Windy

April 12, 2024 – Day 25

Sierra Blanca Brewery, Moriarity New Mexico – Homolovi State Park Campground, Winslow Arizona

It was a fast and easy departure. That’s one big advantage of Harvest Hosts. We rarely bother to unhook the Jeep and there are no utilities to connect to. We just pull in the slides, retract the jacks, then drive off. We needed to get gas before we headed out. From a previous trip here we knew there was a Denny’s inside the Flying J station. We were tempted to get a half decent breakfast. But we had looked at the weather forecast and it was wind, wind, and more wind. Plus we’d grabbed a quick bite already. We decided it was get gas and then hit the road.

A group of bikers passed us.

Notice how some of them are over the dashed white lines. Sure, maybe the group is changing lanes. (They weren’t.) That last one was close enough to make Susan nervous and shift us toward the solid white line in case a wind gust came up. Maybe they think it is funny spooking the silly RV folk. But the tough-guy obviously had no idea what wind does with RVs. There times the wind gusts would push the RV a couple feet one way or the other. And if they’re 1-2 feet away, guess what happens. We get our paint scratched and they’re going to be having a bad day.

And hey, a first for us!

That’s us! Susan was driving. She had waved to them as they went by. Later Susan saw this picture in an Tiffin owners Facebook group. We’re a curious group and like to find out if it’s one of the group members. This time it was us. How cool is that?

We love New Mexico, it has some of the best scenery we’ve seen so far. We took lots of pictures, and we know we posted them last trip but, and we know that after a while it starts to look the same. Gorgeous and all but one desert vista is as (usually) as pretty as the one before. But still, here they are:

We see a lot of trains out here. Some are miles and miles long. Today we saw the shortest one ever. Three engines seems excessive for that few trains. Do you think they lost some?

Around lunch time we saw a sign for the El Malpais National Monument Visitor Center. We thought why not take a break and get a stamp in our passport book.

This section looks a little bit like a convention hall or hotel lobby. But, you know, the exhibits were very informative. The described about a dozen hikes or drives one could take through El Malpais.

SCENIC BUT CHALLENGING DIRT AND GRAVEL roads take adventurous travelers into Ojito, Cabezon, Chamisa, La Lena, Ignacio Chavez, and Empredado Wilderness Study Areas. Extraordinary vistas and opportunities for solitude reward hikers who venture out.

Ojito abounds in dramatic geologic features and fossils from the Jurassic Period. The longest and heaviest animal known to science, the seismosaurus, roamed this territory.

On the north side of the Ignacio Chavez Wilderness Study Area, evidence survives of the Azabache Stage Station, once a major stopover on the route from Santa Fe to old Fort Wingate.

The Guadalupe Ruin, an exceptional Chacoan prehistoric site, occupies a high butte above the Rio Puerco Valley at the southern edge of the Chamisa Wilderness Study Areas.

From a sign in the Visitors Center

That drive above is 195 miles long. 195 miles of challenging dirt and gravel roads? Sign Paul up! (susan here: uh, no thanks.) There were more of these of various lengths.

The richly diverse volcanic landscape of El Malpais (el-mal-pie-EES) offers solitude, recreation, and adventure. Explore incredible geologic features such as lava flows, cinder cones, lava tube caves, and sandstone bluffs. While some may see a desolate environment, people have been adapting to and living in this extraordinary terrain for generations. Come visit the land of frozen fire!

NPS website

The rangers showed us maps of how this was different from the nearby Valley of Fires when we were there in October 2023.

Before we left the Visitor Center we talked with a lady who remembered our RV from the Harvest Host the night before. Very nice lady. She and her companion were off to Las Vegas.

Here’s more stunning scenery. Unfortunately grabbing shots through the window at speed doesn’t give that same sense of “WOW!” that your eyeballs do while standing in it. It also doesn’t convey the vastness. We’re still pretty gobsmacked about that. It’s not hard to see 15 or 20 miles across the desert from the RV window.

At this point we’re about to cross into AZ. The winds had been strong enough that we were stopping about every 60 minutes to change drivers instead of our usual 90-120 minutes. It was that fatiguing. We’d just pull off at an exit, park on the shoulder, and do a quick swap. That’s a thing out here, you always see big rigs parked on the on and off ramps. It was very strange to us at first but now it seems normal.

But this was a real rest area. Thank you Arizona!
(susan here: we knew it was real because there was a gift shop.)

Curiously, you had to exit the highway to get to the rest area but it was easy off and back on so that’s ok. These were pretty impressive rock formations that were a few hundred feet tall.

Metal sculptures are a thing out here. So are dinosaurs. Naturally it follows that you will see a lot of metal dinosaurs.

Soon we pulled into Homolovi State Park, unhooked and happily backed into a very level campsite. Most of the sites out here seem to be pretty level with few exceptions unlike back east.

Daily: 302

Total: 3.028

Driving Miles/Day: 275

Overall Miles/Day: 108

mpg: 6.28