been nice to stayed a little longer, or go visit some of the other places in New Mexico, but time was limited, and we had to move on.
So we never did see the bird from the ashes,by a boy from the Scottish valleys.
A Route 66 essential was over the border in Arizona. Winslow. It is mentioned in the song, of course. The ultimate photo opportunity! Standing on the Corner Park. We’ll let you figure this one out for yourself. Until I actually post the pictures with this blog, you’ll just have to use Google Street View.
Immediately after Winslow, we came to the biggest hole around. No! Not a town, but the Great Barringer Meteor Crater. Almost as big as the opencast coal mine in Fife (I kid you not!), but created in one catastrophic moment. The crater is awesome, the museum OK, some the visitors and their obnoxious children, less so! I first saw pictures of this place in a book, nearly 60 years ago. Got there, eventually. It’ll be here for some time to come, so no rush. But worth seeing.
Eventually! I have mentioned in a couple of the previous blogs, that the obvious city on the map was NOT the clue to a song. Well, here in Arizona is the actual place that the group never sang about. The name didn’t sound quite right, so they changed it to something catchier. Several of the songs in the Great USA Song Contest were modified in exactly the same way. Florida, Oklahoma, and here.
Just handing out some more clues to previous blogs.
Our one night stop, this time, is Flagstaff, Arizona. 7000 feet in altitude, with a mountain as well. Perfect for Percival Lowell to see the Martian canals. He should have gone to Specsavers!
And now the pics. If one of them doesn’t give you a clue to one of the songs, then you really gotta try harder …
