Days 75-77: Following the trail

What trail, you might ask? I found a story set in New Mexico by an author I'd read before. Pretty exciting story about a couple guys with some special mental abilities who flit around New Mexico hunting for lost treasures and attempting to solve the mysteries of why the region is experiencing more sizemic and volcanic activity. He describes a lot of sites around New Mexico and I started looking for them and reading the book when I got here. It led me to some places I might not have gone. In corresponding with him, I discovered that I was spending my first couple nights in New Mexico not far from where he lives, so we had a lively email exchange.

I updated the map on the trailer since I'm now in New Mexico and then started looking for the landmarks. Of course, since I was still generally following old Hwy 66, I had to climb to the top of the Continental Divide. I crossed back and forth over it in Montana, but now I'm actually east and continuing to travel east of the divide. It was a pretty predictable "opportunity for a gift shop" sort of place and you couldn't really see anything interesting, but I figure it's all downhill from here, right?

I headed south of Albuquerque, figuring I'd get there later. I stopped for a couple days in Bernardo, NM at a RV park that also includes a horse hotel and caters to people traveling with their equine companions. Bernardo is at an elevation of a little over 4,700 feet, but you aren't likely to find population information. Aside from the RV park on the other side of the freeway, there is no sign of life in the "community" of Bernardo. Looks like there used to be a kind of restaurant or shop at the interchange, but it's all empty now. The interchange, by the way, is Interstate 25 and U.S. Hwy 60.

I turned on U.S. 60 east and figured I'd run into town. Thirty miles later, I came to the Abo Ruins in the Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument. Wow! This mission was built in the early 1600s in a village that had been occupied for a few hundred years before that. In the mid-century, it was expanded and was the center of a vital community. But in the late 1600s, there were the combined effects of rebellion and Apache raids that drove the community out of existence and fleeing northwest. Much of the mission still stands and has one of the best guided tours (as in markers and booklet) that I've seen. The ruins were truly stunning.

I went on into Mountair and got a few things I needed from the hardware store. Had lunch at Ancient Cities restaurant and it was really good. The next day I checked out of the RV park and while I was inside saying thank you to the host, a dog wandered in front of my truck, laid down and went to sleep. It took the owner about five minutes to physically drag the dog out of the path so I could leave. I finally understood the last sign on their signpost.

A few miles south of Socorro, I turned east on U.S. 380 along the north edge of White Sands Missile Testing Range. Yes. The place they lit up the night with the first atomic bomb tests. What follows is not a picture of the aftermath, but rather another National Recreation Area just east of it. This is Valley of Fires, a huge lava flow some sixteen miles wide and fifty long. You don't actually have to Hawaii to see these lava flows. Hmm. Of course, it was a good opportunity for another self portrait as I looked out over the valley.

That was my last stop until I reached Ruidoso, and Pinecliff Village.