Tuesday, 12-2-97

Today we awoke to a drippy morning. A thick fog rolled in during the night, thick enough to cause the trees next to our campsite to drip on our motorhome. We heard the occasional dripping sound on the roof during the night.

I turned on the TV to check the weather report. It looked as if we would have a bit of wet weather coming our way. With a rain front coming from the southwest and a cold front coming from the north, we were supposed to have a chance of snow.

We took our time getting around and finally left the campground at about 9:30. On the way out, I stopped in the KOA campground office to pick up a souvenir mug for Kay. The campground was a nice looking place to stop along I-40. Since this KOA was near Lake Clinton, we took a short side trip to see the lake. Even though it is small, the lake looks like a nice place to go fishing. From there we headed west on I-40.

The East Side of Lake Clinton

We drove through the gray morning to Amarillo, Texas. There, I filled the motorhome fuel tank and we found a place to get lunch. As we headed toward Tucumcari, New Mexico, I was hoping we would be able to get to Albuquerque before the snow got down to us. Oh well, so much for best-laid plans. We finally ran into rain as we left Amarillo. The rain slowly turned to a light snow just before we got to New Mexico. I figured that this would be all we would see of the snow.

Wrong! East of Tucumcari, the snow got very heavy and it started building up all around the windshield. We were seriously considering calling it a day at 2PM and pulling in to the Tucumcari KOA campground. But just as we got to Tucumcari, the snowfall became very light. So we pulled in to town to top off the motorhome fuel tank and decided to try our luck at getting to Albuquerque.

Most of the day I was able to avoid heavy traffic by setting the cruise control to a speed that was slightly less than that of most of the vehicles on the highway. As a result, we would be traveling with a lot of distance between our motorhome and the vehicles in front and behind us. We were passed many times but we did not get bunched up with other vehicles very often.

The snow stopped for a while, but it was easy to see it had been snowing before we came on the scene. The snowscape around us was the result of a very wet snowfall. The branches of the trees and the wire on the fences were covered with a coating of sticky snow.

Winter wonderland along I-40

Most of the way, the road was wet but not slick. We heard truckers on the CB radio talking of slick spots ahead. The term the truckers used was "Grease," as in "I hit some grease at the 231." Well, we found out about the "Grease at the 231." When we got to mile marker 231, a few miles east of Clines Corners, NM, I found I was driving on a stretch of ice. As luck would have it, I was boxed in by 18-wheelers with another about to enter the highway as I approached on the ice. Fortunately, the driver, of that eighteen-wheeler entering the highway, was able to stop. I would not have been able to use the brakes on the slick roadway.

I wondered why of all times, our motorhome was surrounded by big rigs just as the roadway was most treacherous. On the CB radio, I kept hearing the truckers talking about how slick it was at that part of the highway. We made it through another exciting event. Whew! Then at Clines Corners, we came to a stalled big rig in the slow lane of the highway. We were prepared because we heard about the road hazard on the CB radio before we got to it.

The rest of the trip to Albuquerque was a fairly routine drive. The roadway even became dry for a while before we began to gain altitude. We were presented with another beautiful snowscape just east of Albuquerque. As we reached the top of the pass to begin our descent to the city, we saw two TV video trucks setting up for a live news story to be on the evening news. As we rode the long downhill run to town, we watched a bright sunset through the canyon. It was the first time we saw the sun today; I tried to get a picture of the sun-lit snow covered landscape.

Sunset over a distant Albuquerque, NM

We drove into the Albuquerque KOA campground just after the sun settled behind the mountains. We both decided to stop early to avoid the uncertainty of driving in the dark on frozen roads.

Shortly after getting settled in to our campsite, I turned on the TV. There on the news were the stories we saw being set up earlier.

It looks like we were very fortunate. Early in the day, while we were still in Texas, there were several accidents on the slick roadway. The Interstate highway was even closed twice before we came through. So today, we had a bit of excitement and fun on this leg of our trip. We kicked back and took it easy for the remainder of the night and watched TV until time to retire for the night.