Getting High in Arizona and New Mexico

26 and 29 Mar 2013

First a little confession – we did inhale. Many times on the journey from Bullhead City AZ to Santa Fe NM. Turns out that when you start at the river in Bullhead City (elev. 550 feet) everywhere is up. Seen through the windshield it’s not that obvious but it sure shows up at the gas pedal. Had to say a few comforting words to HB after beating him up a bit on these seemingly never ending hills.  

Shortly after pulling out of Bullhead City

The scenery was impressive as we climbed to Kingman (elev. 3300 feet) through Union Pass (elev. 3600 feet).

You can read the elevations but they really don’t prepare you for an almost continuous climb (and ear popping):
 

No chance of catching up to that 18 wheeler

Every downhill is a thrill now

That green sign says 5000 feet

More up

and up

and up

We finally reached the near-pinnacle of our journey, Flagstaff AZ sitting at a lofty 7000 feet. Still have snow at the roadside.

oh goody - snow

Sorry Flagstaff – can’t stay – still have a severe snow allergy.

For a while we headed down to our destinations of Winslow AZ (for pictures and t-shirts of course) and Holbrook (only 5000 feet above sea level!). Holbrook was our launch point to check out the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest). More on them in a later entry. On leaving Holbrook we were lulled by a high flat desert plain,

flat can be nice sometimes

broken only when we neared the New Mexico border:

We reach the New Mexico border

The rise in elevation wasn’t severe but we did note another high point when we reached the Continental Divide in New Mexico. At 7275 feet it became the range topper of the trip.

Continental Divide coming up

After that – lots of ups and downs on the way to our current location in Tijeras NM about 20 miles east of Albuquerque NM. Tijeras sits about 6300 feet up while Albuquerque ranges from 5000 to 6000 feet. As lowlanders from Barrie Ontario (elev. 827 feet) who have been living in lowland Texas and Arizona the effect of this climb is significant – we still go out for hikes (our campground backs on the Cibola National Forest) – uphill only of course. But now we get to wheeze like octogenarians until we get conditioned to the height and thinner air. Our solution was a trip up (yep more up) to Santa Fe (elev. 7000 feet).

Nice as it is in these mountains we do look forward to dropping down to our next destination Amarillo TX (elev. 3600 feet). Then we move on to Oklahoma City which just skims the surface at 1200 feet above the sea.