Jus' Gallupin' Thru

Three hundred and fifty five miles of beautiful New Mexico scenery got us to Gallup, New Mexico, on Tuesday evening. Everything performed flawlessly, so we were happy to travel a longer distance than we would normally like to go. The route took us north on Interstate 25 through Truth or Consequences, Hatch, and Elephant Butte. Pretty nondescript countryside, but we saw a sign indicating a road leading to the Very Large Baseline Array. This keeps an eye (or ear) on the universe and it's unique noises through a collection of huge radio antennas that point toward the sky. Think of ten antennas, each measuring about 82 feet in diameter, all tracking the same point in space in unison, effectively becoming an antenna ten times the size of each individual unit. The data collected is processed via computer that accounts for the rotation of the Earth, as well as the slight shifts in the crust of the Earth over time. Hope they find something!

We turned west at Los Lunas, taking SR 6 to Interstate 40, so as to bypass Albuquerque. Forty miles of the road were freshly paved and absolutely wonderful; three miles were under construction, and down to one lane. Still, it was a great bypass.

Getting on our old friend, Interstate 40, we drove west through Grants, Prewitt, and Thoreau, and crossed the Continental Divide before arriving at the USA RV Park on Historic Route 66 in Gallup.

We had planned to stay four days in Gallup, but ran out of things to do about noon on the second day, so we packed up our gear and hit the road. I40 passes through some beautiful red rock country as it approaches Arizona, and then the colors change to a light grey. Beautiful!

We crossed into Arizona. Evidently not wanting to be left out, even Arizona has it's share of wildfires. Fortunately, their's are grassfires that eventually burn themselves out.

So, three hundred and twenty nine miles from Gallup we rolled into Kingman, following historic Route 66.

We pulled into the Fort Beale RV Park at about 5:30, just before closing time, and were assigned a nice site in the pull-through section. This park slopes rather dramatically from the street to the rear, so we had a bit of a side--to-side leveling issue, which was adequately addressed by Nessie's onboard leveling system. After consecutive days of 300+ miles, we were ready for bed early.

We are staying here a total of three nights, and then will move on into SoCal to visit family. Nice place this Kingman!