Don's Travels: Albuquerque to Flagstaff

Today [ Tuesday, October, 20] we travelled from Albuquerque to Flagstaff about 320 miles.

Just as we left we saw several hot air balloons. Just the pervious week Albuquerque had had their big ballon festival. We thought we had missed all the balloons, but luckily no.

After watching the ballons for awhile we set off.....

through the city. On the outskirts were some large houses sitting prize locatioins over looking the city. Even these homes had desert style gravel gardens

Once out of the city we saw the large desert space we were to travell through.

It wasn't long before we saw our first train.

Then the next and the next until we lost count. Trains travelling in both directions. Trains pulling onto sidings to let others pass. These trains were large, possible a mile long. In the first hours I counted nine trains. We passed one travelling east and within fifteen minutes another following it.

This next photo taken from the meteor crater parking lot shows the length of the trains.

Finally we we got to Flagstaff our hotel was by the railway line and we found the trains seemed to run continuously.

We travelled across the last bit of New Mexico into Arizona. the following sequence shows the GPS before and after crossing the boarder. On outward trip we discovered that it had no Arizonz maps!.

Now back to the days drive. Those re-used town names came up again. We stopped to take some photos of Luguna--obviously not the California one!

Some more scenery. The sort of bluff that in cowboy films the indians would suddenly appear looking down on the calvary. Usually outnumbered 20:1 the cavalry always seemed to win--except for Custer!

Other scenery along the way..

Across the border in Arizona we were in Indian land and a lot of outlets....

During the trip we have passed many truck tractors being delivered. They just stack them front wheels on the back of the tractor in front.

A coal fired power station. The heaps of coal in the front would have been supplied o by one of the many caol trains we had seen.

Finally before reaching Flagstaff we made a six mile detour to see a large meteor impact crater. First the information centre at the crater....

then the crater.....

and in the bottom of the crater the remains of shaft sunk looking for the meteorite. In the early part of last centrury they spent 25 years searching for the meteorite, not knowing it would have been vaporised on impact.