Great Western Road Trip: The Roads from Albuquerque Through Arizona

As our road trip continues we spend less time on the road between each stop and we're starting to get used to the distances. But the scenery on the road can still make or break the enjoyment of getting where we're going. As we traveled further west and throughout Arizona, we hit dry boring patches and fabulous scenic ones.

We started this stretch in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Albuquerque is much like Texas in that its roadways are well decorated (perhaps even better) with pastel, pueblo-type themes and the landscaped gardens between overpasses, on-ramps, and merging interstates add a lot to the busy traffic. It is surrounded by mountains not more than 5 to 10 miles off, so viewing distances aren't that great.

After leaving Albuquerque on I-40 West, the mountains soon turned to crumbling mesas and the roads themselves were often hilly, but not too steep. The vegetation was as sparse as ever, just prairie grasses and sands. Nonetheless, the crumbling red mesas combined with the pale prairie grasses combined to make quite a nice view.

Not long before entering Arizona, you drive past the "Continental Divide." This is an area of mountains where all rainfall and rivers to the west stay in the West and eventually drain out into the Pacific Ocean. All rainfall and waterways to the east stay in the East and drain into the Atlantic Ocean. It's a fairly nice scenic area and a good place for a few pictures.

Unfortunately, just after you enter into Arizona on I-40 West the mesas disappear. Without their aid to the horizon, the completely flat, dry prairie-deserts become incredibly boring and desolate. The only respite for quite some time is if you take the detour through Petrified Forest National Park (about 40 miles round-trip back to I-40).

If you choose this option, you'll have to pay the park fees (about $10 or free with the national parks pass) but it's worth it. Down beneath the flat lands drops the spectacular painted desert which can be seen directly from the roadside. Also, you drive past entire ancient forests of petrified logs that are strewn around the hills like boulders.

Leaving Petrified Forest National Park on I-40 W, the landscape resumes its flat, boring desert-like features. However, not long after Winslow, mountains appear on the western horizon. As you near Flagstaff, the mountains rise up nearer and appear somewhat reminiscent of the Rockies, but on a bit smaller scale. That's just to say that the view is pretty nice.

We decided to head up 89-North to get to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, though you could take 180 up to approach that portion of the Grand Canyon more from the west. Unfortunately, shortly after heading north on 89, the mountains disappear and they're replaced with semi-desert mesas much like northern New Mexico, but the vegetation is even more sparse and is replaced with more dry dirt-sand. It's better than the flat deserts of Arizona on I-40, but overall, it's not that pretty to look at.

If you're going to the Grand Canyon (and why wouldn't you?) you head west on 64. The good thing is that 64-West takes you up hills with short mountains around you and several scenic overlooks of the Little Colorado River Gorge. Don't let the name "Little" fool you; the gorge is HUGE. It's like an offshoot of the Grand Canyon, not quite as wide, but almost as deep. The overlooks give you a great view and around most of them are Navajo Indian shops where you can buy some souvenirs or some very beautiful jewelry and pottery. The prices here are also much better than the gaudy stores on I-40. Just before you get into Kaibab National Forest (which is about 30 minutes from Grand Canyon National Park) there starts to be forests of junipers, cedar trees and some pines.

I don't think I need to say anything about the Grand Canyon itself. If you pay the park entrance fee and take 64-West through the national park, the road will take you right by the edges of the cliffs and the views are amazing. The bad thing about this is there's very little parking if you want to stop at just one viewpoint; they really want to make you use their shuttle system.

We left the Grand Canyon and backtracked to 89-North. The intersection is at Cameron (a very small town with seemingly nothing to offer) and just north of the town you pass a short section of what appears to be mounds of gray dirt. It really reminds me of people mining for minerals and those kinds of industrial dirt/mineral heaps, but because there's a fence going up and down along the mounds, I think they're natural formations. They're a bit interesting, but definitely not pretty. Unfortunately, this is a big part of the landscape for a while.

On some maps, "Dinosaur Tracks" are listed on 89-North just off the Tuba City turn-off. We decided to check it out, but we were a little disappointed. It's definitely not an official site and the signs for it are crudely painted ones (but these are the same tracks listed on your map). The dinosaur tracks themselves aren't too bad, but they're not spectacular either; some stand out more, some stand out less and look like normal rock irregularities.

The main problem was that there are some Indians sitting out in front of the tracks who will immediately approach you when you open your car door and try to "guide" you around the tracks. They're not good guides, though. The information they provide doesn't go further than, "here are little tracks, here are big tracks," etc. They don't ask at any point if you want a guide but they expect a cash payment afterwards.

I could tell this was going to happen and specifically chose not to follow our "guide," yet he moped around glaring at us and eventually came out and asked for money anyway. It was a hassle and you can choose for yourselves whether you want to deal with it to see a few (fairly neat) dinosaur tracks.

Fortunately, not long after the Tuba City junction, there are a series of nice multi-layered mesas and mountains with different colors for each layer to the east and this makes the desert landscape very pretty. To the west there are hills with a bit more consistent semi-desert/prairie vegetation which also makes the whole scene much nicer.

As you get near the north part of Arizona on 89-North, you drive straight up through the bare rocky mountains that were previously to the west of you. From this vantage point, you can see the basin area on your left with the beginnings of the Colorado river cutting a canyon through it (but, before it's the Grand Canyon). There's a nice scenic stopping point on the ledge of a cliff here to enjoy the view and take some pictures.

Once you get to Page (the northernmost town on Route 89 in Arizona) there's a nice very-blue lake called Lake Powell that you can see surrounded by the large red rocks, plateaus, and mesas. There are also many people boating and swimming in this lake and it's very scenic with the contrasting bright blue of the lake and bright red of the surrounding rock formations. From here, you drive west on 89 into Utah.

One thing I can say about the general features of the west (other than its consistent desert and prairie look) is that it is very much still rugged. In the Midwest, near Oklahoma and Arkansas, you drive through or by a town about every 10 to 20 miles at the least. But there quite a few points in the actual West, since leaving New Mexico, that we might have driven 50 to 100 miles before running into towns. Even many of those towns were very small and made up of what appeared make-shift homes, run-down houses or trailers and prefabs.

This leaves me with the overall impression that the West is very rugged, still much like an old western movie which always portrays it as a great frontier. It seems to me that this frontier is still as yet barely tamed.