The Boho Hobos: Part 3: Dust, Dust, Everywhere

The Boho Hobos are back on the road after a 4 month project in Arizona. We made some wonderful friends while we were there, and although it was incredibly hard to leave them back in that beautiful state, duty calls. My Husband’s next work project is in Farmington, New Mexico, so that’s where we’re headed. We left Phoenix around 11:30 yesterday morning, and drove for about 5 hours before we pulled over to spend the night at USA RV Park in Gallup, NM. We didn’t want to drive, or hook up at our new park, in the dark.

After a trip to the RV park’s playground and a delicious home-on-wheels cooked dinner, we all got a good night’s sleep…well, the girls did at least. For some reason, Nic and I had a really hard time sleeping. That’s probably because it was unfamiliar territory.

I got about 4 hours of sleep and decided to get up at 5am when Nic’s alarm went off. (That’s what time he always gets up for work.) I set out the girls’ breakfast, hit start on the coffee maker for Nic, and started battening down the hatches for yet another day on the road.

Once the morning dishes were done, the boys were loaded into their carriers, the girls grabbed their toys for the truck and we loaded them & all our stuff up, I stepped outside for an impromptu Yoga pose.

I figured “Horse Pose” was an appropriate posture for a town named Gallup, NM.

We hit the road!

The majority of our morning, we had a smooth, clear skies kind of drive. It was lovely and serene.

No matter how many times I see it, New Mexico’s got some seriously gorgeous land formations. It’s always breathtaking!

Eventually, those clear skies turned into our first time of driving through dust storms. At first, I was going to title this blog post “Haboobs”…I learned about those from Mik…but after Googling them…these were not Haboobs…by a long shot. And THANK. GOD. because we probably would’ve died if they had been. These were just small little dust storms that popped up 4 times along our way before entering Shiprock, NM. You can see the pics go from the not so bad, “That’s just a bit of dust off in the distance” to “Where’d that plateau go?” seconds later down the road.

That wasn’t even the worst of it. I guess I never took a pic of when it got all dark and we couldn’t even see the road in front of us…

And then, just like that, the dust was gone and we could see for miles.

But not for long. Round 2.

The 2nd one was shorter, fortunately. We drove through several reservations on our way. Most of the trip was through Navajo Nation.

No, that plateau isn’t floating in the air…it’s another dust storm off in the distance. We’re headed right to it.

Here comes that 3rd dust storm that WAS off in the distance. Notice how that huge plateau is invisible all of a sudden!

We drove through the plateau, never even seeing the side walls of it. We emerged on the other side to somewhat better visibility.

It was still pretty hazy out though.

This Semi ended up being our beacon through most of the dust storms we encountered. Notice how you can only see the tops of the plateaus in the distance. That’s how thick the dust was. There was a plateau on the right of the road as well. You just couldn’t see one friggin’ speck of it!

Dust storms are intense. One second, we could see that Semi in front of us…the next second, nothing. Nada. No semi anywhere. I was yelling at Nic seconds earlier to stay off his butt. The next second, I was screaming at him to catch up to him and get back ON his butt. We decided it was better knowing where that guy was…than NOT knowing where he was. Did he speed up? Did he slow down? Did he STOP in the road…on the shoulder, god forbid? His trailer was all over the road. (It must’ve been empty.) The wind was brutal. It was definitely “lump in the throat” inducing. We caught up to him, and tailed him from the maximum distance away that we could see his tail lights (which wasn’t very far, btw). Luckily, we all made it through unscathed. (These next couple of pics were from the 4th dust storm…and luckily, our final one.)

The eerie dust did make for some spookily interesting photographs though.

Finally, we made it to Shiprock, NM. Farmington is just 20 minutes away from there!

We made it to Farmington, NM and started staking out the place. The “always-wanting-to-create-something” girl inside of me jumped up and down when I saw a Ross, Tjmax, Home Depot, Target, & JoAnne Fabrics. Tee hee. I looked back to notice Cinderella finally fell asleep. A 1st for this whole Road trip…both days! I like how she waited 20 minutes before we landed to pass out, lol.

These beauties were spotted as far as the eye can see! I <3 Spring!

Driving alongside the Las Animas River in Aztec, NM.

We finally pulled into our new campsite “Ruins Road RV Park” in Aztec. It’s seconds down the road from the Aztec Ruins National Park.

At only $300/month (everything included) it was a small park…a REALLY small park (from what we’re used to), and there was the Las Animas River that ran alongside it. The park had no amenities. You had to be a completely self-contained RV…which we are. I knew that before we came here and I was ok with going elsewhere to do our laundry. However, I didn’t like that:

A) There were no on-site laundry facilities (guess it was bugging me more than I initially thought it would)

B) There was a river that ran alongside the park (might attract homeless people & wildlife)

C) There were no streetlights (really dark & spooky at night)

D) There was trash at the back of our RV site (2 foot long sections of old sewer hoses, random other crap, kinda ghetto & unkempt)

E) With no restroom/bathhouse facilities, if any of our friends or family wanted to come visit us here and tent camp, they would be in trouble (I’m sure the RV park management wouldn’t be too down with the digging of holes to go campin’ potty)

The owners were wonderful & the park was beautiful, don’t get me wrong. I’m sure once the leaves grow back on the trees and the grass fills back in, it’s heavenly! The river is gorgeous, and I probably would’ve been down there every single day, but it made me uneasy thinking about who or what else might also enjoy it. We did go down to check it out though. The girls spent some time throwing rocks into it while I watched them like a hawk. Nic wandered around exploring the surroundings. I noticed they had some spots to camp down there as well. Those spots even had water (and I’m pretty sure electric, too) hookups. It’d be an awesome place to camp for the weekend…but for us, not for the duration of our stay.

After our Riverwalk, we decided to only hook up to electric. We did level her out a bit, but we didn’t let out the slide. We set the boys loose inside & the rest of us piled back into the truck, paid to stay one night only, and hit the road in search of a better park to suit our needs… This is NOT an April Fool’s joke.

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