LEAVING T or C AND THE DUSTY WIND
SouthWest Bird of Paradise in our alley in T or C.
We had planned to leave Truth or Consequences NM on Tuesday May 7th. It was extremely windy and blowing dust everywhere on Monday so we lost a day of packing The MotherShip, getting her ready for the trip to Bluff and our meeting up with RV Sue. Good thing too! On Tuesday morning Sue called while Chuck was shopping in WalMart. She needed a new inverter, hers had died and she could not get online easily without it. As luck would have it, WalMart had the inverter Sue needed! If we had left on Tuesday as planned... well, let's just say there are not many inverters for sale on our route to Bluff Utah!
We left late on Wednesday morning headed up I-25N to Socorro NM where we turned West on Highway 60. If you have never driven Highway 60 through NM you should! West of Socorro you end up with the oddest sight..... huge antennas facing up to the skies! The Very Great Array!
The road settles down to wide open spaces when you first see the huge dishes facing skywards for miles! Even in this photo, we were 4 miles away using a zoom lens!
After passing the Very Great Array, the flat lands gave way to more beautiful mountains. We came to Datil NM and just a few miles past it was the BLM campground of Datil Wells. Boondocking only but beautiful and well cared for. Both back-in and pull through spaces available for $5 for non-seniors and $2.50 for seniors is great rent! We plan to stop for a few days on or way back but for now we were on a mission to get Sue her inverter!
But we HAD to stop in Pie Town NM first! YES there really is a place called Pie Town!
Entering Pie Town from the East is lots and lots of windmills on display!
The next thing you see is the Pie*O*Neer Cafe! We pulled in for pies! One for Sue, one for us! Yeah, right! At $25.00 PER PIE! I settled on 2 slices of apple cranberry pie at $5.00 each! Sorry Sue, she never got a taste!
Leaving Pie Town we saw this sign....
DUH! Ya Think ????
When Highway 60 met Highway 191 near Springerville AZ, we headed north to our next night of camping in Chinle AZ at the beautiful Cottonwood Campground at Canyon de Chelly AZ.
Chuck and I had been dancing around rain showers all day. Shortly after we had the MotherShip all set up, the showers caught up to us! After a brief rain, the sky cleared and a brilliant shaft of sunlight pierced through the dark clouds and lit up the cottonwood trees like magic! This is no photoshopping, I promise. Please realize that in normal light, these cottonwood trees are actually sporting bright green, new leaves! But tonight, with a gift from the sun, they turned to pure gold!
I will never understand why Highway 191 south of Chinle AZ is marked as a scenic highway and north of Chinle is not! Highway 191 north of Chinle is totally mind boggling with beauty!
Layers of colors to surprise the eyes!
Rock Monuments around every corner....
Everything came to a screeching halt as a herd of goats walked leisurely across the road!
We thought they were sheep at first, we had just seen sheep being herded by a man in a car. It wasn't until we noticed the horns that they were all goats!
After driving about 2.5 hours from Chinle, passing some of the most amazing scenery, we arrive in Bluff Utah.
RV Sue and Crew arrive to help Chuck set up!
Our campground at Sand Island is near Sue.... plenty long for The MotherShip and crew!
Now we are gonna go spend some time with Sue and Crew, taste testing the local restaurants while ya'll eat your hearts out because we are in this beautiful spot and you are not! LOL not really! We all really love you and we will share our blogs with lots of photos about where we are and what we are doing! Sue writes her blog almost daily when she has a good signal, me ??? maybe once a month but I will try to do better! Sue's blog is:
Happy Trails to you from Chuck, Geri, DoogieBowser and Radar!
