Tucumcari, NM

2021-07-26 – Heading to Missouri for the Oregon Trail caravan… Day 4 – Tucumcari, NM to Liberal, KS

The RV park in Tucumcari (a KOA) is mostly for overnight stays – it’s not exactly a vacation resort. By the time we poked our heads out of the Villa at about 9:00 am all the other RVs were gone… It’s a strange feeling, and an odd sight to see…

So we headed out at about 9:15 and we pointed the truck roughly Northeast. Today we will drive though portions of four states!

We soon left New Mexico and entered the Texas Panhandle. Lynda almost shot a photo of the Welcome to Texas sign…

Around 10:30 am we arrived the cute little town of Dalhart, TX, population 8,400. We have driven through many small towns on our various trips, and most of them are decrepit and derelict. Not Dalhart! It is a thriving town with many nice residential neighborhoods

It also has train tracks right through the center of town…

So we stopped and waited. And waited… Finally we pulled off the road and parked. There was a very nice Family Dollar store here, so we went in a bought a few trinket’s

Finally the train moved on. (It had been moving slowly, back and forth – adding or subtracting cars somewhere along the line…)

We continued on, and soon entered the panhandle of Oklahoma. We spent about 100 miles in Texas and about 50 miles in Oklahoma.

Oklahoma looks a lot like Texas around here…

And it looks a lot like this, too…

Yhe GPS on the dash was pretty accurate…

We see signs of civilization now and then…

We see these everywhere… Anyone know what the small yellow pipes are doing connecting with the yellow tower in the background?

We finally arrived in Kansas – our fourth State of the day… We turned off onto the old highway…

We found our RV park for the night…

This is on the outskirts of Liberal, Kansas, in the far southwest corner of the State. The park is Very primitive, but they have good 50 amp power hookups. We were set for the night. Did we mention it is HOT here? We quickly turned on both ACs and enjoyable time was had by all…

July 31, 2021 3

2021-07-25 – Heading to Missouri for the Oregon Trail caravan… Day 3 – Grants, NM to Tucumcari, NM

We awoke in the Villa in the early morning, we quickly readied ourselves to depart, and we pulled out of the alley onto Main Street. We stopped briefly for coffee and breakfast sandwiches, and we were on the freeway again. These cross country trips are quite utilitarian, and we don’t do much sight-seeing.

We had an uneventful trip. We had more rain – enough to wash off all the mud we picked up whilst parking in the alley behind the winery. We stopped for fuel, as we do each day. We also stopped at a Rest Stop to eat lunch in the Airstream, and to walk around a bit to get our exercise…

At a little before noon we arrived way too early to check-in to the KOA RV Park in Tucumcari.

But we spent some time walking and we were finally shown to a very nice parking spot…

We spent the afternoon relaxing and enjoying the AC – it’s 90 degrees here – the warmest day so far, but we anticipate our next two stops in Kansas will be hotter…

Dinner was our massive quantities of left-over pasta from Moscato on Friday evening. And some nice California Pinot Noir…Always good movies on TCM, and good books to read. I finally finished David Rockefeller’s “Memoir”, and I have started Hemingway’s “The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories”… Lynda is reading an eclectic mix of novels she picks up at used bookstores and thrift shops. We enjoyed a pleasant evening and an enjoyable time was had by all…

July 29, 2021 0

2019-06-06 thru 2019-06-11 – Traveling West – Liberal, KS and then Home…

This morning we pulled out of the RV park in Liberal, KS, and pointed the Villa southwest. In about three minutes we were in the far western part of the Oklahoma panhandle; about 90 minutes later we were in the far western part of the Texas panhandle; by noon we were in New Mexico…

These parts of Oklahoma and Texas look remarkably like Kansas…

At one rest stop there were these nice little picnic shelters… Mid Century Modern!… Nice, but a little beat up…

All day yesterday and all day today, until we entered New Mexico, we followed the railroad tracks. About every ten miles we came to a small town dominated by these giant grain elevators or silos…

The further we drove west the smaller and more distressed the towns were… Not being farming folk, we could not tell exactly what these facilities do, but we assume it is related to grain storage, food processing, feed production, or something like that…

By mid day we were at our campground in Tucumcari, NM.

And, for the record, New Mexico does not look anything like Texas, Oklahoma, or Kansas:

Happy Hours and a light supper ensued in the Villa; tomorrow we head towards Gallup, NM.

Friday morning dawned nice and cool, but the heat will be arriving soon. We pointed the Villa west, towards Albuquerque and beyond…

The drive was uneventful, as expected…

New Mexico looks like this…

At one rest stop we found this Scenic Historic Marker:

We weren’t sure what it meant… east and west looked pretty much the same to us. Yes, western New Mexico does has more hills. We rose to almost 7,000′ elevation before dropping down to 5280′ elevation in Albuquerque…

Then we went uphill again to 7,275′ elevation at the Continental Divide…

We eventually arrived in Gallup, NM, at about 6,500′ elevation…

The sky was beautiful, the sun was hot, but the winds made the 89 degree temperature bearable. By early evening we were able to turn off the AC, and by sunrise tomorrow it is supposed to be 48 degrees…

Happy Hours and a light supper ensued in the Villa; tomorrow we head towards Kingman, AZ.

Saturday morning dawned nice and cool, but the heat will be arriving soon. We pointed the Villa west, towards Winslow, Flagstaff, Williams, and Kingman…

The drive was uneventful, as expected…

Arizona looks like this…

We drove for about six hours, taking time for rest stops, fuel, and lunch… We finally pulled into Kingman, AZ by mid-afternoon…

Interesting note is that we stayed here almost exactly two years ago as our first stop after leaving Irvine on our 4 1/2 month trip, the day after Lynda retired…

Happy Hours and a light supper ensued in the Villa; tomorrow we head towards Palm Desert, CA.

Sunday morning dawned nice and cool, but the heat will be arriving soon. We pointed the Villa west, towards the California border…

The drive was uneventful, as expected…

We crossed over the Colorado River…

And we entered California!

We were met by some attentive uniformed people who asked us where we’d been, and if we were bringing in any firewood…

The California Desert looks like this…

For those of you who insist on calling places like eastern Oregon a “desert”, please stop! Rivers, grass with cattle grazing, and green leafy trees do not make a desert! See photo above for what a desert looks like!

We moved on to Palm Desert, where they have succeeded in making the desert green: