drive day

The sky was so clear this morning that the sunrise wasn't much (no clouds to catch the sunlight), but the early light on the nearby mountain was worth getting up for. 


Though my destination was almost due north of my starting point, the roads took me zigging & zagging along the border of AZ & NM through a wide variety of landscapes. I've driven across NM (east to west & west to east) several times on various routes, but never up the state, so this was almost all new territory for me. I started at 4,000'+ in elevation, reached 8,500'+ at one point, & most of the drive was at 6,000'+. There were more cows than people. 




Gallup, NM, where I'll be for 2 nights, is at an elevation of 6,600', so there's some lingering snow here, & temp will drop to 25* tonight. The folks next to me said that it was 67 today at home in Minnesota (high here about 57), & it won't be nearly as cold there tonight. 



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

boat tour to wildlife & glaciers

Image
I can now die a happy woman! The boat trip was fantastic in every way. (Major Marine 8.5 hour tour on Orca Song from Seward to the Northwestern Glacier in Kenai Fjords National Park) We saw SO MUCH wildlife, including several rare sightings & behaviors.  Here is the first of 3 sea otters we saw.  This is the sea cave & rocks where we got very close to see sea stars & jelly fish - many, many of each.  A dozen Dall's porpoises swam & played near our boat for a while. They swam so fast that they were hard to photograph, but we saw each one many times. This group of Stellar's sea lions is typical of what one sees in Alaska, that is no babies, just a group of adults hauled up on shore.   Though humpback whales are often seen in this area, they are mostly seen alone or perhaps a mom & baby. Not only did we see a whole pod, we saw them engage in what is called bubble net feeding. Many pods around the world do not engage in this type of feeding. There are...
Read more

Alaska!

Image
Top-of-the-World Highway This road runs from Dawson City in the Yukon into Alaska. The 110-mile drive today was a dirt road with the exception of a 9-mile long paved stretch in the middle - seems odd to have a short paved stretch in the middle of a long dirt highway.  arrived in Alaska! I've wanted to come to Alaska since I was 14. My day trip to Skagway last week was to a small corner of Alaska, but that corner isn't connected to this main part of the state, so this feels like my official arrival.                                         Chicken, Alaska Apparently, the original residents here wanted to name the town after a chicken-like bird called a ptarmigan. However, they couldn't agree on how to spell that, so they compromised on "Chicken". It became a small town when the Pedro Dredge (now a National Historic Site) was set up here to dig for gold. Besides a few crazy tourists who...
Read more

The ALCAN & Cassiar

Image
Most of today's drive was on the section of the ALCAN east of Whitehorse, which I'd driven on the way out, so no scenery pics.  There are still some gas pumps in Canada that don't take credit cards. It amazes me that you pump first & then go in to pay.  The Stewart-Cassiar Highway is even more desolate than the ALCAN, so everyone turning south onto the Cassiar stops at the same gas station to fill up. While pumping gas there, a heavy duty truck camper pulled up next to me. Even more than the rig, the map on the side caught my eye. This guy has been on the road for 15 years & been to all of the places on this map - amazing! I got so distracted by the map that I forgot to take a pic of the rig. He bought the truck in Australia with another camper on it. That camper fell apart in South America, so he took the truck to the Netherlands where they built him a custom expedition-style rig. He's now back "home" in northwestern Canada for a while. A short distan...
Read more