Thursday, February 16, 2012

The WINDS of change

Tuesday morning we left Pancho Villa State Park and headed north to Deming. Along the way stopping at the our first Border Patrol Inspection Station. These stations are a common sight in southern areas but since we have been mainly central PLUS in the deep south we haven't come across one until now. But oh do we remember them well from years past - spent a lot of time going through last year since we were stationed in Arizona and California.

Anyway - I digress...

We stopped in Deming to stock up on supplies at Walmart and then got back on I10 continuing our trip west. 

Bad news right away! 

WIND!

It was windy when we left Columbus but we didn't give it much thought other then being happy that we were leaving the dust storm.

Now on the interstate we were going nowhere - very slowly.

Because of the climb in elevation west of Deming and the wind we couldn't talk the truck into doing much more then 30 miles hour!


These billboards line the highway along this route - for about 100 miles they keep popping up. Obviously a marketing ploy. Blacksheep warned us about 'The Thing' which is at a souvenir shop - has anyone stopped to see what it actually is? Blacksheep?

Wow - I actually found something about The Thing when I googled it!


Well I couldn't really photograph the wind.....but it sure was kicking up the desert sand.




We were thinking that once we hit the divide perhaps we would begin a decent and that would help with our speed - no such luck.



Nothing important about this sign but when you watch a fairly barren landscape for about an hour something this colour really stands out - plus I just like the sign!

By the time we reached Lordsburg we realized that we would have to stop and wait out the wind. There was just no sense trying to push through it.

And so at about 2:30 we pulled in behind a berm between the Comfort Inn and McDonalds. A very strategic spot of course - we wanted to get on-line to check the weather.

70 km/h winds! about 45 miles/hour

Good thing we pulled over! even where we were it was a bit scary at times..the trailer really won't blow over

will it?

The severe wind alert was predicted to last until about 7:00 pm. By 5:30 we decided to leave and at least try to get somewhere for the day.

We ended up driving all the way to Tucson. The winds had subsided and the slope was pretty much all down hill.

Ahhhhhhhhhh.............back to normal.

We spent the night just north of Tucson at the Home Depot pulling in at about 9:00 pm. We were glad that we had driven through Tucson in the evening and not the next day during rush hour.

Thanks for sitting through a fairly boring blog post - but hey - it's part of the story! The windiest travel day we have experienced to date.

Teresa

Today's Interesting Link: Here's a great link I found a few days ago - strange that I didn't know it existed! I found it through Ayngelina's blog Bacon is Magic - Where profiled her. It seems to be a great site about Canada - good for Canadians and for our fine American visitors to see a bit of our country - eh!

4 comments:

  1. I think those winds are all over, very bad here in Bullhead City for the last few day, travel safe.

    ReplyDelete
  2. It sure was a crazy weather day - other then the wind I think we missed the brunt of it!

    Thanks for coming over to visit from TnT's site - I've been to yours many times!

    Bullhead eh? we stopped in there last spring on our way up - we wanted to see what it was like - esp. since we watched Into the Wild and Chris had been there for a bit.

    T

    ReplyDelete
  3. The Thing is just that---a thing.....its supposed to give the illusion of an alien holding its baby, in a box under glass....but its just a thing.....a marketing ploy to get tourists to stop and spend a buck to walk thru a maze of buildings and corridors to see lots of tacky stuff....

    Safe travels guys.....

    ReplyDelete

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