On Wednesday we were on the road early, leaving Dalhart, Texas around 8:30 a.m.
On the western edge of town, we passed by what must have the biggest cow pen in the world, at least it was the biggest one I have ever seen.
There were cows as far as we could see — thousands of them. I have since found out that this was a feed lot, where the cows are held to be fed. I have never seen anything like this before. It was too foggy to get a good picture.
We saw lots more interesting things along the way from Texas to New Mexico…
Dalhart is famous for the XIT Ranch.
The ranch was a 3,000,000-acre plot of land traded in exchange for the construction of the Texas State Capitol in Austin. The ranch no longer exists, but its history is celebrated with the city’s XIT Museum and Rodeo and Reunion.
As we drove along, the scenery changed slightly from flat to more rugged the closer we got to New Mexico. When we arrived in Tucumcari, we went to the Flying J to fuel up the truck. I am always amazed at the way the most ordinary things are built in the most amazing scenery. At least to me it is amazing scenery, but to people who pass it every day on the way to work, it is just their neighborhood.
At Tucumcari, we finally got off US 54 and started heading west on I-40. While a lot of the time the roadside view is flat and boring, there are some interesting mountains and buttes. We stopped at one rest area and found some interesting plants growing there.
The weather could not have been better, with sunshine and white puffy clouds. But around noon, the winds for which the area is known picked and made driving difficult.
Albuquerque has some of the prettiest highway bridges I have ever seen. The intersection of I-40 and I-25 is shown in this picture. Some of the bridges in New Mexico have Native American designs incorporated into them, which I found quite interesting.
Also in Albuquerque, there were several sculptures along the side of the road. One I found quite interesting looked like a giant stainless steel aloe plant.
We saw lots of trains, which we noticed seemed to be much longer than the trains we have seen in the East. But then we decided that the reason they look longer is because we can see the whole train all at once, since the landscape is so wide open out here.
We stopped for the night in Grants, New Mexico at the Blue Spruce RV Park. It is a very small campground, in front of a mobile home park. The campsite fee for the night was $15, which included cable TV. Even though it was just off I-40, there was no highway noise to keep us awake.
If you are in Grants and have time to stay a couple of days, you really have to go to Sky City at the Acoma Reservation. It is the oldest continuously occupied village in the United States. You will have to pay a fee to be able to use your camera there. It is also required that you ask people before taking their picture if it is okay with them to do so.
The Ice Caves and Bandera Volcano are 25 miles south of Grants. The ice caves have been attracting visitors for more than 1,200 years. We didn’t have time to stop this time, but these two places are on my list for the next time we go through there.
My hubby and I have been living in a travel trailer and working at campgrounds and resorts for the past several years. We decide where we want to go, and look for a job there.
