Finally, some hills!

8/1/2016

Woke up this morning and surprise surprise, Jane has retained ALL of her coolant overnight! Amazing! Power steering fluid was almost gone so I topped that off and called it good. I did notice that Jane consumed a pretty large dragonfly yesterday, but left it there for posterity.

Spent some time warming her up while packing up so I could make sure that there weren’t any air bubbles in the cooling system. Once that checked out, I hit the road! I am really a huge fan of the aspect of camping that wakes you up bright and early but feeling fresh and awake instead of totally blah like I normally would feel waking up early.

Oh, also I discovered that I had forgotten to sunscreen my left thigh before yesterday’s drive.

Anyways… I decided I was really very tired of the wiggling and the waggling all over the road. I hit a pothole and scared the person in the lane next to me veering around and that’s about when I called it quits. So I stopped in Roswell (the next “big city” on my route, and never mind the aliens) and asked for a good alignment shop at the local Autozone. They sent me to Killgo’s Auto on 2^nd, saying that they do older vehicles pretty frequently.

I cannot thank the Killgo’s guys enough! They quoted me a couple of hours to go through the alignment, but I told them that I really just thought that toe was off. After all, the car was driving pretty well (not 100% perfect, but a solid 8/10) with the alignment I put on it prior to messing with it the day before leaving. Since I only messed with toe, I figured that that had to be the issue. So they had me put her on the rack in this old school alignment service bay (very cool) and fixed that right up in about 10 minutes. Apparently I was ¼” off, which is A LOT. They sent me on my way with a handshake – really nice of them!

With that fixed, suddenly driving was no longer a chore! No longer did I have to plan a strategy for bumps in the road, or fear the sight of an oncoming pothole in the distance. I was once again master of the road! So Jane and I kicked our butts into gear and really made some good time. The flatness continued for a while but then gave way to some lovely hills that made for a much more pleasant drive.

Pictured in the background: hills

Unfortunately I didn’t take any pictures of the hillier part right outside Albuquerque, but the area is known for pretty strong gusts of wind and they whip Jane around like no tomorrow when they hit the side dead-on. I figured it probably wasn’t a good idea to be taking pictures through that.

I stopped in Albuquerque at some Mexican lunch place -  Padilla’s - and had some delicious Christmas chicken enchiladas. New Mexico can’t be beat for their green and red sauce (though I am usually more in the green camp)! From there I headed to the west side of town to Petroglyph National Monument, a park dedicated to preserving thousands of petroglyphs carved on basaltic (volcanic) rocks by ancient settlers of the area. You kind of have to go at the right time of day (or in the right weather) to see the petroglyphs up on the rocks, and binoculars seem to be a good thing to bring. When I got there at 3PM, I found that the harsh sunlight was obscuring most of the petroglyphs I wanted to see. Fortunately, clouds came rolling in so I was able to retrace my steps and see some really spectacular art!

A giant hill of chunks of lava! (more or less)

Neat boulder with some really cool petroglyphs on it. Also, a bunny.

Close-up of petroglyphs - this rock seems to be bird-themed

Bun hanging out in the shade

A rattlesnake and a goat... not sure why together?

???

For real what were these people actually trying to convey with this drawing

Someone added a 3-dimensional aspect to this face by carving it on the corner of a boulder

World's first game of Pac-Man?

Another popular rock.

Close-up with all kinds of stuff. My favorite is the guy's head on a stick.

More people and animals.

I have no idea what this is a drawing of but probably the guy who drew it didn't know either and that's why he put a frowny face at the bottom.

Lots of different faces and heads

Well this one is definitely a duck, so at least I got that one.

A singular picture of me and some petroglyphs... it will likely be the last!

I also found this funny lizard that ran right up to me and plopped down in the sand, then posed for pictures for a while… so here’s one of the pics because clearly he wanted to be a star.

I headed on to Grants to the same campground that I stayed at on my trip to Fabulous Fords Forever last year  - but a storm was brewing!

Fortunately it didn’t start raining until after I had set up all of my stuff. So now I’m standing in the laundry room working on this blog post. I expect to have a wonderful night’s rest tonight as tenting in the rain is pretty awesome. That, and because I’m not freaking out about Jane tonight because she has, for once, managed to retain ALL of her fluids for an entire day.

Tomorrow I’m headed west along Route 66 – hope the weather cooperates!