Ooh yeah, a fancy car! This post doesn’t have dinosaurs in it, sorry!

One of the fun things about traveling around the southwest US is coming across these little places with tons of character. On this trip, we even stayed one night on a little strip of the old Route 66, complete with slightly shady motels, neon signs, googie architecture, and various other vintage interesting things. The southwest is full of dead animals and weird kitschy things that I adore.

Our first night in New Mexico was spent at a tiny little gas-station-turned-hotel called the Largo in Quemado, and it came with this pretty rad wall-mounted elk. They also give you enough breakfast to feed three regular people, or one palaeontologist who’s about to hike 10 miles a day for two weeks and also really likes breakfast food.

An overnight stop in Springerville, Arizona was at another motel with a cool gift shop with this weird Christmas cow skull.

We also checked out the ?world-famous Western Drug in town!

This is probably the most American photograph I have ever taken.

No wait, maybe this Marines logo made out of rattlesnake rattles is the most American photograph I’ve ever taken.

These are some very specific instructions, also found at Western Drug. Sadly I did not bring one of these home, although I would desperately like a leprosy-free armadillo to hang out with.

And finally, a real Route 66 classic – the El Rancho hotel in Gallup, New Mexico. We didn’t stay here (we stayed somewhere much much sketchier!), but we did have dinner. Apparently this place was popular with movie stars back in the day!

It’s pretty fancy inside!

Dead animal parts everywhere!

One of these days I’m going to have to just drive the old Route 66 and enjoy all the random nostalgic stuff that remains in parts of it. Here is a dinosaur for sticking around until the end!

(It’s a bunch of random bone in a croc coprolite! You’re welcome!)