Tag: New Mexico

Standing on the Corner. The Mother Road episode 23.

We had a great time in Milan. A tiny, unassuming little town (with two local craft brewers..!!) and great access to some phenomenal natural experiences.

We were a little sad to leave…mostly because of the big shade tree over the trailer…!!…..but the road was calling, and the temperature in Arizona and California was rising. I kept looking ahead at the weather maps and was dreading what was coming. If 39 deg C is unbearably hot…..what could 49 be…!!!

The last New Mexico Route 66 stop was Gallup. Our plan was a stop at the visitor centre and use their parking lot for a lunch stop, which was partly foiled as it was closed for the holiday weekend (July 4 Independence Day).

We were still able to park and have a wander back up the main drag for some of the old motels and signs.

Gallup was a little different to many of these small towns, many of the classic motels were still in operation if a little run down……

….and the more famous, El Rancho, looked to be in fine shape…though we did not go in….

There were many small galleries, native craft makers and suppliers…. apparently, something else Gallup is famed for

Back on the road….It is very obvious when you cross into Arizona. There is a dramatic change in the landscape, a terrific grand-ness to the scenery bordering the highway……incredible red rock cliffs. (pictures with my phone do it no justice)

Our target destination today was Holbrook, Arizona…the closest town to the twin National Parks of the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert. Route 66 passes right through the middle of these two…….and very handily close to Winslow, so we unhooked the trailer at the Holbrook KOA and booted it over there……you just gotta go there…. 😁

…and now you are all singing it…..LOL……

It has to be one of the best set up and maintained ‘attractions’ we have seen so far…..that and you are singing that song in your head for days…before and after….but it was very cool.

Winslow is not a big town as there was nothing remarkable about it other than the tourist traffic stopping for the selfie on the corner……us included.

From Winslow we followed ol’ 66 back as far as we could…through Joseph City and found some marvelously photogenic dereliction and these very curious tipis everywhere.

Another oddity of this area is that a lot of the land is native reserve. They don’t observe daylight savings on reserves in AZ…so consequently the time keeps flipping back and forward as you drive down the road…..very confusing when you are not from there….

Holbrook itself has a little collection of old motels and this absolute classic still in operation…….the very amazing Wig Wam hotel.……. Every room/wigwam was decked out with classic cars……

..it was such an experience …we had to come back and see it lit up at night.

We were almost totally distracted from some of the other stuff on Holbrooks main drag…..

That was a lot for one day…….and more excitement to come with the National Parks to visit tomorrow…whoooeee…!!!!

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Hemingway was here. The Mother Road Episode 22.

Having had a quite fabulous time investigating the New Mexico landscape….. the official Route 66 attractions from this section of the road were beckoning. It was another backtracking trip……but one where the road (old highway 66) was actually in fairly good condition.

We drove all the way back to Casa Blanca, New Mexico for the Budville Trading Co. . It sounds very grand…but in reality it’s remote, desolate and, as with much of the 66 ‘attractions’….derelict.

Bud Rice and his wife opened the service station in 1928…Bud was the only towing service for many miles….and also became the Justice of the Peace. Apparently, he had a reputation for issuing hefty fines for minor infractions by unsuspecting travelers…….Ultimately, he was shot and killed in a robbery in 1968. Sounds like just the sort of colourful character and behavior you’d expect out here in the wild west.

Budville yielded a little collection of crumbling buildings and signs.

Next town on the return drive west was Villa de Cubero….another unexpected little gem of history.

This was a great little trading post/’tourist court’… (motel and convenience store..!!)…built in 1937 when the route was realigned and paved……still in operation. We scored some locally milled blue corn flour here…. 😁. But the history of this place was more impressive than that…

This place is also a little motel….

…..and reputed to be where Hemingway stayed while he wrote “The Old Man and the Sea”. If one wanted solitude to write this is the place, no busier now than it would have been then.

There were a few stops along the road for old signage often buried in trees……

…and some spectacular landscape vistas.

Among the attractions listed in the 66 route guide are the old pueblos in Acoma, but with a request/warning not to photograph them. It was our first encounter with some of these quite ancient dwellings. The construction is quite simple but still has that “grown out of the earth’ feel that is so much New Mexico.

We took a drive up to the Santa Maria Mission…(where we were allowed to photograph)…..the view from here down the valley was breathtaking…and impossible to photograph the scale.

Our journey brought us back down through Grants, where the entire town is a veritable neon sign/motel graveyard in its own right.

Scott had lots of fun leaping out of the truck and wandering round some of these (very sketchy) sites. Grants is a place which really exemplifies the short history of Route 66 from humble beginings, to hey day and in short order to what you see here.

It was quite sad to see a town that had quite obviously been a going concern in its day……

I think that this was one of Scotts favourite signs so far….LOL….

…and of course we just had to do the pic in the 66 gateway…… 😁

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Over Lava Falls, Up Sandstone Bluffs. The Mother Road Episode 21.

After a long chat with one of the rangers about the bats, he also highly recommended the viewpoint at the sandstone bluffs. So, of course…we drove down there. Detailed maps of the park and any info you could want are freely provided at the visitors’ centers.

One of the short trails partway down the road is a viewpoint for a massive sandstone arch, carved out of the cliff by hundreds of years of wind.

It was a day for slow paced walking and many extra bottles of water, but a worthwhile stop.

The downside of stopping is always the lack of shade…..even for this short stop the truck interior (black of course….!!) would become stickily hot.

Onward to the bluffs….

Most of the elevation gain is the drive up there….which is fortunate considering the heat and lack of shade. At the top was the ranger we spoke to earlier, chatting and answering questions, we were most envious of his office. I’m not sure the pictures convey the scale, the height of the bluffs or the vastness of the valley…….spectacular…!!!

An impossilbly beautiful high viewpoint that lays out the whole valley floor in full panorama….and likely a point where anyone who lived here 3,000 years ago may well have watched that magma oozing out of the ground as it happened.

There are rock pools dotted around the top (we had watched the National Park video in the visitor centre so we knew to look for them..!!) There are populations of tadpoles and ghost shrimp…incredible place to find these tiny swimmers….

Yes…that is a shrimp in the middle of that picture……

We had a wander around in this magnificent landscape…..

There are always the reminders of the recent usage of this terrain.

A quick stop was made on the way back down b/c we spotted this little derelict building (what is a route 66 post without a little dereliction…LOL)

Time for another (small) hike although trying not to be too ambitious as general temp was high….but the black basalt rock makes it even hotter when you are out there.

The Lava Falls Walk is part of an ancient route the indigenous population used to cross the lava fields. For more modern hiking/walking this part is marked with small cairns, although still very easy to become disoriented in these surroundings. Only admiring the surroundings once stationary, gazing at the landscape while trekking across it, well that way lies disaster as you can see from the photos.

….and as the sign suggests…you really don’t want to fall…..this stuff will shred your hands, knees and boompsadaisy…….!!!

What a fascinating place to be……you can clearly see all of the bubbles, swirls and oozing stuff, now frozen in time.

Here’s me for scale again…..

We were stepping carefully over cracks in the earth…..and staring in wonder at the life clinging on in such a harsh place.

There were a couple of spots where we lost the line of cairns and had to backtrack a little…….and amazing how quickly one can become completely disoriented…..( I was also following Alltrails..!!)

The contrast between the sandstone bluffs and the lava fields below is mind-blowingly stark. Such an ancient, untouched landscape……another place where you can really get a sense of how it looked hundreds of years ago…….fabulous place…..

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Fire and Ice. The Mother Road Episode 20

Having thoroughly enjoyed Albuquerque and now with two fully functioning AC units (phew) Scott spotted our next side trip …the Bandera Crater, Fire and Ice.

To reach a convenient jumping off point for Bandera, we picked a campground in Milan, New Mexico….The Bar S. Great little campground. As we progressed across the continent with increasing temperatures, I was learning to check google maps satellite view and choose campgrounds with shade trees…..!!!

So…to Milan, a tiny town just off the highway, with a 30 minute drive to Bandera. After I made the booking, I spotted another campground that also had an onsite Kraft brewery (darn it..!!)

Driving the highway towards Grants/Milan we were surprised to be driving through a lava field…well actually a magma field…it’s an astonishing landscape….it looks so recent and hard to imagine how long ago this actually occurred..

The drive down to the Bandera Crater takes you across El Malpais National Monument. It’s an extraordinary landscape…we had no idea that it existed until we were driving through it. A bit of investigation revealed that the first flow is about 10,000 years old and the most recent….3,000 years old. It is astonishing to see the wrinkles and bubbles of magma that looks like it might have happened last year……

Bandera promised a walk to the volcanic rim (it was a very warm for a walk on black lava rock…… 33 Celsius./91F….!!)… and a descent to a frozen cave.

Although not a challenging walk…… it is an extraordinary display of all the varied volcanic features from lave tubes to tree holes…..

A wide variety of plants were clinging to life in this very severe black basalt.

It’s a fairly short walk up to the crater itself with an easy wide trail of crushed basalt.

….and then down the other side to find the path to the caves…..

You have to get all the way to the steps before you see them…..

….and the descent…. not that far but you can really feel the temperature drop as you go down….

Another extraordinary sight/experience….amazing mother earth…..

The visitor centre is another great experience……quite….rustic….and not in the trendy, but very genuine, sense of the word…great little place…..

Next stop was the trailhead for El Calderone……a hike that we had scoped out and planned to follow the next day. The El Malpais area was used by the American military for munitions testing and training in the second world war, Consequently there are warnings about finding old ordnance in the area…. 😮

A trip to the visitor centre for this National Parks gave us another idea tho.

We found the information for a bat outflight which occurs from the larger volcanic caves in this area.( As ever in the US National Parks, the Rangers were super friendly and helpful.) How could we resist….. The planned Ranger led trip ended up being cancelled due to heavy rain that night (bats don’t fly when they are wet..!!) …but we were able to return the next night to the same spot.

We were joined by a group of Boy Scouts and their leaders who had spotted the activity during a trip they had made to hike the Grand Canyon…so they were weary and dusty but very excited. They were a great group to share this amazing experience with.

We waited for the moments just before dusk…and all of a sudden …the cloud of 3000-4000 bats appeared in the cave mouth, swirled a little and then flew east.

They swirled around us…you could hear them and feel the air movement as they whirled around us…..It was a surprisingly emotional experience…..incredible…the photos definitely don’t do justice to what it’s like….

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