Almost there. I'm at my final stop before Mesa, Albuquerque NM. It was all perfect until I got to the hotel, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
Left OK heading once again towards an ominous black frontal system, but it seems that I40 and that system were on diverging paths, so aside from some rain (I hardly bear to describe it as rain after the friggin deluge of the previous day) nothing much happened.
Then everything cleared away, and I was treated to blue skies my entire drive. And treat they were. Today was the perfect day to drive (aside from the wind trying to blow me off I40 - more later) and it was interesting to note the change in topography the further west I got. From OK's green, plush miles of absolutely nothing, to TX's rather less green miles of absolutely nothing, to NM's almost spectacular miles of nothing. All domed by a phenomenal blue sky. Particulary coming through NM. It may just be that NM's landscape is so much closer to that of where I'm going that got me all excited, but maybe it's also the air, and the altitude. The colour was just unbelievable.
My buggy got something of a workout today. She's very laden down, and a little right-heavy, so has a tendency to veer a little right, especially when on a camber. So imagine my concern, turning to mild panic when she started drifting left. Not just drifting left, but when I let go the steering wheel, she was in the left lane in seconds. I thought I was losing a left tyre, and THE LAST thing I wanted to be doing was unloading the car in the middle of Texas to get at the spare.
So I pull over at a rest area to see what the damage was. Thankfully there was none, but I almost got blown into the Gulf Of Mexico. All those miles of nothing means no windbreak, and I was being blown off the road. I have a bigger respect for truck drivers now.
So we're tootling through NM at the 75mph speed limit - NM is getting a bigger and bigger fan with every passing minute - when I see a sign saying that if the lights are flashing, I40 is closed. What the hell would close it regularly enough that they'd install that? It would have to be snow right? I'm having a hard time swallowing this as it's 88 out and cooking my Garmin Grumpinpuss through the windscreen, but I had noticed that my buggy had been having to drop gears more and more. Must be the altitude thought he, not knowing much about NM geography.
I discovered a neat little thing on my GG that has a Where Am I? function that also gives you your altitude. So I keep checking this as we go along. At the closure place we were at about 4,800 feet - which is high in and of itself. Well my lovely buggy was made to haul all of my worldly goods up to over 7,000 feet. Poor thing.
From that heady height it's literaly all downhill to Albuquerque, especially the last 15 miles or so. I'm hoping the west exit isn't like the east exit, or my poor buggy is gonna have a hard time of it tomorrow. It's a shorter drive at least.
I doubt I'll be able to post tomorrow, as my apartment doesn't have a business centre (yet) and I'm hoping the cable guy comes on Thursday.
Until I can post again......
PS
TOMORROW - I'm gonna be in my new home TOMORROW!!!