Arches National Park Second Visit

Day 11 of our 2018 Jumbo Road Trip.

Kayenta, AZ. to Green River, UT. We started the morning early with a pre-sunrise drive a few miles north of Kayenta to see if the rumors were true that the Milky Way still exists, and sure enough, it does. After a gourmet breakfast at the McDonald’s across the street from the hotel we packed up and headed back north to drive through Monument Valley as the sun was just coming up. It was an awesome idea, but it faltered in its execution. While there were a few decent photo opportunities, the direction the road runs through the valley there, would have been better lighting available if it was nearing sunset not sunrise. It also didn’t help that when the road crossed into Utah it turned more east than north putting the early morning low sun right in our faces for about an hour and a half.

I planned a short driving day, just 205 miles, so that we could revisit Arches National Park. The first visit back in 2009 we only covered about a third of the park and we wanted to go further in this time. I mentioned back then that it would take a couple days to see the park and I was wrong, we are going to need at least a third visit. The first time we took in Balance Rock, Park Avenue and took the hike to the North and South Windows. This time we covered another 1/3 of the park by taking the hike to Delicate Arch visiting the Fiery Furnace. The Delicate Arch walk was the big time sink. The trail is 1.5 miles long and all up hill to the viewpoint. It gains almost 500′ in elevation along regular trails, bare rock and a couple of narrow ledges, but well worth the effort.

Canyon de Chelly

Day 10 of our 2018 Jumbo Road Trip.

Albuquerque, NM to Kayenta, AZ. No geocaching today. The first half of our trip was on I-40, and although I had selected a few to look for we didn’t feel like it. The second half of the trip was through Indian Reservations and they do not allow the placement of caches on their lands.

The highlight of the today’s drive was a stop at the Canyon de Chelly National Monument. This place wasn’t on our radar and we wouldn’t have even driven by it (I had a different route planned) except for a random conversation with another traveling couple at lunch yesterday in Madrid. The woman running the Jezebel Soda Fountain said that if we had a chance while out this way we should visit the canyon.

Last night in the hotel room we looked up where it was and there it was, right on the other side of the Arizona border. So instead of cutting diagonally north west across New Mexico to get to Kayenta, we headed due west into Arizona and then north, which was only slightly longer and brought us right by Canyon de Chelly. All we had time for was a drive along one of the rims, we picked the south drive because it had more overlooks and were not disappointed.

Once again we have found a spot in the western part of the country that deserves a longer or second visit. Another one of those places is Arches National Park just north of Moab, UT. Guess where we are going to be driving right by tomorrow? Tomorrows route was specifically planed to be 100 miles less than the usual just so we can venture further into Arches than we did back in 2009.

Cattle Abduction

Day 9 of our 2018 Jumbo Road Trip.

Albuquerque, NM to Albuquerque, NM. Lots of geocaching today. We drove a few miles north of the city center to the Alameda Open Space Parking Area to walk a loop around both sides of the Rio Grande River on the Paseo del Bosque Trail. We walked 4-1/3 miles, found a dozen caches and DNF’d just two.

After that we headed back to the east side of town to drive NM14 north back to Madrid for lunch. When we were in the Jezebel Soda Fountain yesterday eating some ice cream the discussion turned to gelato and burritos. They sounded so tempting that we vowed to come back for a breakfast burrito that they serve all day. It is so large that is easily splitable, but because this was going to be our lunch & dinner meal for the day, we each got our own. Mine with the green chilies and Donna’s without. There are a few places to eat in this funky little town and this is the only one we have eaten at, but so far we see no need to try another.

On the way up to Madrid Donna asked, “Did you see that cattle crossing sign? It had a UFO on it above the cow silhouette.” “Nope,” I replied, then I asked, “Go back?” “Yes,” she said. The picture above is evidence that they do exist. Click on the big photo and get a close-up of the sign. Not only is there a little UFO silhouette on above the cow, but there is a small doll eye glued where a cow would have an eye. As we continued on, it seemed like all the cattle crossing signs had been modified. Most all of the signs were pairs back to back on a post, so a sign faced both directions, but only the sign that was facing northbound traffic had been doctored. Funny we never noticed them yesterday…

On the way back to the hotel I took a second pass at the musical road on NM333/Rte66 between Tijeras and Albuquerque. This time, unlike yesterday, I actually got a couple of seconds worth of recognizable music.

Almost 22,000 Half Feet High

Day 8 of our 2018 Jumbo Road Trip.

Albuquerque, NM to Albuquerque, NM. No geocaching today, but we didn’t just sit around the hotel. First we went out to breakfast on the edge of Old Town at the Central Grill and Coffee House. Donna had her go to Eggs Benedict and I opted for the Waffle Dogs (maple sausage links, dipped in waffle batter and deep fried.) Afterwards we drove over to the minor league baseball stadium to check out parking and seating locations. The Albuquerque Isotopes are a Triple A affiliate of the Colorado Rockies and they were playing a matinee game that we thought we might attend.

When we did head over to the game we were unpleasantly surprised to find out that for a week day morning start the place was probably going to sell out the 13,000 plus stadium. Traffic was creeping along to get to parking and there were hoards of people walking towards the stadium. As we got closer and noticed the crowds trying to get into the park we decided we didn’t want to see a baseball game after all.

Instead we took a drive up to the top of Sandia Peak to get a look back down on the town Albuquerque from nearly 22,000 half-feet (10,679 whole feet) high. After coming back down we drove north towards Santa Fe on scenic NM14. We stopped in the small artsy community of Madrid1 where we spent one night instead of two back in 2009.

In spite of it being an off day we drove almost 200 miles and just south of Madrid the Lady Bug ticked over the 22,000 mile mark.

Aliens Crash Land in New Mexico

Day 7 of our 2018 Jumbo Road Trip.

Monahans, TX. to Albuquerque, NM. Finally made up for our slight of Roswell, NM back in 2009 by making it through here on this trip. If it wasn’t for this very interesting “Welcome To” diorama south of town, the several little green men statues in random spots and the International UFO Museum & Research Center (we did go in) this could be any other town of 50,000 people in a desert setting. I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting, but this wan’t it.

This was our longest mileage day, so there was not a lot of time for geocaching. We looked for just 2, the one that was near the above picture on the south side of Roswell and one on the north side that was near the road that branches off US285 leading to the 1947 UFO crash site.

Sand in My Shoes

Day 6 of our 2018 Jumbo Road Trip.

Monahans, TX. to Monahans, TX. A rest day and visit with Donna’s brother day. But first, we got up early and headed just a few miles east of Monahans to do a little geocaching in the Sandhills State Park. We parked in one spot and followed the road for a little under a half mile through the campground to the first cache.

After signing the log we thought it would be cool to walk directly across the dunes to the other cache about a mile away. We made it to about halfway before giving up and getting in the car to drive over to the next one. Turns out it was fun to walk on the dunes, but not that fun.

Much to our chagrin, the second cache was hidden in the middle of the dunes, so we ended up having to “bushwack” our way across the sand about an 1/4 of a mile one way. On this section though there was a lot more desert vegetation making the sand firmer and easier to walk on than the nothing-but-sand sand first trek.

The third and last cache was an Earth Cache where there is no actual container, but questions to answer. There were three questions that needed answering here and we couldn’t find the answers in the usual places, ie. the informational kiosks or signs on the trails. So we went inside the visitor’s center and asked the ranger, she must get that a lot as she had them written down right at the front desk.

We were four for four today as we had picked up one in the town of Monahans itself before making it out to the stat park.

The Windmills of Your Mind

Day 5 of our 2018 Jumbo Road Trip.

Abilene, TX. to Monahans, TX. At a scheduled 205 miles, today’s drive is the second shortest of the trip, so we “killed” some time by first driving into downtown Abilene and walking around looking at the 17 storybook statues that are located near the Visitors Bureau.

We also did a bit of geocaching on our short backroad trip west, again finding 4 of the 5 we looked for.

We drove by two separate wind farm installations on the route, one near the town of Merkel, which has the audacity to call itself the Windmill City and one outside Lemesa where this photo was taken, while we hunted for a geocache along US180. Whenever we encounter a wind farm like this I start to hear in my mind the song The Windmills of Your Mind from the original The Thomas Crowne Affair movie.

Tonight’s meal was Mexican. We have been avoiding it as a cuisine on the trip so far, so that we could reserve our taste buds until we got closer to the real deal. We might have waited another day or so until we got into New Mexico, but Donna’s brother Steve, the reason for the stop in this west Texas town, suggested it for dinner.