From Arizona to New Mexico

Tuesday October 17th, 2023, day 17

Our second week in the motorhome started yesterday and we are still happy and satisfied with our tour and our experiences. We started from Holbrook at midday and headed towards New Mexico, including Santa Fe, along the Southern Pacific Railway, which has shaped the landscape here since 1882 and started from Santa Fe.

This Southern Pacific Railway runs almost exclusively on freight trains, which are of immense dimensions. Containers stacked double-decker per wagon, trains that are over 4 km long and are pulled by up to 9 diesel locomotives.

We are still on the southern Colorado Plateau and drive hundreds of kilometers through the Southwestern United States without seeing any real cities, the relief of the landscape changes, but the surface of the landscape always remains desert or prairie. As far as the eye can see, and sometimes it's easily 40-50 km. In this prairie there are hardly any settlements, hardly any animals. Today we got off the interstate and were driving a little bit of country road when a coyote/coyote crossed the road in front of the car. Wild West, after all.‼️ We drove through extensive land of the Navajo Indians and observed how simply, almost poor, the Native Americans live. Mostly just in parked trailers in the middle of the prairie.

With New Mexico, which was first part of Spain in the 17th century, then part of Mexico in the 19th century and has only been the 47th state since 1912, we have reached the 4th state on our journey. We headed east on Interstate 40 until we reached Albuquerque. Then we are in the middle of Albuquerque, and only those who have seen “Breaking Bad” know that we wanted to visit Hank at the police station.

Now we are at a campground north of the city and are making ourselves a salad for sunset. In the meantime we have also crossed a time zone, we are now Mountain Time and only 8 hours “behind” Central Europe (otherwise more like 200 years 🤭😉😂)