Driving Around in Circles

With the big move for our daughter & SIL out of the way (a move where I was able to avoid the hard work!), it was time for me to hook up the trailer and look for someplace cooler.

This time it will be a loop around parts of Northern New Mexico that I've not visited. Since BJ's back continues to bother her, especially when sitting, this will be a solo trip but at a slower pace than the handful of one or two night trips that I've done this year.

As has become my custom, I'm letting the geocaches determine where to go. It doesn't make for the shortest distance between two points, but does raise the odds of seeing something interesting along the way. For example, in all the years we've been driving to and through New Mexico, I've never visited El Malpais National Monument so this time I'll stop to make observations at some earthcaches and a virtual cache on my way to Albuquerque

One of the things I observed was how helpful benchmarks can be --- who would have guessed that was a rock??

Defunct land sales seem to be an item, at least on the back roads.

I stopped at Maybelle's for lunch but had to bring my own.

Home for a couple nights in Albuquerque. Temps were in the low 90's so power for the air conditioner was much appreciated!

They have several classic trailers that they rent on a daily basis as well as a couple very nice Hudson cars that they don't rent!

It's hard to read because it wasn't lit, but in the front window they advertise 'Suntans Available - Inquire at Pool.'

Route 66

My plan, when I left Barstow in time to enjoy the sunrise, centered on several challenge caches and three earthcaches that were all located along Route 66 - at least at first glance.

My first earthcache started in Ludlow, where an info plaque (not this one, but nearby) told an amazing story. It turns out, 'they' had actually considered using nuclear blasts to create a road cut for Interstate 40.

The observations needed to complete the earthcache requirements required driving east on I-40, almost to Kelbaker Road. Not a big deal since another of the earthcaches was on Kelbaker Road just before the intersection with Route 66. I'd just do them in a different order.

I wasn't sure what to make of this sign when I pulled off of I-40 onto Kelbaker Road. Nothing to do but drive on...

When I got to Route 66, the road to the east was blocked, with another sign that read the same as the last one - no through traffic WEST of Cadiz Road. That was disappointing since one of the caches I wanted was on Cadiz Road south of Chambless. But first, I needed to backtrack to Amboy.

Amboy is a burg located west of Kelbaker Road. It still has a post office and a large neon sign advertising Roy's Motel & Cafe.

The motel now has an open door policy. In fact, there are no doors! The hotel was obviously out of business. The cafe might still be in operation but there was only one car parked there.

I continued west of Amboy another mile or so to Amboy Crater for the last California earthcache I planned to visit on this trip.

There's a three mile trail that loops around the hill in the background but the heat was already making itself known so I located the info I needed to complete the requirements and headed back the way I'd come.

I did find one classic geocache hiding in the rocks, but because of the rerouting, I missed visiting places like Klondike, Siberia, and Bagdad.

When I returned to Kelbaker Road, the semi driver was just returning to his truck after delivering a front end loader with a 12' wide bucket. He had unloaded here because of bridges with inadequate load limits but said the road was open to Cadiz road, but not EAST of there.

With that info, I drove around the road closed signs and continued east towards Chambless. Spotted this sign which was in better condition than the former cafe and gas station that it advertised!

Chambless appeared to be totally lacking in residents. The buildings were decaying but the fences were in good condition.

Immediately east of Cadiz Road was another road block and this sign stating the road was impassable. It certainly didn't look it, and there was no one to ask. I'm betting a bridge washed out at some point.

Since the highway is now a county road, it could well be that they decided not to replace or fix whatever made the road impassable. Unfortunately, this loop used to be a 75 mile section of surviving Route 66, complete with several 'whistle stop' towns that survived on tourism.

I'm hoping to go back this winter and spend some time in the area, including finding out what makes the road impassible.

Where to Now?

The weather has been super hot, limiting any interest in local hiking. Once again, I put together plans for an overnight trip, looping up through Searchlight, Nevada and then over to Barstow, California before heading home.

As is typical when I'm traveling solo, it was an early morning departure, but the GPS in the car was loaded with the route,

and cachetur.no made creating a list of caches an easy task. I was going to concentrate on some earth caches and a handful of other caches that looked interesting.

One of the nice things about Cachetur is that the new app updates an estimated schedule based on actual arrival times. By adding a waypoint at the beginning for home, I was able to start the list with an accurate departure time - 3:39 a.m.

Cachetur estimated the trip to be 871 miles with a completion time (including time for the 25 planned caches) of 23 hours, 14 minutes, and 59 seconds. I'll admit to being crazy, but I'm not going to do a 24 hour trip without some rest so I decided I'd get a hotel in Barstow before starting back.

I took lots of pictures on day one (on the phone) and managed to lose every one of them when downloading them to the computer the first evening. This one is from the next day and the previous ones are from my old Canon camera which takes terrible pictures thanks to all its river abuse.

The best stop of the day was in Baker, California which bills itself as the Gateway to Death Valley. The thermometer stands 134 feet high to commemorate the highest temperature recorded here. It was 108 degrees when I was there, slightly cooler than the high in Phoenix that day.

This picture isn't mine - it was taken several years ago and is used in accordance with the Creative Commons license.

I got into Barstow about 2 hours ahead of schedule. A hotel room with a working air conditioner gave me a place to log the various caches I'd completed. An early start tomorrow for the trip back including a section of Route 66.