Driving into New Mexico was like driving into a wind tunnel. There were gusts up to 50mph. Windy enough to push you along as you walk down the path to the visitor center. Imagine driving this bus. Mike who is driving behind me, said I looked like I was drunk. Usually I don't like when big trucks pass me, due to the wind turbulence they make, but here I was glad, since they acted as a wind block. So for a moment I wasn't being tossed around like a top.
There were many RV's on the road, all headed for the Balloon Festival. We continued west on RT 40, thru Tucumcari, which Mike says means between a woman's breast....but I'm not sure...he likes those big busted women...
We finally camped at Santa Rosa Campground. We knew we were now in the desert, as only scrub brush and a few cedar or maybe hemlock trees were there. We found that the blowout had done more damage than we thought. The force of the blowout had pushed up the metal of the wheel well and had broken the compartment which houses the dump station. The sewer hoses were ripped to shreds and the sewer release handle was broken. I had to buy a new hose, but the handle caused a smelly drip. I washed it all down the next day.. don't want our DNA all over the place.
It was a beautiful sunset, but still windy. This area is prone to high winds, being so flat. Santa Rosa is an old town, part of the RT 66 revival towns. Everything is RT 66. We drove on it..I didn't get any kicks....
At the campground, our neighbor had one of those $250,000 deluxe RV's. They were from Texas headed for the Balloons. OK, maybe I have a hidden dislike for really rich people showing off, but how do you go camping and have perfectly coiffed hair??? I could see it, here was the rich kid who married the head cheerleader. Or maybe this was one of those Enron execs who paid themselves with our money.
We didn't check out the town, but this was the town my friend Margaret and I stayed in when we were moving her back to PA. We stayed in this cheap motel on RT 66, went to get something to eat, only to find the motel manager was coming out of our room....spooky. We didn't find anything missing, but we barricaded the door that night. We did have a great Mexican meal and a well deserved beer for me.
The next morning we got up early, had a McD's senior coffee and hit the road. The wind had died down some, thank goodness. We were only about 100 miles to Albuquerque.
We stopped for lunch at a Cline Corner roadside tourist place. They advertised all over. We had a great Mexican platter, but the bathrooms were terrible. smelly dirty gross. And for me to say that, you know they were bad, a construction site Porto-potty was nicer.
We at an RV dealership in Albuquerque to buy the new dump station handle, which was $20, but it would cost $105 or more to put it in.. yea right we can do it.....the saga of the dump station handle is coming soon ....
Driving around Albuquerque was not too bad, but we hit rush hour traffic and of course construction, so we pretty much inched our way south onto I25. Meanwhile Mike is driving me crazy, every 5 minutes he get on the walkie talkie "where are we going", which I say "south".
My plan was to stay at the La Mirage RV park in Belen, NM for the night. The GPS put us in the wrong place. If I followed the GPS,, we would have ended up at a Nursing Home....Then we stopped at a Mobile Home park to ask directions, which no one there could speak English. We finally found a man who directed us up the hill. Once there, we were told they were all full, due to the Balloon festival...I should have called..but the lady was nice and called the campground down the road-20 miles- and got us registered there, so off we went- headed for Kiva RV Park.
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