Tucumcari is about 2 and a half hours east of Albuquerque. Here are some sites you can see along the way:

• Santa Rosa de Lima Chapel: now in ruins, it was built in 1890
• Cuervo Ghost Town: the most notable buildings that remain today are an old school house and church.

Here are sites within Tucumcari:

• Blue Swallow Motel: probably the best preserved Route 66 in New Mexico, it opened first in 1940
• Route 66 Tucumcari sites: Tucumcari is certainly a shell of its glory days, but a great joy for lovers of abandoned and historic sites. There are also several museums in the town, but I was unable to visit was I went in the summer of 2021 and they were closed due to Covid.

Rather than taking I-40 the same way back, we decided to go further south to see these sites along the way back to Albuquerque:

• Ghost Towns: New Mexico is dotted with small ghost towns, in this area you can see Vaughn, Encino, Lucy, and Contreras, the last of which has a lovely old school and San Jose Catholic Church
• Abo: part of the Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument, the ruins of Abo can also be seen along this route