We wake up to a still clouded but dry Albuquerque and take it a bit easy with breakfast and packing. Today’s route will take us out of New Mexico, and into Arizona, and from reading the guide we know there aren’t very many stops along the way. Also, we’ll find out when we cross into Arizona, it’s one hour earlier there than in New Mexico, which was at Mount Time. Actually, this surprises me since I thought Arizona was on Mountain time too. After some googling later on I discover it IS on Mount time but does not have daylight saving so that explains the difference. Anyway, for us it does not matter much, we live by the time of day anyway.
It is noticeable that we are in true dry country now. There is still vegetation but it’s the kind that grows in arid climates and the ground between is rocks and sand. Luckily, due to the clouds I guess, it is not very hot until later in the day.
We stop for a moment in Laguna, where the San Jose Mission Church, from 1710, is located. We can’t go inside because there’s a service going on. It is Sunday, after all.
The next stop is Budville, where an abandoned store can be seen along the road. After that, the road leads us past old lava flows, called “malpais”. It’s kind of strange to see the black lava in this otherwise yellow and red landscape. The next, somewhat bigger place is Gallup, and that is the final town in New Mexico.
East Arizona appears to be flatter than New Mexico. It is also very windy and there are a lot of very very dark clouds on the horizon. There are some parts of the old road we could drive but they are mudroads and not adviced when it is raining. Given the threatening clouds, I don’t want to risk getting stuck and we stay on the Interstate, the only other option here. And so, we advance rapidly on Holbrook. We do pass the Petrified desert exit and shortly debate doing that location today (it’s scheduled for tomorrow) but decide against it. First off, it’s 37C outside, which makes getting out of the car for pics not nice, and we don’t want to rush it. Everyone says you need to take your time there because it is very beautiful. So we’ll do that tomorrow.
Holbrook is a sleepy little town, with an old sign here and there, and one of 3 remaining wigwam motels. We take some pics at the wigwams and I find them pretty small. I’m kind of glad we don’t stay here haha. Instead, we stay in Brad’s Desert Inn, a very nice and older motel close to the wigwams. It is nice to be there early for a change, and be able to relax a bit. We’ve had a few long days in the past week!
A special applause for our brave Volvo. Today it is exactly two years ago that we got the registration papers and could drive around legally with the C70! The poor baby hasn’t driven as intense as the past 10 days ever but she is holding up very well!