Visiting Albuquerque: Sideways Woodlands

“See enough spectacular things in life and live well-altered.” – Old Sean

Re-Enter the Road

That’s better.  I feel much more like myself.  Currently, I’m wandering again, like my life depends on it.

Once again, I’m throwing on rugged boots, lashing on a thin backpack and meandering off into the wilderness.

This is far different than my other travels however.  For a full month, I’ll be traversing the US in a constant state of caution.  Instead of rotating outward from city centers, I’ll be hunting down the emptiest places accessible in America and wander far from people and COVID.

My friend Ari has requested my controversial companionship for a nationwide camping trip to dispersed campgrounds around the US.  Due to our living situations, we both quarantined for two weeks prior to the trip for safety.

Ari has a Kia Soul which will be bearing the burden of this trip.  My own goods simply my regular luggage:  A single backpack.  An additional yoga mat.  A day pack.  Some camping foods.  However, my travel companion is more inclined towards comfort, so the car is packed with a tent, a cot, hammocks, entertainment, Frisbees, sleeping bags and enough canned goods to last a three weeks, should the need arise.

Trips into obscurity, at least for myself, are generally west.  Beginning on the 20th of July, I gathered my continually scattered wits and prepped for travel.

West Texas Tours

The first place we went, predictably, was into the endless expanse of west Texas, where miles are eaten up in straight roads, glaring heat and somewhat plodding semi-trucks.

One of the great advantages when driving in the United States is the enormous collection of odd roadside attractions that townships accumulate.  Some are listed, others are random events, others are discovered, and all are perplexing and quintessentially American.

On the way from Dallas to Lubbock, there’s a gas station with no convenience store, where gas slowly drips out at a glacial rate.  Horses wearing fly-masks while picking past, giving us hopeful looks and sideways glances in an otherwise rugged and empty terrain. 

We ate lunch on a dusty stretch of land with a single, shady tree behind two white churches with cowboy silhouettes. 

The world’s largest mule shoe is predictably in Muleshoe, Texas. 

We had stopped in Lubbock to so Ari could play violin for her great grandmother at a safe distance (as a birthday gift). 

Into New Mexico

When forging into New Mexico, once can find the Clovis Man, a statue depicting one of America’s original inhabitants. The statue depicts a spear-wielding man inside the arc of a mammoth’s tusk.  The Clovis culture flourished over 11,000 years ago and artifacts found from this group remain one of the earliest examples of human migration to North America.  Since the Clovis Community College campus where the Clovis Man resides seemed empty, it seemed a fortuitous little area with a nearby prairie dog town. Under a shaded tree, we stopped and had a picnic here.

We were also delayed by a sudden, oddly spotty desert storm against the sunset, creating “Eyes of Sauron” across the horizon, which peered at us in judgmental consideration.

We spent our first night camping on an odd route known as Juan Thomas Road.  This dirt terrain winds past strongly worded “No Trespassing” signs on every corner.  Only after passing these jealous fortresses can one reach the campsites. 

Finally, at Juan Thomas Road (our overnight campsite) we were fortunate to find the tent Ari had brought was astoundingly easy and swift to set up.  Stars, due to the light pollution from Albuquerque, were negligible.  We dozed off only to awake a few hours later to shining sunlight and a pair of dirt bikers making use of the empty roads.

Reaching Albuquerque

Just because this trip is in perpetual isolation, doesn’t mean we’re unable to visit cities.  It simply means we can’t attend places with people or enter indoor locations.

As such, I had a few sights that I wanted to see.  Primarily, I wanted to look at a few features from the television drama Breaking Bad, including the House of Walter White (guarded by signs and a formidable black, metal gate), the gravestone of the same character, the famous car wash in the show and the restaurant Los Pollos Hermanos, owned by the dapper crime lord, Gustavo.

We didn’t have time to see all of it, but I got my fix.

We also made our way through the downtown area, where I snapped a picture of the somewhat disappointing sculpture Auto Hawk, which is crafted from car doors welded together.  I suppose I assumed it would look a bit more hawk-like.

Regardless, downtown Albuquerque is mostly shuttered, with numerous shops placing wooden boards over their storefronts until Coronavirus blows over.  These features have been decorated astoundingly well, with art of every caliber chanting out political maxims, depicting motion, splaying colors atop dancing limbs and foretelling references to Black Lives Matter.

Old Town Albuquerque

We eventually veered away from downtown and into the much quainter Old Town.  This area was alive with buzzing hummingbirds and full of Mexican-style adobe buildings.  A passive cat followed us through shops and past food bowls.  There was a smattering of open stores, but like much of downtown, the majority were strategically closed.

Once finished here, I convinced Ari to take a look at Pueblo Montano Chainsaw Sculpture Garden.  This land is covered in charred tree stumps, victims of a fire a 250 acre forest fire started by teenagers launching fireworks.  Among the firefighters to combat the blaze and evacuate citizens, was a man named Chavez.  Following the quelling of the inferno, Chavez picked up a chainsaw and began sculpting the logs into a series of standing animals.

It’s a really pretty park, despite the heat hammering down.  We also managed to spot a rather chill lizard lounging about.

Back Westward

Finally leaving Albuquerque brought us to another couple of roadside attractions. 

In Gallup, there’s a gigantic metal loop, similar to a hot wheel track. This loop, is naturally called “Galloop.”  Ever the slave to poor puns, I made sure to visit.  Likewise, Gallup also has Babe Ruth Park with very compelling metal desert art and a colony of prairie dogs curiously bobbing up towards visiting people.

Of course, the rest of the trip was classic of the area.  I always feel as though I don’t give New Mexico enough credit for what it is.  Great heaps of red and grey stones create flat-topped mountains and the road rolls with them through desert scrub.  Native American influence comes from every angle, in the form of artwork, worn billboards and odd symbols carved into cliff faces.

The Petrified Forest

However, there has always been one particular icon on route 40 I continually miss.

For years, especially during high school, I would make occasional road trips to see my friend in Phoenix.  And always, I would pass the so-called Petrified Forest. Usually, I was unable to stop and view this curiosity.

This time, however, I finally got to enter the national park.

The Petrified Forest is a stunning desert panorama with numerous bizarre aspects.  Firstly, as the name implies, the entire land has petrified trees scattered across the plains.  These structures emerged from eroding hills to lay in shattered intervals against the sun.  The differing sediments in the ground cause a wide array of colors to appear in the petrified wood.  This includes rustic yellows, iron-rust reds, and odd veins of white and midnight chunks of pitch black stone embedded.

The petrified trees aren’t the only feature of the park.  From a viewing platform, one can see “The Newspaper Rock,” which shows a high concentration of Native American Petroglyphs.  Likewise, the Painted Desert in the Northern portion of the park is a great bluff view of deep reds, washout whites and hardy gray stones fighting erosion which cuts deep knife grooves into walls. 

Other features include the Tepees, which are solemn grey hills quickly being eaten by erosion, Puerco Pueblo, a small set of ancient foundations, the Crystal Forest (the highest concentration of petrified trees) and the Long Logs and Great Logs near the Southern portion of the park.  The logs found in the southern portion of the park are known as part of the Rainbow Forest for the bizarre and vivid colors that emerge from tree cores.

Continuing West

Overall, the stop was very much worth the trip.  At the time of this writing, it was a twenty five dollar entrance fee (card only, due to COVID) and the park is a thru-park, meaning one can drive south from I40 and exit out the other side, near Holbrook.

Finally through New Mexico, Ari and I completed our drive to Flagstaff, Arizona.  There, we were due to meet a friend of ours and her daughter for a dispersed camping trip in the Coconino National Forest.  The road, especially when escaping to the most obscured part of the woods was painfully rugged and nearly completely deserted aside from two cars in as many days.

Until our next stop,

Best regards and excellent trails,

Old Sean

Written July 21st 2020

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