I left Looking Glass Road in Utah a few minutes after 1:00 p.m., about half an hour early from usual.
A few miles west of Farmington I took the 64 bypass. It was dark and I'd not been this route before. The road climbed up onto the mesa then wound through some hills. I was trundling along at about 40 miles an hour when a semi came up behind me; I moved onto the shoulder to let him by. From then on we barreled along at 60 until we came out onto 550 a couple of miles north of Angel Peak Scenic Area.
Calling it a "Scenic Area" is a little misleading. It's a huge gas field with pumps runnning constantly; the "area" sounds like an airfield with planes idling on runways. The scenic part is a huge pit of badlands while the gas field -- a prime example of BLM's multiple-uses policy, is mostly flat, over-grazed (but with cattle still on it) and covered with a low-growing shrub with mean little stickers.
The main road around the rim (of the badlands) is so washboarded I called the BLM office to complain. You take your chances on the other roads as they're mere scrapings through the brush put in place to enable servicing the wellpumps. There are places of loose sand and the sandy-clay turns into gumbo when wet.
But the washboard was so bad it motivated me to move onto the secondary roads which, although they have weeds growing in their middles, are at least (relatively) smooth. It was too dark to see so camp was a random choice settled on because there was a flat spot in the middle of a triangle at a junction. As a consolation prize the moon rose a golden buttery yellow and spread a magnificent glow throughout the night! This morning I was rolling by 10:30 a.m.
Cabezon Peak & Associated Plugs
The Ojito Wilderness is out there somewhere. It's about an hour and half from Albuquerque. It looks closer on the map but you can't travel very fast on the dirt roads.
As you travel south, the landscape grows increasingly dramatic. The San Ysidro Anticline is in the middle of a geologic hodgepodge that includes active fumeroles, mudpits and several areas of anomalous contacts.
Geology 101 Field Trip
