From Albuquerque to Bloomfield, NM

We got ourselves and Auntie Violet organized this morning; disconnected the power, water and sewer while dodging rain drops; raised the jacks and pulled in the slides. Then we were off. We headed west on I-40 through Albuquerque and turned off to take on diesel at the Sandia Indian Casino service station. Auntie Violet took on 40.346 gallons @ $3.899 a gallon -- much better then the 4$ plus we paid the last time.


We turned off of I-40 unto NM 550 and headed north. NM 550 is a very nice four-lane highway. We ran into a very short stretch of construction, then the rest of the way was smooth sailing. The first part of the drive was through fairly flat sagebrush and junipers.

But we soon entered more fascinating scenery -- many layers of rock worn away with harder limestone capstone in weird shapes on the top.

Some of the cliffs were crowned with pine trees --

And then we approached this sinister-looking cloud. Sure enough, it was full of snow!

Fortunately, the ground was too warm for it to stick and it didn't last too long. But, we did run into a few more of its relatives!

This set of rocks were the only ones we saw that had black tops. Perhaps volcanic ash?

Most of the mesas had reds, pinks, yellow, whites and some greenish layers --

This one stood by its majestic lonesome --

While these followed us alongside the road --

The greenery is mostly small junipers with sagebrush along the lower edges --

As you can tell by the pictures, there were lots of clouds and stormy weather along the way. We were lucky that we didn't have the kind of winds that we had yesterday. We arrived in Bloomfield a little after four PM and settled in at Desert Rose RV Resort.