Westward Ho!

June 22, Day 2

Good Morning! Up at 5 am. Breakfast at Denney's and on the road by 6:30am. Got gas for $2.13 a gallon. The wind really killed our gas mileage yesterday. 19.7 mpg. Today's mpg is a bit better at 21.5. You don't realize how flat the panhandle of Texas is until you get to the boarder town of Glenrio which is a rest stop.  The original town is a ghost town with most of the buildings standing in

Early morning sunrise in Amarillo

great disrepair. If we pass by on the way back I plan to stop and take pictures as they look quite interesting. When I-40 was built the town dried up and died, as it was bypassed as so many small towns along Route 66, the Mother Road which is still drivable in many sections of Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico. We took a quick break and got back on the road heading west. 

At the Glenrio Rest Stop

What fascinated me so much was while in Texas, you are traveling along and you look out and it is flat as far as the eye can see and BOOM you drop off a plateau and you are among vistas, valleys and arroyos plus jaw dropping scenery everywhere you look. The ravines of the high desert just overwhelm you if you have never seen it before. 

We made it to Albuquerque around 9 am and headed north on the 550 highway. It turns out that we were on a scenic highway, the feature was the White Ridge range. OMG! Words can't express the stark beauty of the range from San Ysidro to Cuba New Mexico.  You are diving along and come around a bend and they just smack you in the face!  You go around the ridge and they seem to go on forever. The terrain changes mile by mile and you are just in awe of it all. 

Front of the White Ridge Range

Back of the ridge as you round the bend

We had a fuel stop in Cuba and made ourselves some lunch, walked and watered the dogs. As we climbed out of the valley the scrub trees turned into tall pines. As quickly as they appeared they disappeared into a lunar landscape dotted with giant rose looking rocks. 

A lone sentinel in the middle of nowhere

Every twist and turn of the road brought forth a new surprise for the eyes to feast on. I can't help but wonder what our ancestors thought of this WILD country and the promise it held. We made it to Farmington, New Mexico around 3 pm for a fuel up and to get some supplies and the much needed coffee. Off in the distance we could see Wisdom Peak at 14,082 ft. in the San Juan Range in Colorado. It still had snow on the peaks.

As we headed toward the town of Shiprock we could see off in the distance, this massive peak, like a lone sentinel guarding the desert floor rising out of nowhere. The peak of Shiprock is massive and Indian legends abound. This sentinel standing 1,583 ft. above the valley floor lets one's imagination run wild as to what event it may have been entrusted with. 

Two different views of Shiprock

It's 5:10 pm and we just crossed into Arizona...Wide open spaces with strange sounding names. Teec Nos Pos a wide spot in the road. The color of the rock has changed from red to soft sandstone yellow. The view goes on for miles and miles. Northeast Arizona has wide open spaces with lots of large Mesas. Reminds me of the movie "The Searchers" with John Wayne.

 

Some of the wide vistas to be seen

We crossed over into Utah a short bit later and into the Valley of The Gods. We made our destination as the sun was setting, so we had to make haste and get the tent set up for sleeping. We decided to leave the fly off and sleep under the stars which was absolutely awesome!