Strolling Amok

Bighorn Campground in Glenwood, New Mexico

Bighorn Campground near Glenwood, New Mexico.

This post isn’t so much about the Bighorn Campground as it is a rave about the scenery on continuing southwest from there. About all that can be said about Glenwood Campground is that it makes a handy overnight stopping place if you’re in the area. It’s beside and below a relatively unused highway, and consists of several gravel drives along a wandering path in. It offers metal picnic tables of questionable usefulness, and a very clean vault toilet that needs you to BYOTP. Overall, it’s small and scruffy, and although you can stay there 14 days, it and nearby Glenwood have no compelling draw to hang around for more than a day or two unless you’re just looking for a place to blow time at. Since I’ve been thoroughly spoiled by where I’ve spent my summer, I’m now picky.

Below is a sort of dashcam of the drive from Grants, New Mexico to Glenwood, a trip of about 180 miles that gave me an eye-popping 19MPG fuel average. 11 minutes in length, it’s in 3 segments. Nothing truly heroic about it, but it does catch some of the scenery onroute if you have the bandwidth. There’s a sort of push-pull effect in it that I’m guessing is the iPhone’s effort to stabilize the constant juggling of the windshield mount I have. There doesn’t seem to be any way to turn it off so that I can deal with stabilizing it purely in software later, so this is what it is.

The network of back road highways that zig-zag from Glenwood toward Raso, Arizona immediately provide some of the most inspirational views I’ve encountered so far, and I’ve hit some pretty good ones. Unfortunately, I was unable to use my GPS, since it did not recognize the street address I was heading to, and the coordinates I had were bogus. So I had to tie up the iPhone with navigational duties and forego its use as a dashcam on that leg. Too bad. The stills I took do not do what is there any justice at all.

The most impressive parts involved vast, sweeping valleys carpeted with gold-colored grass that were bordered by mountains. In many spots, there were multiple layers of mountains from high viewpoints. Incredible, but I have no photos of either. The features tamed right down once I was solidly in Arizona, but wow, what a 175-mile trip that was! Should you choose to take that trip from Glenwood to Raso AZ, just be sure that your vehicle’s powertrain and brakes are up to snuff, with no “I should have that looked at before long” issues hanging. That goes double for towing a trailer, and you should have either the equivalent of a “Tow/Haul” transmission mode or be able to downshift to lower gears as needed. Worth it? Yes.