Tinkertown (outside Albuquerque)

Up to this point, waking up in a Walmart parking lot was a failure of the night before. But after a month on the road, we were (and still are) just happy to find a place to park where we were 99% guaranteed not to get hassled. My good friend Chiyo suggested we have the green chile at Frontier Restaurant.


Michelle's huevos rancheros and my burrito barely showing in the background. So good! And the green chile was, indeed, amazing.


Before getting on I-40 (and Route 66) to Arizona, Michelle's nerdy but helpful "Road Trip, USA" book steered us towards the Tinkertown Museum. Kind of like the Orange Show in Houston, it's difficult to explain what Tinkertown really is. From their website:

"It took Ross Ward over 40 years to carve, collect, and lovingly construct what is now Tinkertown Museum. His miniature wood-carved figures were first part of a traveling exhibit, driven to county fairs and carnivals in the 1960s and '70s. Today over 50,000 glass bottles form rambling walls that surround a 22-room museum. Wagon wheels, old fashioned store fronts, and wacky western memorabilia make Tinkertown's exterior as much as a museum as the wonders within. Inside, the magic of animation takes over. The inhabitants of a raucous little western town animate to hilarious life. Under the big top, diminutive circus performers challenge tigers and defy gravity while the Fat Lady fans herself and a polar bear teeters and totters."

It'll be easier to show you...


There are tons of beautiful hand painted signs. This one greets everyone in the parking lot.


Recycled bottle wall.


Miniatures in their glass case.


Sometimes it took a quarter to get the figures moving, sometimes you just had to hold a button...


So hard to show what this looked like in person, but those guys are about 5 inches high. When you press the button one might move his arm abck and forth like he's moving a checker and the other might just nod.




Crazy circus!


A lot of the hand painted signs were pretty awesome inspirational messages. They're all mostly silly cliches, but I always appreciate stuff like this, especially when people believe it wholeheartedly.




Where we stole our header from... thanks Will Rogers ('s estate).


This shake with Uncle Sam was a test of the strength of our... personalities? I scored an "uncontrollable," Michelle got "cold fish." I dunno what either one of those mean. We wandered Tinkertown for as long as we could take it then got on the road to some plaster wigwams.