From Sedona, we headed out for a 600+ mile, 10 hour drive to southeast New Mexico! Moving on from crystals and vortexes in Sedona AZ to aluminum hats and aliens in Roswell NM.
This was one of the rest stops along the way. Good warnings for a little Pacific Northwest girl like me! And I saw some goofballs looking under the rocks! WHAAT?!
Cruising along I40, we took a little stop along the way at the Petrified Forest/Painted Desert National Park.
I suppose this might be really pretty if we hadn’t already seen the amazing colors up in Utah. Kenny was glad we had an annual pass for the National Parks, and we hadn’t paid to see this. Although, if we had time, we might have seen some cool stuff in the Petrified Forest part. But we had a whole lotta miles to travel today, so only a quick stop because…
…our daughter wanted us to find this car. So we did!
Back on the highway, and soon we were changing time zones back to Mountain Time. Darn – just lost an hour!
Across the border, we got off of I40 at Gallup, NM, which has preserved some of the old Route 66 iconic signs and buildings. Primary focus of the town is the nostalgic El Rancho Motel. It has served numerous famous actors over the years including Ronald Reagan, John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, and Katherine Hepburn.
Back on the road. Next up – Albuquerque NM! We initially had this and/or Santa Fe on the itinerary. But- we really want to get to Austin for the weekend to meet up with a friend. With the amount of miles before and after this stop, and the long list of things to do here, we would need to stay 2 nights. So we dropped this and kept driving.
This is for our daughter who lived in Santa Fe, and granddaughter who was born here in 2003!
After a whole lotta hundreds of miles of boring hot dessert, we arrive in Roswell NM. Contrary to common belief, this is a HUGE town! 5th largest in NM, with over 48,000 people! And here we thought it was just a little po-dunk dessert alien town with extraterrestrial nerd fanatics. Ha! Surprise! But, I did spot a couple of aliens for fun.
And there is a museum, of course!
We stopped to sleep here, because it is on the way to our next destination, which is Carlsbad Caverns. After 600 miles, we figured this is a good place to rest.