Drive-through service at Toyota in Albuquerque

Thursday turned out to be a day of huge contrasts and a long drive across state lines. It started off in Albuquerque, New Mexico where we had to get our car serviced. In Vancouver this is a big multi-hour ordeal and we were worried we’d have to stay in the city an extra day to get it done. By fluke we booked in to a motel that happened to be right next to a Toyota service centre so bright and early Thursday morning we drove over to see if we could get ourselves slotted in early on.

Needless to say we were quite surprised when we discovered the Toyota place had drive-through service! You literally pull in without an appointment, tell the people what you want done (in our case an oil change, fluid top-off and overall inspection) and they take your car in right then and there. By contrast our regular maintenance place – Open Road Toyota in Richmond – requires you to book in advance and keep your car for up to 8 hours.

The service was quick (under an hour) and the people there even let me walk into the service area to take pictures and have a look under our car. Very impressive. And the coolest part? It cost a mere $35!

Things to do in Albuquerque…

Comical appearance, disturbing potential (talking about the bomb)

For most of the places we’ve visited we’ve found stuff to do in books or on the web. But for Albuquerque the only thing we knew of was the Hot Air Balloon Fiesta which is supposed to be spectacular. Unfortunately we showed up one week late for that and when we asked the receptionist at the motel and the AAA guy at the local office what to do and what to see in the city they both said “there really isn’t anything worth seeing here”! Crazy. I’m sure they were being modest but seriously, it didn’t exactly make us want to stay. So we hit the one attraction listed in all the research: The National Museum of Nuclear Science and History. Unfortunately it was a bit of a bore and the only things I found even remotely interesting were the scale replicas of Little Boy and Fat Man (the nuclear bombs dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively) and the huge periodic table set in stone at the entrance. The girls looked like they were about to keel over from boredom and the only thing that was of any interest to them seemed to be the x-ray machine used to check that your shoes were the right size back in the 50s and 60s.

So we moved on all the way to Amarillo, Texas.

Big Steak – Big Bore

Before and after eating way too much food at The Big Texan

According to legend there is this great place along the route through Amarillo that you just have to stop by where they serve a 72oz steak. It’s called The Big Texan and we pulled up at 10pm local time. It’s true what they say: Everything really is bigger in Texas, but that doesn’t mean it’s any better. The food we got was mediocre (read Anny’s post for amore detailed description) and the atmosphere was flat and dim (literally). I’m sure if there was someone there taking on the 72oz challenge it would have been more interesting but when we were there it seemed like the crazy trio from Canada was a bigger attraction than the food or surroundings.

Overall, apart from the driving and the service, a bit of a waste of a day I have to say (no rhyme intended).