Western Travels Days 2-3 February/March, 2016

Tuesday, 2/2.  Our plan was to spend the night in Post, TX, and then head northwest to Albuquerque to see my cousin, Judy, on Wednesday.  Unfortunately, when we left Post, we encountered fierce winds from the north.  It was so strong that the transmission wouldn’t shift into high gear.  The RPM’s which normally are about 1500 were 2200 and my gas mileage was about 5 MPG.  According to the weather, it was going to be that way all the way.   I couldn’t see straining the engine all that way so after about 20 miles, we turned around and went back to the campground in Post.

We had a good rest of the day and in the morning got up to leave, only to find that our water hose had frozen and we had no water.  So I went out with the hair dryer and got it thawed enough to turn the water off and disconnect the hose.  The hose was still frozen so we just threw it in the back of truck and hoped that it would thaw during the day.

Saw a lot of oil wells along the way here in NM.  Loco Hills, operated by Standard Oil.

And the refinery.

We also saw numerous groves of pecan trees.

Flat land with mountains in the distance.

We started our climb up into some mountains on the way to Alamogordo.  

Judy wanted this picture to show that there is snow!

Little did she know (or me for that  matter) that we would encounter a lot more snow as we got farther up into the mountains!

8,650 feet up here and cold again.  We actually stopped and I turned on the heater in the trailer just in case any of the pipes might freeze up.  (But about 10 minutes later we were on our way down and the temps came back up).

Looks like they had just plowed the roads a day or two before we got there. Temp was 17 degrees in Cloudcroft, NM, a popular ski area.  But it was a beautiful trip.
On the way down, a long 8 miles with 6% grades, a tunnel came up.

Almost out of the mountains with Alamogordo in the distance.

And a snow-capped mountain off in the distance.  Not sure what/where it was, but it really stood out.

Got to our campground about 4 this afternoon.  Before we could get setup a guy came over and started talking with us.  Turns out he and his wife are from Luverne, MN. About 25 miles south of Pipestone!!  And he is a cousin of a classmate of mine (Gloria Hermann).  So I had my annual with her picture and he had a current picture on his phone.  After we got setup, we went over to their trailer and visited for a couple of hours.  We made plans to get together with them in August when we are back in MN.

Tomorrow we are headed to Benson, AZ and will spend 5 days there before heading over to Why, AZ to meet up with some friends and will go into MX a couple of days later.

More later…