Day 50 & 51- Grants

It was a relief to wake up and not have our scalps missing. 🤣 None of us heard much traffic on the road in the night, and they seriously couldn’t have seen us unless they were looking. We packed up and pushed our bikes through the tumbleweed jungle again to get back on the road. We had made good progress yesterday, so today would be a shorter ride to Grants.

Morning tea time for the Kiwi’s

We passed by the coal mining operation which didn’t have a lot of activity other than this huge surface scraper bucket crane, busily doing some surface level mining. There were remnants of earlier mining operations all over the place. Looked like most had been reclaimed back to nature (hopefully). I did note that there really were no more wild camping options beyond where we stayed last night, so it was good we stopped when we did.

We were all looking forward to stopping in Grants for a couple nights since we had been remote for a while, with maybe the exception of Cuba, but that was a bit of a disappointment. Old Route 66 goes through Grants, so we all envisioned stopping by a classic diner to have an ice cold milkshake. Not much was known about the town by any of us. Some riders like to do meticulous research on all the places they would go through, while we just liked to get surprised along the way.

What did surprise us was the level of mining activity or remnants of such just north of the town. Many had signs of radioactive warnings posted on fences along the road. No real activity to be seen of folks working or machinery. Hmmm. Later on we seemed to see many scrapyards and metal fabrication shops just before reaching the town of Grants. It was an eerie, somewhat post apocalyptic sight. Many junkyard had dogs barking at us behind locked gates as we went by. We finally reached what was dubbed as the historic Route 66, but it was again what looked like abandoned businesses along the route. Where was that magical diner with our milkshakes? Maybe it was further in the center of town? We kept biking until we were what looked like the center of Grants. It was a bit better than what we had seen earlier, but still quite neglected. We saw a mining museum and made note of that.

One of the few Route 66 remnants (it was a junker as well)

Interstate 40 runs just south of Grants so we figured that is where most of the economic activity would be from folks needing to take a break of traveling on the road or wanting a bite to eat. We figured that would be the best place to find a motel. On our way there, we saw many abandoned and run down hotels on the Route 66 strip. Hardly any were still operating. Almost like the place had just been bombed in a war many years ago, and nobody bothered to clean it up.

Remnants of when America was “great”…

We did finally get to what we hoped would be our “promised land” near I-40 interstate. It was better, but there were still businesses/motels that had shut down. Maybe folks were no longer stopping in Grants along the interstate? We did find a pretty reasonably good quality (and priced) motel that was just across the street from a Super Walmart. Not that I would normally deem that as a plus, but for us GDMBR’ers it was golden in getting some much needed food supplies and sundry items. I got a cheap pair of flip flops and some shorts to dive in the pool with (which I never did).

On our rest day we all biked to the mining museum to learn a bit more about this region. Jess had also ordered a bottle of the chain lube I had been using, so we swung by the Amazon locker to pick it up. No, Grants didn’t have a bike shop.

The museum was a bit of an eye opener and helped explain the current state of Grants. In the late 1950’s, Uranium was discovered nearby and easy mining access on the surface initially, and then in mines underground. The whole race to build nuclear weapons, and later nuclear reactors caused the town to boom. In the late 1980’s folks suddenly became aware of the environmental and health dangers associated with this radioactive material, and the operations came to a fairly sudden halt. Basically a classic boom and bust. That helps explain the number of abandoned properties in the town. The companies that made a killing during the boom, quickly left to seek other opportunities elsewhere. The people who still live here just have to deal with the cleanup. Sad.

Inside the museum. They had recreated the mining operation underground.

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