New Mexico Road Trip

Hey yinz guys! My sister, cousin and I just started a long road trip a few days ago. We left Pittsburgh and are headed to New Mexico and Arizona!

We have some offroad trails planned and a little camping.

We left on Sept 21. The first few days were uneventful. We drove through Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. We then followed some of the old route 66 stuff like the Meramac Caverns and the Blue Whale slide and the Cadillac Ranch through Missouri, Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle. Here on day three we're finally in New Mexico at Tucumcari.

Some Pics from the first three days!

The Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio. Awesome museum and totally free! They have some legendary stuff. These pics are from the new "Experimental/Ground Breaking" hanger. This is like .01% of the exhibits they have there!



Meramac Caverns, we didn't actually do a cave tour, only saw the gift shop. Legend has it Jesse James hid some gold in the cave. There's no actual evidence saying he did, but there's no evidence saying he didn't...



Hats are fun!



We ate lunch here in St. Robert, Missouri! The biscuits and gravy were super good!



The Blue Whale slide Catoosa, Oklahoma. Used to be a swimming hole in the Route 66 heyday. Now the pond has E. Coli and brown recluse spiders so swimming is prohibited. The slide itself was restored by volunteers recently and opened for public admiration! You can climb all over it, at your own risk of course!


Pop's Soda Pop Store! Arcadia, Oklahoma. Soda flavors you've never ever heard of and some you wish you hadn't! There's so many kinds it's unbelievable! We got a six pack of random flavors. The place has a cool design and sells gas too!







Some pics of the Cadillac Ranch. The paint on the cars is literally a few inches thick in places!



See the bulge on the wheel? That's all paint! It's kinda squishy and rubbery.



More pics to come! I'll try to post up a few on Sunday. Saturday we'll be off the grid!

Tomorrow we're gonna see the governor's mansion in Santa Fe and do some off roading at Valles Culdera National Preserve if we can get a permit. Or maybe Santa Fe National Forest if we can't. We're gonna camp out in Santa Fe NF.

Thanks for tuning in!

 

Yesterday we drove through Santa Fe where they were hosting a cool arts festival. We looked around a bit and drove on towards Valle Caldera National Monument. To get there we went through Los Alamos where much of the Manhatten Project took place.

We planned on getting a back country travel permit for Valle Caldera but they were all gone by the time we arrived. They issue 30 per day.

Valle Caldera. It would have been cool to explore the back country.



We drove on to Santa Fe National Forest where we would camp the night. We also planned to do some 4x4 roads to some hot springs but ran out of daylight. We set up camp and prepared for a very cold night.



Ramen noodles on a classic SVEA 123. My great uncle used to carry this very stove with him when he traveled on his motorcycle in the 60s! Still works like a charm!



We all slept poorly that night. Temps went down to the upper 30s and we weren't quite prepared for that. The sleeping bag I had was comfort rated to 45*F, even with an additional blanket on me and wearing several layers of clothing it was very very cold. I ended up getting up at like 1am and re-stoked the fire with whatever I could find. We were all up by 5:30 and gone by 7:00.

Our main stop today was the Very Large Array, the world's largest radio telescope installation. The size of these things is incredible. There are 27 dishes that can be spread out over 22 miles on a customized railway system.



You can do a cool walking tour with a few interactive exhibits. They allow you to get pretty up close to one of the dishes.



Each dish is 81 feet in diameter and weighs 230 tons!



This is only about half of the dishes on the site! The entire site works like one gargantuan instrument run by a super computer that can do 16 quadrillion calculations per second!



The Very Large Array is a great stop for anyone with an interest in astronomy or technology.

 

What, no update? Where are some trail pics?

 

Aw c'mon dude! We were off the grid for a night!

 

Yesterday we did the old Apache Trail. It's an old Native American route that was turned into a major road for the time. It goes from Apache Juction to Roosevelt.



Woot! Should say "Fun Begins"!



A pic of the road. It was really tame. We even passed a Cadillac coming the other way! Honestly the scenery was cool and the remoteness was neat but the road was so badly washboarded it was kinda miserable.



The upper sections were cool. Lots of elevation gain and switchbacks.



We ate lunch here at Tortilla Flat! I got the "Wrangler Dawg", a beef hot dog on a pretzel bun smothered in nacho cheese, bacon and green chiles. And fries! So good!



We then made our way to the campground at Lost Dutchman State Park in Arizona. Here's a pic of our spot for the night. Excellent view and since it's kinda off season there were very few other patrons!



Sunrise on the Superstition Mountains!



Today we wanted to do a 4x4 road up to Mt Lemmon near Oracle, AZ. It's in the Coronado National Forest, Catalina District. The morning was somewhat stormy, we had rain and wind on the way there that had us second guessing the trail. Fortunately the weather turned really nice by the time we got there! The road started out nicely groomed and a bit wet and muddy.



Later it became very rocky and rugged. We aired down to 20psi (from 32) and it made a huge difference in the harshness of the ride. With the E rated tires I'm running I probably could go down to 15 or less but I didn't want to chance popping a bead.



The road got pretty gnarly in spots. I don't have any good pics of these spots because I was taking some short vids with the camera. I never actually needed 4wd though, just crawling up in 1st gear. In a few spots I almost needed low range just because of the steepness and how slow I was going. I gotta do the 2lo mod!

A view from the top and Tucson far far below. The elevation here was about 8000 ft.



Air nup at the top! Thanks to @ramonortiz55 ! The twin ARB from the recent group buy makes short work of this!



The mountain is really interesting from a vegetation stand point. We read that going from the base to the summit is the vegetative equivalent of traveling from Mexico to Canada! At the base is dry desert and cactuses. a bit further up it becomes like rolling grass land. Further yet and it's like a deciduous forest, almost jungle like. And finally at the summit is an alpine style pine tree forest! Pretty neat.

The front half of the road is paved. We came up the "Back way to Mt. Lemmon". So we snaked down into Tucson where we saw the military's airplane graveyard. It's a huge yard full of operational planes and parts for emergencies and whatever.



Also saw some A-10s flying around! They are one of the coolest airplanes in our arsenal! (image cropped)



It was a good day! I'm glad the weather cooperated for our little trail run. We're gonna look for some other stuff for tomorrow.

 

Some pics of Saguaro National Park West. We did an easy dirt road into the park instead of the paved way. Lead to some cool out of the way places. The cactuses are everywhere around here!





Some of them are huge!



After leaving the park we visited the Ironwood Forest National Monument just a few miles away.



There was a gate to pass through, latching it behind you and seemingly miles and miles of this...



Small gnarly trees and a few dirt roads. We explored around a bit but did not spend much time here. Still cool in it's own way.

We didn't do much the rest of the day. We went to a nearby air museum just to check out the gift shop. I guess since the airplane graveyard is here also they had old used aircraft parts for sale in the gift shop! I struggled to rationalize buying an EGT gauge or giant pitot tube for my truck! Didn't take pics of that for some reason...

The rest of the day I kinda just vegged out in the hotel room. It's nice to relax after so many days of long driving.

 

The next day we did another 4x4 trail. This one I got info on from the forum here. Post 7466

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/jeepandrews-az-trail-runs-campouts.265528/page-374#post-8834617

http://www.experience-az.com/adventures/4wd/chinacamp/chinacamp.html

The road to the trail was called Middlemarch Rd and was wide, flat, and smooth! Great fun, I was averaging about 45mph for the 12 miles or so of this road. You could go faster but people do live around there so I thought even 45 was pushing maybe.



The road eventually narrows and you enter into Coronado National Forest. You turn left onto what I guess is called Gordon Tank Rd, but there are no signs. We actually passed the turn and went a half mile too far. The info said you'd turn at about 15 miles after turning onto Middlemarch, but I found the turn to be after only about 13.



The road gets pretty rough. The write up says they got some pre runners and even a 5 lug up this road. I don't doubt it, but I wonder if conditions have gotten worse since the write up. There were a few times I used low range to slowly crawl over some larger rocks in the road. There are steep drop offs at times and you're almost guaranteed to get some pin stripping on your ride, I sure did! I hit my skid a few times and sliders once. Adventure!

The trail eventually passes through a narrow split in a rock face and comes to an old mining settlement that makes a great campsite. There's a few old concrete slabs left from yester years.



The return trip. For the way back I aired down to 20psi. Smoothed it out a bit. I should have done that for the way up but it kind of slipped my mind. A narrow, rocky, cactus lined road. Steep drop offs but the road itself was not very steep.



After the trail run we visited Tombstone, the site of the famous shootout at the OK Corral. We then pretty much drove straight on back to I-10 to US-70 and up to Alamogordo, NM. When we came over the mountain pass outside of Las Cruces we saw a view of incredible nothingness. In this pic you can see the White Sands Missle Base. Man there was just nothing for dozens of miles. A huge wide open expanse.



It's a rare site to see that much nothing! Kind of makes my imagination run wild.

Tomorrow we visit White Sands National Park!

 

*Cacti

Ironwood lol

 

I forgot to get you my gopro for epic trail footage!

 

Whatev... I like cactuses, lol

Go pro would've been cool. Maybe next year.

 

You should make the trip up to Cloudcroft and Ruidoso if you get the time.

 

Today was another nice laid back day. We only traveled about 30 miles from the motel. First we visited Pistachioland Tree Ranch. They have the world's largest pistachio and all kinds of goodies.



We then went on to White Sands National Monument. This was a unique place. The roads are so wide and everything's the same color, it's kinda surreal driving around.



Walking through the dunes was also kind of surreal. It's so bright with the sun and the white gypsum sand it's hard to open your eyes! Sunglasses would have been nice! The temps were somewhat cool but it's hot in the sun, there's no shade anywhere. Walking was easy, the sand had a hard consistency. It had just rained the night before so that probably helped but they say the gypsum sand retains moisture even in the hottest weather.



A view of the mountains in the distance, still cloudy.



Random tree!



Tomorrow we go on to the Trinity atomic bomb test site and Roswell New Mexico!

 

Today we drove to the Trinity test site. It's literally in the middle of nowhere. From Alamogordo to the turn to the White Sands Missile Base was over 100 miles and your pretty much in the missile range the whole way. There's signs here and there that say the road will be closed when the sign is flashing due to ordinance testing.

It's pretty much this for 2 hours to get to the gate where you turn into the missile base.



I took about another hour to wait through the checkpoint line and to drive to the actual site. The site is miles from the checkpoint. There's nothing around except an occasional small shed or bunker, but still pictures are forbidden til you get to the Trinity site.

Trinity! There were a crap ton of people. I didn't think it would be so crowded! It was like a county fair or something. There were even people selling mugs and T-shirts with mushroom clouds on them! I was like, "Really?" The first atom bomb was a great scientific breakthrough but it's not exactly something to celebrate like that. at least in my opinion.



This obelisk marks approximate ground zero. On this spot in 1945 the world changed forever.



We found some Trinitite! It's a foggy green radioactive glass made from the surrounding sand in the intense heat of the explosion. Collecting it is illegal as it's technically stealing form the government and can land you in big trouble. It's also radioactive, so you wouldn't want to stash it in your pocket right next to your balls! We still saw people picking up pieces though.



We then drove on to Roswell! My sister was stoked on all the alien bullshit around. It's kind of amusing.



We stopped briefly at the alien museum just for souvenirs.



Huh, who'da thought, aliens love Coke...



There was a newspaper reproduction in the gift shop of the original Roswell crash story. After reading it, it sounds to me like a man who had no idea what he was looking at found some remnants of a weather balloon. I doubt you could make a space craft out of "Strips of rubber, tin foil, some sticks and pieces of 'very strong paper'"

I think a rustic ranch working man found some shiny sciency do dads and made some wild assumptions. I don't mean to put the guy down, he himself says he regrets ever telling anyone about his find. It's be like someone presenting me with a bunch of jet engine parts and asking me what they were for. Of course, having never torn apart a jet engine, I would have no idea. Set up that scenario in the heat of the space race in the 50s and I too may suggest my jet engine parts were from the latest space craft. I'm just sayin'...

 

No real update today. We drove from Roswell NM to Greenville Texas. Texas is very big... and flat.

 

Subscribed!

Looks like an awesome trip.

 

Nother update. Today we drove from Greenville, Texas to Meridian, Mississippi. Again we didn't really stop much or see anything crazy.

For the last leg of our trip we planned on taking a ferry to Ocracoke Island and driving up the seashore to Kitty Hawk. We were gonna camp one night on Ocracoke but we will probably be changing plans because of hurricane Matthew. I think we can still beat the storm and take the ferry Wednesday evening but instead of camping on Ocracoke (it's supposed to be windy and rainy that evening) we'll probably play it safe and try to find a room in Hattaras.

We'll see...

 

Good Luck! Be safe out there!

 

Welp, it seems they started evacuating much of the North and South Carolina coast so I guess the Outer Banks is out for us. That's a super bummer. We were all really looking forward to getting to the ocean and doing some beach driving. At any rate our prayers go out to all the people who have homes and businesses at risk.

Our new plan is to go inland from our room tonight in Columbia, SC to the Smokey Mountain NP area. We may check out the Biltmore mansion, which is also the site of this year's Overland Expo! Unfortunately we will be a few days early for it but we may see some set up. We'll check out the smokey mountains and spend a night in Cherokee, then wake early to drive the Tail of the Dragon road! It's kinda up in the air after that.

 

Tail of the Dragon! I was just out there 2 weeks ago. Beautiful down that area.

 

aw man! how far were you guys from Amarillo when you drove in Texas?