Loneliest Roads to Wells, NV

We spent most of the day at 75 mph on US Route 50, "The Loneliest Road in America", and then on US 93 north to Wells, Nevada. Nothing to see or stop for along the way, but spectacular scenery with a series of mountain ranges and wide valleys. Stopped at a favorite little Oasis on the border of Utah and Nevada called "Border" for lunch, and lost a few quarters in the slots. This little place is 50 miles from anything in any direction, but it has a motel, cafe, gift shop, gas station and casino!

Should be home by early afternoon tomorrow. After 16 days and about 4000 miles, we are ready to get home! Its been a great trip and we loved traveling in our new VW, which averaged about 44 mpg of diesel.
We saw everything we intended to visit and found some fun surprises along the way.

Unless something spectacular happens tomorrow, this will be our last post of this trip. We hope you have enjoyed reading our blog!

OK, I love "ribbons of road" pictures!

Border Oasis

Rt 50 - "Loneliest Road in America"

Humboldt Range 11,000ft near Wells, NV

Pet Sanctuary, Bryce Canyon and Escalante

Before we left Kanab this morning, had a chance to walk up and down Main Street. Interesting place! Famous as "Little Hollywood"; made many westerns here from the 1920's through the '60s. Plaques along the street recount people like Grefgory Peck and a number of other familiar faces you can't put a name to.

Then, quite by accident, just north of Kanab we came across the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Angel Canyon. This is the largest "no kill" animal shelter in the country. Spread out over 3700 acres in the canyon and employing 500 people, at any one time there will be 1500 animals in residence.....cats, dogs, horses, birds, you name it! They'll host 400 volunteers and 25,000 visitors every year. Amazing! Check it out here Best Friends Animal Society.

Then we headed up Rt 89 to Bryce Canyon National Park. We'd been there before, but its still a breathtaking place. If one had the time, there is some spectacular hiking. From Bryce, we took a spectacular drive on Rt 12 through Escalante and Boulder to Torrey, UT. We'd been here before, too, but this is one of the "top ten" in the country for amazing scenery and variation, so we were anxious to drive it again. It tops out at 9700 feet with a phenomenal view of all of Southern Utah.

Ended the day in Salina, UT, on I70. Decent dinner at Denny's, complete with beautiful sunset!

Recognize this guy, and remember the shows?

3700 acres in Angel Canyon

Pet Cemetery; lots of wind chimes

Sanctuary visitor center

Bryce hiking trails are awesome

The Hoodoos

Perfect weather!

View from 9700 feet 

View from the top of Rt 12

Grand Canyon to Kanab, Utah

Another spectacular day! 80 degrees, not a cloud, virtually no wind! We spent the morning taking in the views from the Canyon's South Rim (The North Rim doesn't open until May 15th - 9000 feet up, they get lots of snow). This is a great time of year to be there; we couldn't imagine what it would be like with large summer crowds. Last evening we had visited Bright Angel Lodge, the "original" hotel built in the '20s by Fred Harvey Co. Interesting story about Mary Colton, an architect (interestingly female) who designed all the stuff that Fred Harvey built over a period of some 50 years! At the East end of the South Rim one finds a place called "Desert View", another hotel built by Harvey/Colton and a wonderful Watchtower, built in 1923, providing  a commanding view.

From Grand Canyon we headed north to the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument. Spectacular purple colored cliffs - cheapy camera can't do it justice! We crossed the Colorado River on the Navajo Bridge at 3500 feet elevation, then headed backup and over the ridge to 8000 feet before dropping down into Kanab, Utah where we stopped for the day. An interesting side trip from there took us to Pipe Springs Nat'l Monument and a restored "fort" built by the Mormons in 1870. One of the few real springs around created a virtual oasis in the desert, complete with Cottonwoods!

While we were in New Mexico and Arizona we spent a lot of time driving through various Navajo reservations. It is very disappointing to see the apparent poverty they live in and to realize they live on Godforsaken land forced on them by the US Gov't. (Most agree that we should be ashamed of our Indian policy)  And, most of the small towns in those states that we visited looked pretty sad and forlorn. Kanab, Utah, however looked totally different! Clean, seemingly open for business. Furthermore, to visit the Mormon "Fort" you go on the Piaute Reservation - they looked downright prosperous!

We got this pretty nice Best Western in Kanab through Priceline for $45.00 (deal!); dinner up the street at Spurs Cafe was excellent!

Navajo crafts roadside - bought a basket from this guy!

Navajo Bridge over the Colorado

Prickly Pear in bloom

Colorado from the bridge

Vermilion Cliffs

Mormon Fort

Petrified Forest and Grand Canyon

Another gorgeous day! We left Grants, NM heading west on I40, through Gallup and stopped at Pertified Forest NP and the Painted Desert. What an interesting find! Its the largest "collection" of petrified trees in the country.....they're everywhere! And beautiful Agate colors.

Then back on I40 to Flagstaff, passing through Winslow and on a few miles of old Rt 66, which looks like a pretty nice city except that it sits at 6000 feet and they have real Winters! From here its 70 miles due north to the Grand Canyon on a very scenic road which takes you through beautiful Ponderosa forests and over an 8000 foot pass. We checked in at the Red Feather Lodge just a few miles outside the park, then went into the park and viewed the Canyon at Mather Point (Mr. Mather is credited with starting the National Park Service - bless him!) By then it was way past our dinner time so we went to the cafeteria at Yavapi Lodge for a pretty decent meal, jostling with a busload of pushy, obnoxious French tourists!

Not sure about tomorrow. We've heard that the road we intended to take through Page, AZ has had a collapse so is closed. Hmmmm.

Painted Desert

Route 66 site

Petrified trees

San Francisco de Asis - Flagstaff

Late afternoon light casts great shadows

Alamagordo, White Sands

First stop today was the White Sands National Monument, about 25 miles southwest of Alamagordo, NM. What a fun place! Huge, pure white sand dunes with remarkably fine sand. A favorite thing to do is to buy a glider at the visitor center and slide down the slopes! We found literally hundreds of school kids on a field trip doing just that! (We passed!) The weather was warm enough, but cloudy and pretty windy.

From there, we went back to Alamagordo and visited the National Space History/Hall of Fame Museum. It was OK, but not great. Struck us as pretty out of date - stuff has happened in the last ten years that wasn't there.

Then we headed north up Rt 54 to Tularosa where they grow lots of pistacios and pecans. We stopped at the famous McGinn's Pistacioland for interesting food souvenirs....and the world's largest pistacio!

Then we headed up I25 toward Albuquerque, took a scenic route detour around it, and ended up in Grants, NM. By late afternoon the wind was howling and we had to deal with dust storms. But, it was 78 degrees!

Painfully slow internet at this Days Inn....and a forgettable dinner.

Tomorrow, Flagstaff and Grand Canyon.

(No photos tonight - I don't have the patience to wait to upload. I'll add them tomorrow)

This place is really cool!

Very popular with the locals- but on Thursday?

Like going to the beach

Blowing sand

Space Museum

World's Largest Pistacio

Carlsbad Caverns and Alamagordo

First stop today was Carlsbad Caverns NP. Its a 7 mile drive up into the mountains from the flat, desert highway 180. The weather continues to be great; the wind has finally settled down! We felt lucky that we were visiting the caverns at a slow time of the year. You can yell from the way this facility is designed, they handle a LOT of people during the summer. The Visitor Center sits at about 5500 hundred feet; the elevator into the cavern goes down 850 feet in about 60 seconds.

You enter into the "Big Room". Even before you start your hike, you see rest rooms, gift shops and a snack bar! The self-guided walk takes you through the "Big Room"; its about 1 1/4 miles around just this one room! Its very dry, unlike most caves you tour which have water everywhere. The sheer size of this room is beyond description! In a word, Spectacular!

One can also take a number of different ranger-led tours through other areas of the cave, including a special evening tour to see the bats fly!

From the Caverns, we drove about 25 miles down the road to Guadalupe Mountains NP. Beautiful mountain scenery with some great hikes for the adventurous with a day to spare. An interesting feature of this place is that it had one of the last remaining ruins of the Butterfield Overland Mail Route. Butterfield, who was involved with Mssrs. Wells and Fargo, contracted with the US Gov't in 1857 to run a mail/passenger coach from St.Louis to San Francisco in 25 days. They made that run for just 11 months; they had to give it up when the Civil War came too close.

Then we headed back out into the desert and on to El Paso and then north to Alamagordo. Except for the mountains in the distance, its not pretty - sand, cactus and litter.

Ever have coffee in a cave?

Great road for a speeding VW!

Finally, lunch outside with no wind!

Capitan - Guadalupe's feature

Southeastern New Mexico, Roswell and Carlsbad

This morning we headed south, staying on secondary roads, across some very flat and uninspiring territory, until we climbed into the Capitan Mountains. We detoured a bit from the main road to find our friend's winter place in Alto/Ruidoso. Coming in from the north we didn't find much, but it turns out the area is a seasonal resort town with many second homes and condos. Heading south, it seemed to go on forever!

On a friend's recommendation we stopped at the Pinon Pottery shop and an Iris Farm then headed on over to Roswell, once again flat and uninspiring. Roswell, of course, is famous for the 1947 Alien Landing. So even though we knew it would be tacky, we stopped at the UFO museum. Now we can say we did!

From there we headed south on down to Carlsbad where we stopped for the day. Finally beginning to see some signs of agriculture and dairy farms. Also lots of Pecan orchards. Had a great supper at the Red Chimney Bar-b-q which included brisket, smoked mac & cheese and fried okra.

Weather is sunny, 60s and VERY windy, causing the air to be loaded with dust, limiting long term visibility.

Caverns tomorrow.

Dust limited the view 

Neat pottery

Will be spectacular in a month!

Welcome to Roswell, UFO town

UFO Museum

Authentic space ship piece

This is what they looked like!