New Mexico, worth the detour.

Outdoors

Lava tubes, a cinder cone, and a bat cave sit on the quieter west side of El Malpais, reached off NM-53 rather than the NM-117 side most Route 66 travelers already see — this is the Continental Divide Trail/West Malpais Wilderness access point, a genuinely different face of the lava field.

Outdoors

The first (or last) glimpse of Albuquerque on old Route 66 — cresting this mesa nine miles out from downtown drops the entire Rio Grande Valley and the Sandia Mountains into view all at once, the same view that made westbound Mother Road travelers pull over before I-40 ever existed.

History

A roadside sign on the New Mexico prairie marks the exact spine of the continent — rain falling a few feet to one side eventually reaches the Pacific, a few feet the other way, the Atlantic. Route 66 and I-40 both cross it at 7,245-plus feet, the highest point either road hits in New Mexico.

History

Built by Laguna Pueblo hands between 1699 and 1701 out of stone and adobe mortar — unusual for the era — this is one of the best-preserved of all the old Spanish missions in the Southwest, still an active parish church on the same ground 300-plus years later.

History

A 12-mile run of pure Route 66 abandonment: the burned-out Whiting Brothers gas station shell outside San Fidel, the shuttered Budville Trading Co. and 1936 Dixie Bar, and Cubero's 1876 adobe mission church where Route 66's original 1926 alignment was bypassed in 1937 — three ghost stops in the same short drive.