In case anyone’s been wondering, we did make it to Albuquerque. If you need to catch up on the first leg of our trip, you can find it in Part I. We left off with our stay at Labaddie Brewing in Labadie, Missouri, after a visit to the Gateway Arch in St. Louis.
The next day was mostly a driving day, although we stopped at Shaw Nature Reserve in Gray Summit, Missouri, for a morning walk/run.
That night we stayed at the Joplin, Missouri, KOA (Kampgrounds of America). In the morning, Mark ran and I walked loops around the campground before we got on the road. We also had to deal with a cooler leak before we left. This one wasn’t as bad as the leak that happened on our previous trip because we learned to store everything in plastic bins this time. Still, we had some mopping up to do.
As you can see from this photo, the campground was mostly gray dusty gravel that was roused into clouds of gray dust in the morning by a small tractor-pulled rake. It took days to get the dust out of our shoes!
Another long day of driving followed. We entered Oklahoma and landed at our Harvest Hosts destination just after 4 pm: The Stafford Air & Space Museum in Weatherford. We had enough time, or so we thought, to tour the museum before the 5 pm closing time. We were wrong. The museum is named in honor of Weatherford’s hometown hero, Lt. General Thomas P. Stafford, who flew on both Gemini and Apollo missiions with NASA. The museum documents the history of flight with loads of fascinating exhibits and artifacts. We didn’t even get through half of it before closing time.
Out in the parking lot, we were one of two camping vehicles staying the night. We pulled out the Weber grill and Mark grilled some chicken for dinner. The temperature was still fairly warm, so we took a walk through the cute little neighborhood behind the parking lot after dinner. Small neat houses lined wide streets with Hallmark-movie street names like Hayride, Harvest, Cloud Nine, Pumpkin, and Falling Leaves.
The next morning we made a pit stop at the local Walmart and headed west to Arizona by way of Amarillo, Texas. We’d found a Nature Reserve in Amarillo online that looked like a nice place to walk and run. Their website warned of a road closure and gave directions on how to reach their entrance. But road work popped up in every direction we tried to turn in Amarillo. So frustrating! We drove in circles and couldn’t get near the Reserve. We gave up. Our destination for the evening was Tucumcari, New Mexico, so we set our sights on that and left Amarillo behind.
The scenery (and stopping to grab lunch) helped to soothe the frustration. Lots of open land, cows, and wind turbines along the way. Central Time zone gave way to Mountain Time, so we arrived at the Tucumcari/ Route 66 KOA campground in early afternoon.
It was early enough that we thought we’d roll out the awning to shade the sliding door side of the van. The sun was intense. But so was the wind. We took the awning down after ten minutes of strong wind gusts. Mark went out for a run, instead, doing 6.6 miles on route 66 in Tucumcari.
The temperature dropped overnight and at 5 am, with the temp inside the van at 57 degrees, we decided to put the heat on. Our first (chilly) New Mexico sunrise:
We left the campground mid-morning and headed toward Santa Fe. Our friends in Albuquerque were out on a day trip to Sevilleta and wouldn’t be home until late afternoon, so they recommended Santa Fe and the Randall Davey Audubon Center & Sanctuary for us. We enjoyed another scenic drive along the way — so different from New England landscapes. Freight trains with what looked like a hundred cars became a common sighting, as well.
The Audubon Center turned out to be a gem! Beautiful views, trails, hummingbirds, artists at work, and more. I walked around, birdwatching and taking photos, while Mark ran on one of the trails.
Our Albuquerque friends texted us when they were on their way back home, but we almost didn’t want to leave the Audubon Center—it was so beautiful. Reluctantly, we did. And we arrived in Albuquerque just in time for green chile stew for dinner!
There’s so much more to say, but it’s taken so long to get this post done due to poor cell phone and wi-fi reception that I’ll stop here and fill you in on our Albuquerque adventures in my next post. Meanwhile, we continue to meet all sorts of people and see some amazing natural and human-made wonders.
Peace. 🙂
Chapter 3 