Day 3 & 4, Thu & Fri, May 1 & 2, 2008 New Mexico

The wind, which seems to always be blowing out here, really started to pick up in the afternoon. It was blowing steadily at 13 mph, with gusts up to 20 mph. But the temp was in the 70s, so it was still comfortable.

The landscape in eastern New Mexico was flat. I mean FLAT, flat. And there were nearly no trees. If the road rose even a little, you could see for miles. Dean said that's probably where the song came from. The Who was probably driving across New Mexico, and it came to them:

" I can see for miles and miles
I can see for miles and miles
I can see for miles and miles and miles and miles and miles
Oh yeah"

We finally started climbing in altitude, and the landscape changed. All of a sudden, there were
mesas on all sides. It was interesting that this wasn't a gradual change.

We stopped at some ranch in the middle of nowhere to have a Blizzard. Apparently, this ranch family found a way to supplement their income, because they had a huge building with souvenirs (think cheap tourist stuff imported from China), mixed with genuine Native American jewelry, and Minnitonka Moccasins. They also had a Dairy Queen, hence the Blizzards. When we came out, the wind was stronger, and the temperature had started to drop. It was in the 60s, and the wind was blowing steadily at 17 mph, with gusts up to 30.

It turns out that was a fateful stop. Almost immediately after leaving, the car started to overheat. This started a long, frustrating afternoon of trying to figure out what the problem was, and not making much progress down the highway. And it kept getting colder.

In the end, we only made it as far as Albuquerque, NM, although our reservations were for a town in Arizona. And the temp landed in the 30s, with sustained winds of 35 mph, with gusts of 50. We had back-up plans in place for Jeffrey to come get us and tow the car the rest of the way to Las Vegas, if necessary. That wouldn't have been a happy scenario for any of us.

But God is good. Dean figured out the car's problem. It's not fixed completely, but he has it in good enough shape that we can make the rest of the trip without hassle. And we managed to move the reservations in Arizona to the return trip, so there was no loss there.

I did get to see the lights of Albuquerque at night. That's quite a sight. The city basically covers the bottom of a bowl, so from any elevation on the sides, you can see the entire city. The lights were beautiful.

We left Albuquerque in good time Friday, and only had a little more trouble with the car. The landscape became progressively more rocky, and the vegetation dwindled to little more than scrub and cedar bushes as we got into Arizona. We decided to come back by the same route, since we were running late enough at this point that there was no time to stop for pictures. So, we'll get a few shots of the terrain on the way home.

We got into Tusayan, AZ, late Friday afternoon, and met Jeffrey, Christi, and Kiersten. We didn't have enough daylight left to get to the Canyon on Friday, so we started out early Saturday and spent the whole day there. I'll put up pictures in the next post.