USA Road Trip » New Mexico

Day 19 Great Smoky Mountains National Park to Paducah Kentucky

admin — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 13:58:29 +0000

We left camp in the Smokies, driving through the are north, which was very green and beautiful. Along the sides of the highway, there were fields of wild daffodils, and many blossom trees – spring has only just started in this part of the US.

It was then back on the I-40, which we last left in the Texas Panhandle (north texas). All was good, we drove through Nashville Tennesse without dropping below 50 mph (80 kph), which tells you two things.

1. That the USA Interstates are very good at getting you through large cities with no congestion.

2. We are not country music fans.

Then it started to rain. In the 19 days we have been in the USA, we have seen two cold fronts sweep across the country. Both times there have been severe thunderstorms and tornados. Yesterday a tornado almost completely wiped out a town in Wisconsin. However this is just normal life in the US. They get severe storms and tornados often.

So we were on the I-24 heading north, and it rained more and more and more. The traffic slowed and slowed. It was hard to see the tail lights of the semi-trailer only 100 metres in front. It was very, very heavy rain. We heard on the radio, some areas received 3 inches of rain (75mm) in only an hour or two. There were tornado watch warnings for Tennesse and Kentucky, areas that we were driving through.

The rain continued on and off (although not so heavy) until we got to Paducah Kentucky.

Day 3 Gallup New Mexico to Santa Rosa New Mexico

admin — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 03:31:44 +0000

We left Gallup driving through the interesting New Mexico landscape. It is very like the area around and north of Alice Springs in Australia. We passed several Indian Casinos on the I-40. The Casinos are built on Indian Reservations, because they are exempt from local and state planning restrictions.

We can travel at a fair speed along the I-40. The speed limit is 75 miles per hour (120km/hr), and plenty of cars (and semi-trailer trucks) pass us when we travel at the speed limit.

We headed into Albuquerque, and the Old Town area. We wandered around the old (and touristy) area. We had a Mexican lunch at La Hacienda.

Albuquerque

Albuquerque is a nice looking town of 550,000. They seem to embrace the desert enviroment with houses and buildings in subdued desert colours.

We left heading east, finishing up at Santa Rosa. We’ll be in Texas tomorrow.

Day 2 Needles California to Gallup New Mexico

admin — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 16:24:50 +0000

We left Needles a bit late, after stopping at the Post Office so Judy could post a parcel. We headed east again, into Arizona on the I-40. We crossed the Colorado River, and stopped for fuel at Kingman ($3.59 a gallon). Further east to Flagstaff, where we got a fuel bottle for our stove.

Between Kingman and Flagstaff there was some old snow still laying about. We spent a fair bit of the day at above 1800 metres altitude.

East of Flagstaff we stopped at Meteor Crater. This is a very recent crater, only 50,000 years old, and much deeper that the meteorite crater we visited at Wolf Creek.

Meteor Crater Arizona

It was then off to Winslow Arizona, which is famous for being in the lyrics of the Eagles song “Take It Easy”.

: Greg standin’ on a corner in Winslow, Arizona

Judy with the flat-bed Ford, on the corner in Winslow Arizona (or, if you prefer ... It's a girl, my Lord, near a flatbed Ford ...)

Here are the relevant lyrics:

Well, I’m a standing on a corner
in Winslow Arizona
It’s such a fine sight to see
It’s a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed
Ford slowin’ down to take a look at me

And here are The Eagles singing it:

The souvenir shop on the opposite corner had a poster in the window advertising an Eagles gig in Winslow, some time in 1975

For dinner we drove into the centre of Gallup, and ate at a little Mexican Dinner called Jerry’s. Great food, great atmosphere and as ‘whitefolk’ we were definitely in the minority. We used Trip Advisor to find out about restaurants in Gallup and Jerry’s was at the top of the list. It’s located in a side street just back from the main street, and we would never have found it by ourselves. I think we’ll be using Trip Advisor a lot from now on, to find places we might not have found otherwise. We do have an old Lonely Planet guide (1999) with us, but the internet is much better for current information.