Traveling to Mexican Hat, Utah 5-3-08

We had a long day today. We left Tijeras at 9:20, fueled up and hit the road. We took 40 west and in Albuquerque picked up 25 north. Going through cities makes me anxious and I’m not the one doing the driving. About 15 miles north of Alb. we picked up highway 550 north. It was a nice four lane highway with gorgeous scenery, but no good places to ever pull out to gawk at the views.

East of Bloomfield, NM we crossed the Continental Divide, it's elevation was 7,380 feet.

In Bloomfield we stopped and fueled up and Larry was ticked that $3.999 was good. He believes we shouldn’t be paying over $1.00 a gallon for diesel and the fact that when we hit the road four years ago it was under $2.00 and when it hit $2.00 he was cranky, so you can imagine how much I’ve heard about the fuel prices over the last four years! He’s right though. May of last year it went over $3.00 and in less than a year we were paying over $4.00. Just this year it went up fifty seven cents! We are amazed at how many people don’t realize the direct connection between the rising fuel costs and the rise in groceries and other things.

Any way, back to today, we picked up 64 west and checked out Farmington. There are a lot of oil fields here and that surprised us, so Farmington was very industrial with lots of businesses connected to oil, energy and hardware. It was bigger than expected and their Main Street was kind of cute.

We stopped at the Safeway there to pick up a few things. A homeless looking man asked Larry for some money…I carried on into the store and got started with the shopping. Larry came to the door and told me he was staying with the truck…so I knew something about the guy out there made Larry uncomfortable. I finished my shopping and as I head around the side where we parked the rig a Police Unit was stopped in the driveway. I wasn’t sure if I should continue on to the truck, but Larry saw me and didn’t indicate I shouldn’t keep going. The cop had a guy handcuffed and laying face down on the sidewalk….interesting.

After Larry refused the man any money the guy walked around our trailer and Larry kept an eye on him. The guy checked out a parked car and walked over behind our trailer again and picked up a big rock. Larry called 911 and while he was on the phone the guy leans nonchalantly against the car and then tries to break the window with the rock. I put the groceries away, Larry talked to the cop and then we headed on west! Farmington did not give us a warm fuzzy feeling!

There was an RV Park in Shiprock, but after scoping it out, there wasn’t anyone in the office, we decided to keep on trucking…not a warm fuzzy place either. The Shiprock formation looked more like a castle to us than a ship, I didn't get a very good photo of it, it was on Larry's side of the truck.

Most of the day we were at high altitudes, six to seven thousand plus feet. We crossed into Arizona and then picked up 160 west until we came to 191 north into Utah and then we picked up 163 south to Mexican Hat.

Mexican Hat is a teeny town next to the Mexican Hat Rock. The RV Park is small and behind a store/restaurant combo, but WOW, what scenery! It is just a short walk down the hill to the San Juan River. It is a big, swift river that flows into Lake Powell, which is the Colorado River damned up.

I took about two hundred pictures! Some were blurry of course taking them out the window of the moving truck, but most were good. Utah has the most stunning scenery, but then I love rocks! I also love flowers and there are a lot of wildflowers blooming everywhere.

We got into the RV Park at 5:30 and we had traveled 333 miles today. Our necks were sore with all the swiveling we did to catch sight of all the great scenery! LOL! Most of the first pictures are in New Mexico, but don't hold me to it! The lizards were here in Mexican Rock, Utah...they don't want to be thought of as New Mexican Lizards!

These last pictures are all here at Mexican Rock, one is of the RV Park from down below and the red/orange wall of rock is what I can see here from my window. The San Juan River flows at the base of those red rocks. It’s a good thing rocky scenery isn’t noisy or we wouldn’t get any sleep tonight!