On the Way to Santa Fe...

We have a reservation in Denver - not easy to come by around the Memorial Day weekend and I'd already changed it once - so we had a lot of miles to cover to make it in time. My sister Amy and my niece Jill live there and I haven't seen either of them in three years so we've all been looking forward to this visit.

We left Fresno on Tuesday and our first stop was Newberry Springs, CA. It's pretty much the only place to stop once you've passed Bakersfield and there's only one campground...the Newberry Mountain RV and Motel Park. We stopped here the last time we traveled this way and it works well for an overnight stop - wide open, level, gravel pull-thru sites with no need to unhitch the truck from the trailer, full hook ups including TV, and a very nice woman who runs it. My only complaint is the price has risen and is really too high for what you get but, it's the only game in a very tiny town (population 2500).

On the way to Newberry Springs we encountered a severe storm warning and hit some strong crosswinds so we decided to stop at Murray Family Farms, a cute roadside stop on Hwy 58. We fueled up and had lunch while we waited for the winds to die down a bit. 

Our next stop was Williams, AZ. We enjoyed a week here in 2014 seeing the Grand Canyon and other sights but this time it was just a two night rest stop. I wanted to stay at the Grand Canyon Railway Park since we really liked it in 2014, but it was booked so I called from the road and got a pull-thru site at the Canyon Motel and RV Park. It's got good space between the gravel sites but our site was so un-level we ended up with two tires a bit off the ground. They are a Passport America park but, unlike the Railway Park, they don't honor it on pull-thru sites. I wouldn't have minded if they'd said it on the PA website but it wasn't listed in the restrictions and was a disappointing surprise.

Needles, CA! We stayed there last fall and didn't expect to see it again but we needed fuel on our way to Williams and found ourselves smack in the middle of Needles. Right across the street from the gas station sat the Wagon Wheel Restaurant and we were hungry so we had breakfast for lunch. The omelets were good! We were glad we were just there for lunch, it was already 92 degrees and rising!

We rested up in Williams and moved on, next stop Gallup, NM and Mountain time. We actually crossed into the Mountain Time Zone when we hit Arizona but, since Arizona doesn't observe Daylight Saving Time, we didn't lose an hour until New Mexico. We stayed overnight a the USA RV Park - long, level pull-thrus and full hook ups including cable. They even offer a BBQ dinner and ice cream social for a reasonable cost but we were too tired to check it out. We'd stay there again.

Friday morning we set out for Santa Fe, NM. We didn't make it to Santa Fe when we went through Albuquerque in 2014 so were happy to finally have the chance to visit.