Through the Mountains of New Mexico

After 800 miles, snowy mountain passes, and heart-attacks caused by flying sparks, we finally made it to Albuquerque, New Mexico late Tuesday night. We left Austin on Saturday morning and spent several hours, well into the afternoon, getting our trailer ready and collecting vegetable oil from a fellow WVO user also named Dan. When we finally got back onto the road, we drove through heavy rain and only made it to San Antonio by nightfall. It actually worked out well for us, though, because in the morning we made our way to the historic Alamo, sight of the 13 day siege where the Mexican Army, led by General Santa Anna, horribly defeated and killed about 200 Texans led by the infamous Davy Crockett, James Bowie, and William B. Travis. While I’m not one for guns and battles, the sight was incredibly touching given that they frequently referenced quotes from Travis’s last minute pleas for help, signed with “Victory or Death.” While much of the Alamo fort has been rebuilt, the church and one long wall are original to the mission that founded the fort in 1744. Even though much of it isn’t original, the extensive timelines, videos, and exhibits definitely make the sight worth visiting. We are very glad that we stopped by. 

The historic church at the Alamo.

After strolling through San Antonio, we began our drive northwest through Texas on the way to New Mexico. Our goal for the day was to make it to Alamogordo, NM for the night but as the darkness set in, we decided that Carlsbad, NM was a more realistic destination. We crossed the New Mexican border and happily smiled to ourselves about how we made it so far in one day without a single problem. Unfortunately, we forgot to knock on wood. We were about 20 miles from Carlsbad when we went over a giant pothole/bump/bridge (both of us were so scared we couldn’t remember what happened) when all of sudden we heard a crash and saw an eruption of sparks in the rearview mirror. Daniel pulled over and went back to see what happened, fearing that the tongue of the trailer had snapped. Luckily, the coupler had just popped off the ball and the safety chains had held the trailer to the bus. Unluckily, the stand that holds the trailer up when its not attached to the bus had not magically dropped and the tongue of the trailer was flat on the ground. Given that it was laden with two 55-gallon drums full of oil, a scooter, and many other things, it was impossible for us to pick it up and put it back on the ball. So there we were, stuck on a country road in the middle of nowhere, in the dark, with no cell phone service. Fortunately, there weren’t any rattlesnakes, scorpions, or coyotes sneaking towards us, at least none that I saw and trust me, I had my eyes peeled for them. Our solution to the problem was to pull out the 2 ton jack and raise the tongue just high enough to be able to back the bus under the coupler. We did so slowly, with the trailer rolling ever so slightly backwards in conjunction with the increasing height. We were afraid the trailer was going to roll back into the road but luckily we got it just high enough that the trailer stand could fit back down before that potential catastrophe could happen. We then backed the bus under coupler, snapped it down, and crept our way to Carlsbad for the night. The next morning, we added a ratchet strap to the coupler/ball system and haven’t had any problems since. Hopefully it was just on at an awkward angle and won’t happen again. 

The trailer on the ground after it popped off the ball.

With our new homemade solution in tow, we started on the road to Alamogordo, the closest city to the White Sands, a place we really wanted to see on the way to Albuquerque. At first we were happy that we had chosen a back-road to get there because it was much more scenic than the boring old interstate, but we quickly realized why the GPS had repeatedly been telling us to get back on the major highway. We gradually began going up hill but we didn’t think much of it because our silly minds kept telling us “hey, New Mexico is a desert, there’s no mountains.” But of course, the higher we climbed, the more wrong we realized we were. The things we were driving up were definitely mountains, like ski-resort mountains. As the bus worked hard to pull that heavy trailer up-mountain, the engine began overheating. We eventually confirmed that there was nothing wrong with the engine, it was just being overworked. After stopping for repeated breaks and using lower gears, we eventually made it to the top and drove through the adorable little ski-resort town, Cloudcroft. The drive down the mountain was a bit scary considering how steep it was (we were going down about 5,000 feet in elevation), but the views of the mountains were breathtaking.

When we finally made it down the mountain and arrived in Alamogordo, it was getting too late to see the White Sands. We stopped in town for the night, and started out again in the morning. We drove the 20 miles to the White Sands and we were a bit disheartened at first because of the seemingly incessant rain. To our great delight, however, the rain began to subsist after a while and a beautiful rainbow appeared over the endless white sand dunes. It was an absolutely gorgeous sight and I feel very lucky to have seen it. We played in the sand for a while longer, ran up and the dunes until we were out of breath, and took in the awesome landscape as best as one can in terms of a thousands of years old geological wonder. The awe-inspiring sights continued for us as we made our way north to the Valley of Fire, a 20 mile long lava flow. It’s a very young lava flow, relatively speaking, being about 5,000 years old. It was so much fun to walk around, explore the cavernous lava rocks and ponder about what the Native Americans living in the area when the lava vents were opening thought about it!  In the end, it was a successful day of incredible sight seeing. 

Lava rocks in the Valley of Fire lava flow.

Beautiful rainbow over the White Sands.

Daniel and I in the White Sands.

We finally arrived in Albuquerque that night, and after meeting up with our friend Christina and her roommate Emiliana, we took a much-needed hot shower and hit the sack. The next morning, Christina drove us around to a nifty coffee shop and showed us the Co-op, a grocery store full of local and organic foods. We explored some more on our bikes for the remainder of the afternoon, had a lovely dinner with our Albuquerque friends. On Friday, my mom and sister will fly in to Albuquerque and we will drive to the Grand Canyon to spend the weekend. I am so excited to be able to spend some time with them in such a fantastic setting. We hope that you all are enjoying a lovely holiday season!