Thursday, October 13th.
Today was a very long day… my drive was over 10 hours including stops and I covered about 475 miles. I am only about 320 miles away from the South rim of the Grand Canyon… I’ll be there tomorrow. Yippie!!! I hit the road in the dark and I was very glad when the sun came up. I kept seeing all these red lights on a hill in the distance… it was very strange. I think it may have been lights on a series of wind turbines though I am not certain. I watched the sun rise in my side view mirror… it was a giant ball of orange.
I was in New Mexico by 10 am this morning and stopped at Russell Travel Plaza. They have an old fashioned looking cafe and a free car museum… both were super nice. I had second breakfast today and skipped lunch. Just outside of Albuquerque I had a good scare. The 18 wheeler in front of me started to zip into the left lane and realized at the last minute that there was a vehicle there and started fishtailing his rig right in front of me… I thought for sure that truck was going to jackknife but luckily it didn’t. I slowed down… a lot to get some distance from the driver and then the driver started whipping the truck around again. Good riddance! I arrived at Bluewater Lake State Park in New Mexico at around 4 pm. The park is very pretty and I had to drive around and pick out a campsite then pay at a self pay station. It is a very pretty place. What is even prettier is the night sky here. You can see so many more stars and the Milky Way is visible… so beautiful. It is supposed to go down to the mid 30’s over night… it will be a cold morning to pack up my campsite and head out.