12 Oct Road Trippin with Karma – CA to NM: part III

Thursday September 15 (cont)

Our drive back towards the four corners area was easy and scenic. Before we knew it we could see the epic monoliths in the distance rising out of the earth.

The views kept on coming as we made our way down the 10-15 miles through the area. We even saw a bunch of people recreating Forrest Gump’s run through the iconic landscape!

Soon we we leaving the valley, and the geology was shrinking in the rear view mirror. Holy cow what an incredible sight!

I looked up free camping last minute on our way to Monument Valley and settled on a spot that caught my eye: Valley of the Gods Road. We drove through the small town of Mexican Hat and crossed the San Juan River a couple times and then found the turn onto Valley of the Gods Road.

We were immediately blown away. The dirt road lead past campsite after campsite with amazing views of even more monoliths in front of us. We drove further and further down the road, hunting for the most perfect campsite with the best views. After about 4.5 miles, we found it!

Friday September 16

Being at such an incredible campsite, I was of course awake before sunrise to catch the return of the light on the landscape around us. I was not disappointed!

We lazed around the campsite until 10 am, having time to do some yoga, reading and even taking another nap! Our destination for the day was Farmington, NM – which was only 125 miles away.

We’d never been through Farmington and wanted to take our time getting back to Taos. We looked up several breweries, eateries and even another National Monument as things to keep us busy the rest of the afternoon and night!

After checking out a brewery in Farmington, we headed to Aztec Ruins National Monument. This park features a 900-year old ancient civilization with tons of complete structures still in tact that you can walk through!

After finishing our tour of Aztec Ruins, we visited another brewery / pizza shop in the town of Aztec, then found our parking spot for the night just outside town in another BLM area.

Saturday September 17

Our final and 16th day of the trip! We had all day to go less than 200 miles, and we took our time, grabbing breakfast at a cute local diner in Bloomfield, NM, wandering around downtown Chama, and then finally a nice happy hour dinner, back in Taos at our favorite local spot Medley!

All said and done, we drove 1,600 miles on this second half of the journey, bringing the trip total to just over 3,000! We were thrilled to once again explore new parts of our incredibly vast and sprawling country!