Day 111 - Southwest across New Mexico
The RV park wants us out by 11am
and it's not much after that when we hit the road. Although Cedar
City is almost due west of Santa
Fe you can't go directly without a rugged off-road
vehicle so we need to head south and go across in I-40.
The first leg takes us down I-25 to Albuquerque
where we make two stops - a gas station to fill the RV and a Petsmart to stock
up on the special prescription food for Quill and Cosette. Filling up the RV is always a stressful
experience, not just because of the expense (60 gallons today at $2.51 per,
which is by far the "cheapest" we've seen recently) but also because
of the sheer size of our rig. Towing the
car makes it even harder. Today it isn't
a problem until I'm pulling out. Vicky
has guided me around the corner when a car pulls in right in front of me. I hope the driver can't read lips (lol), but maybe
he can since he backs up and gets out of the way. The delay allows a large pickup truck to pull
up in front of a food truck just to the right of my exit. It doesn't stop me - just makes the exit
harder!
Mission
accomplished we head for the pet store. Their
parking lot looks impossible for the RV but I can and do park at the side of
the road and we get the supplies for the cats.
Vicky has planned a route back to the freeway for us but
unfortunately the road doesn't do what the map said it would, so we stop and
work out another route and finally get back on I-25.
From here it's an easy 2 miles to I-30 and all that's left
is 138 miles of freeway driving.
We decide to stop for lunch at a promised rest area 50 miles
down the road only to find it's closed - in fact we can't even find it! Fortunately, a little further on is El
Malpais (more Badlands!) National Monument, which we've
visited before. The landscape in the
area is volcanic in origin and has spectacular black formations among the other
rocks. We remember a large parking lot
and little traffic and sure enough we have the place almost to ourselves. Wince we have done it before, we don't go
into the Visitor Center
but just eat some bread and cheese and continue west.
Vicky had found some campgrounds along the road but we
decide to press on to Gallup, only
20 miles from the Arizona
border. This has 2 advantages - it gives
us more time for tomorrow, when we want to make a couple of stops, and it has a
Walmart where we can park for free overnight.
On this last stretch Quill does something she's never done before - she
settles down on the dashboard in front of the co-pilot's seat. Vicky gets a picture.
All is fine until it starts to rain and I have to turn on
the windshield wipers. Although Quill is
inside and the wipers are outside she doesn't see it that way. the first time the wipers approach Vicky sees
her wince, and then she's out of there!
So it's time for a night at Walmart.
....except that when we arrive at the Walmart we find the
parking lot is completely full - probably a temporary situation as it's around
5pm, but we don't see much space for RV's.
Across the road is a Home Depot with a large parking lot,
and we see 2 RV's parked there so decide to go investigate. On closer inspection we see the first RV is
smashed at the back, and the lady at the wheel says she was just hit by a
driver without insurance. She recommends
that we wait and stay at Walmart, which will be safer.
At this point Vicky checks out the reviews of this Walmart
parking lot and finds people complaining they were awakened at all hours by
panhandlers and will never stay there again.
We've already met one panhandler.
That's mild, however, compared to the person who says his tow car - a Corvette
- was hit in that parking lot in the middle of the night by someone who
obviously did it deliberately. So it's
back to the drawing board!
We sit in the RV and decide there's no point in going back
30 miles to the RV parks we passed, and then find there are no RV parks within
reasonable distance on our going forward route.
What to do? We both remember
about the same time that there's a new Fairfield Inn by Marriott at the other
end of Gallup where we've stayed a
couple of times. Thanks to our travels
we are eligible for a free night there - except that the website is being
upgraded and I can't redeem the free night today.
We call the hotel anyway and they have a room at a
reasonable rate and are happy to have us park the RV in their safe lot, so we
end up spending the night there. But not
before we discover that the RV door didn't close when I came in, and Cosette is
nowhere to be seen! This is a busy
street with lots of traffic and as I've said, not a very nice area so we're
worried until we discover she's under the RV.
After some persuasion she does come out and we're united.
At the hotel we order in a pizza and while it's coming I go
down to the pool, only to find it's full of small kids, so no chance for a
swim. I get an individual "Fire Eater'
pizza - with jalapenos and hot sausage - it's tasty but not overly hot to me
(but if you know me you know that doesn't mean it wasn't hot!". Vicky gets a calzone stuffed with mozzarella
and hot sausage and declares it excellent.
So we get a night in comfort, and a "free" breakfast in the
morning.
The cats can't come into the hotel but we feed them and lock
them in securely and they're fine.
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