Comfort Inn Santa Rosa

A good night prepared me for a longer drive today (about 390 miles/625km). Fortunately, the winds that continued most of the morning died down in New Mexico. The beautiful New Mexico flat top rock formations are always a delight. New smooth roads also gave us a relief from yesterday's roads that my dad used to call "planches à laver ...

... across at the Texas Steak house was great for dinner.<br><br>It has been quite amazing watching the landscape change from intense desert in Death Valley to the Mojave Desert of Nevada to the sagebrush and not much else across northern Arizona and New Mexico to now entering Texas to greenery and acres of cotton growing; plus plenty of Freision dairy herds in this area too, intense farming the way they were herded into pens and hay fed.<br><br ...

We started the day in Eagles territory checking out the "Corner in Winslow Arizona" before setting out for Alberquerque New Mexico, me thinking that will be a long way to drag the co-pilot!! Stopped of at the NM welcome centre for some maps and then at Gallup for breakfast at Cracker Barrel. That was about 10.30. By about 12 we could see we were approaching rain but kept going until we were getting ...

... today along I40 through the Texas panhandle. <br><br>Just a word of warning to anyone traveling along this route, stick close to the speed limit. 10 miles over will easily earn you a ticket. The state trooper was so overzealous, he even tried to wave over a light blue pick-up while in the process of soliciting my ticket. The truck did not stop. On the bright side, I did a favor for the van in front of me that I had been following.

... interesting. I don't know what on earth made stanley marsh decide to bury those cars but it was cool. The sad part was that people have been leaving their empty spray cans all over the place. Then it was onto the mid point cafe in Adrian which was also closed. Then it was into Tucumcari new mexico which looked like it was a ghost town. The one store that I know should have at least still been in business was closed ...

... box to a spare pitch opposite us to effectively reserve it, but didn't tell Mel. While he was gone, Mel was busy packing things away in the bus, but did notice a ranger get out of his truck at the pitch opposite and then drive off a few minutes later. Five minutes later, Neil returned to report his tool box "stolen". We both hot-footed it down to the trailer of the camp host but he wasn't there. And while Neil started to ...

... and got all the tools he needed, he went to work out in the back lot and Mel took herself a few miles up the road to the local library to use the internet. After several hours she returned to find Neil still dismantling away! During the morning there had been a fair amount of rain, but now the sun was out and it was hot again. <br><br>We left around 3 pm armed with just about everything we had come back for and made our ...

... along the highlands to Natural Bridges. The camp site was full but a couple of Albertans took pity on us and let us share their site. They were sleeping in their van so were no using their tent pad. After setting up in the wind we took a drive around the loop to get a look at the three natural bridges for which the park was named. We slept through the windy night and go an early start the next morning and hiked down into the river bed for ...