400 miles for us today.....

Another on the road day is now behind us, as we are in the USA Campground in Gallup, New Mexico...  We are now 270 miles from the house in East Mesa...

The big wheels were rolling about 10 AM this morning and the winds had now become Southerly right across all those cattle confinements South of town.... Pheewww......

We never even slowed as we zoomed thru the lots...  One breaths rather shallow as he passes right thru these places....  But in only 40 minutes we were crossing into New Mexico changing our watches to Mountain time...

Often times we stop for fuel or Mc Donalds in Tucumcari, but the timing was wrong and I was only missing about 10 gallons from the diesel tank...

And hour later we were passing Santa Rosa, and Loyce radioed that she wanted to stop at the Micky D's there...  They have a big truck parking lot, so that works well and we spent almost an hour there...

We hit it hard up over the high ground at Clines Corner's and then down the hill into Albuquerque...  It was about 2 PM and the traffic hadn't started for evening drive yet...  We blew right thru at normal highway speeds..

Another half hour stop at Flying J on the West side of town where we picked up 42 more gallons of $3.95 fuel....  Loyce fueled the car over in the car lanes at the same time...

We decided to head on West at about 3 PM....  Gallup is another 130 miles and on the West edge of New Mexico...  We arrived just as the sun was almost gone to the West....  Darkness was complete once we were registered...  $31...  Fairly normal...

It took a flashlight to hook up the utilities, and it is to be 26 degrees here before morning....   This park is at 6500 ft which always makes Gallup a cold stop in the winter....

And I can hear you all saying why such a long day...?  Over 400 miles.... But if you check the weather forecast for Gallup and up over the mountain starting Friday and this weekend, you will learn that snow is in the future....

So, like my normal luck we are ducking nasty weather going up over the mountain, and expect rain and 50s once we get to Mesa..  Warmer weather might be coming back by next week...

Sandy suggests we find another route, and we have used several other routes before, they are all longer but with the snow in the weather forecast we decided to make it quick and as short as possible...

This RV park is right off the West end of the local airport so planes will fly over with their wheels skimming the tree tops, but there is not much traffic after dark..  But the trains run right along the North side of old route 66, which is the road past the front of the park...  Wooo, Wooo!

This is about as long as we ever want to drive in one day...

Retired Rod