Sandy and I had originally planned on heading to Arizona on February 21st, but then winter storm “Q” entered the picture. So Sandy changed an appointment she had for the 20th to the 18th. That meant we could leave on the 19th, which we did at 6:10AM. Even though it was -1 degrees when we left with some light blowing snow, we were glad to be on our way. As it turned out it was a good move as every route we would have taken ended up with 10 to 14 inches of snow accompanied with high winds that closed many of the roads. These were the conditions heading south on I-35 out of Minnesota. And now with winter storm “Rocky” starting to come through we are REALLY glad to have left when we did.
Although it did give us a good opportunity to see this “Sundog”. Sundogs are prisms formed on both sides of the sun under very cold conditions by ice crystals in the air.
After driving 697.7 miles we stopped to stay overnight in Pratt, KS. It was a long day but we were trying to outrun the snow storms that were coming through.
Well, we did pretty good as we woke up to only 2 inches of snow. When we left at 5:30AM this is what we had to drive in until we caught up to a couple of semis that we then followed, but it was still slow going.
Of course there is always someone who has to pass to get to the front.
It took us an hour to travel the first 30 miles and an hour to travel the next 45 miles. From there it got better and by the time we had traveled 125 miles we were out of the snow. We had rain and winds up to 35 MPH for most of the day.
By the time we got to Tucumcari, NM we were treated to some of the sunny weather we expected down here.
Mother nature is trying to take back its territory by drifting over the highway in the White Sands National Monument by Alamogordo, NM. You can’t see it but this sand dune is covering a fence that is about one hundred feet off the highway.
Here are the Sierra Dona Ana mountains partially obscured by the dust blowing from the White Sand Dunes as we approached the Las Cruses area.
The second day we drove 639.9 miles, again with stiff winds, before stopping in Las Cruses, NM for the night. The campground had a wind advisory of wind gust up to 67 MPH until 10:00PM. Thankfully that did not pan out, but we still had winds of 35MPH.
From Las Cruses we drove a leisurely 253.8 miles to the Pima County Fairgrounds in Tucson where we met our friends, Chuck and Lorraine. Lorraine surprised us with a wonderful roast beef dinner. Thanks Lorraine, it was great. We are going to be spending time in the area until March 1st visiting friends before we head to Cave Creek on the north side of Phoenix where we will be staying the month of March.
Until next time,
Dave and Sandy
1 comment:
As we were reading your post, Ruthie said they are in NM and then the towns got very familiar. We arrived in Deming NM on Feb 19 and left this morning heading East to get out of the wind and snow. We are in Hobbs, the weather is warmer but we haven't outrun the wind yet. Wish we had got to see you. Be safe, Vern and Ruthie Still on the road.
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