3/8/22-Tuesday was a VERY LONG DAY! It was just over 400 miles, thankfully not as much wind as yesterday, but a long day. It started out lovely, with a home cooked breakfast of eggs, sausage and toast. 😋 We enjoyed the morning, but had to hug goodbye, and we hit the road around 10:00. The Google said our route would take us just under seven hours. I had a non-interstate route all figured out, so we had to weave our way through the country side to get to the highway that would take us west. It was still cold, and we had a bit of GRAUPEL. Huh? 🤔. Yep – it’s a thing that Steve told us about. It is tiny frozen snow! It isn’t hail, but much smaller, softer, and easier to crunch, yet it is pellets and they bounce like hail. It isn’t sleet, which is clear frozen rain drops. Graupel is white, like tiny styrofoam pellets. Huh! Who knew? Well, we had some as we drove along. I told you it was cold!
We went through a lot of small towns today, but surprisingly, the Google said that our time estimate was only about 15 minutes longer than if we took the interstate freeway. This was a cool looking building in Albany Texas.
And then we went through Mineral Wells, “Home of Crazy”. So now we know where it comes from!!
We saw lots of solar panel farms spreading across hundreds of acres. We saw lots of wind farms.
And of course, it is Texas, so we saw LOTS of dino-pumps.
These things always look giant as you come up on them!
About 3:30 we hit a roadblock. Well, we did not literally HIT it, but there was one. Our highway 180 that had been so good to us was closed in Lamesa – for 40 miles! So, we tried following the detour signs, but they kind of left us hanging, and that isn’t good with a trailer behind. So I quickly searched for a detour route, and we ended up going a bit southwest for awhile. You can see where our detour happened on the map. The roads weren’t bad, it just added some more time to our already long day.
Finally at 5:30, we crossed into New Mexico. YAY! There wasn’t a nice welcoming sign like on the interstate, so I just had to take a screen shot.
It wasn’t far to our camping spot for the next three nights. Lots of desert out here!
There’s our sign! Hackberry Lake Off Highway Vehicle Area. It is on Bureau of Land Management Land (BLM), with lots of roads and trails to ride the Kawi on. 🛺
By 5:45, after over 7.5 hours, we got to the camping area. Fancy, huh? 😉. Hey – its FREE! There is a huge gravel area with five picnic shelters and even a pit toilet. But no water or electricity. We have the place to ourselves, so we picked a spot and got all set up in a jiffy.
We’re about 20 miles northeast of the town of Carlsbad.
Thankfully the wind had settled down, and by 6:00 we were all set up as the sun went down.
We are glad that we have a propane furnace in the Limbo, because it’s going to be COLD – like REALLY COLD – for the next week!!
We have propane for heat, but it takes battery power to make the fan blow, so we’ll see how the solar panel on the roof does at recharging the battery tomorrow. We have a propane stove, so I can cook and make coffee in the percolator. Limbo even has a USB plug-in connected to the battery, so we can keep our phones charged. If we need 110 power for anything, Kenny can fire up the generator, but I tried to plan meals that didn’t need the microwave. We’re roughin it! 😉 And looking forward to getting Kawi out on some trails!! 🛺