Summer 2009

When I plotted the routes for this trip, I decided to have this leg go "overland" without using any Interstate Highways. I thought it might be an interesting trip going diagonally across the Navajo and Hopi reservations. I also thought that this might be a relatively flat ride... I was wrong (I have been using that phrase a lot on this trip).

I should have consulted my topographical maps or even looked at Google Maps terrain option (see the map above) and I would have realized that this was not a flat prairie. I knew I was going to encounter high desert and we did. What I didn't realize is how many mesas and canyons and hills we would have to traverse in the 267 miles we covered today. The other thing I didn't realize was the changes in elevation which reached well above 7,000 feet. These changes in elevation took us from desert scrub to tall pines. Just for comparison, there are no mountains in the eastern United States that exceed that elevation. Gallup is at approximately 6,500 feet.

The ups and downs and twists and turns surprised me but really didn't provide a challenge to the truck. We had luck on our side because the wind was on our back for most of the trip and gave us a bit of a push. If we were heading into the wind the way did on the way west, we would have had a fuel problem. I carry a 5 gallon tank of diesel in the unlikely event that we would be in a situation where we were low on fuel with no service station in sight. We drove quite a few miles from Tuba City before we saw a service station in Keams Canyon and I didn't hesitate to get fueled up. We probably would have made it with the fuel in the tank and our 5 gallon reserve, but that is tempting fate and I'm not about to do that in a sparsely populated area like the one we drove through. What I had not known is that once we got past Keams Canyon, there are more services available and we would have made it without a problem. I have come close to running out of fuel on past trips and that is not a good feeling.

We arrived in Gallup, a town we stopped at or passed several times before. We are sitting in a campground on the western edge of the town and the wind is just blowing in from the west. It seems that there is nothing here to break up the wind. The trailer is rocking away in some of the gusts. When I registered at the campground I asked about the winds which I had not encountered in previous trips through here. I was told that these winds start in May and go on for a couple of months. At least it is likely that the wind will be mostly on our backs and not give us the problems that we had going west.