Jemez Mountains Road Trip ~ The Drive Up

 

I love road trips, don’t you? There are so many new and exciting things to see and do, beautiful vistas to enjoy, adventures to experience, and it’s just wonderful to get away from home for a while and be on no particular schedule at all.

On Friday my kidlets and I headed north to the Jemez Mountains in the Santa Fe National Forest for a weekend of camping with my twinlings’ Boy Scout Troop. Ranchman John had to work so he offered to take care of all the critters while we went on our road trip, so we were set to go. It’s only supposed to be a 2 1/2 hour drive, but we had to make a couple stops on the way, so we didn’t leave as early as I’d planned.

Oh well, life is always full of surprises and many of them are good, right?

It has been more than 12 years since I’d driven up to the Jemez so I consulted with Google Maps for Directions, but I knew something was amiss when we took a left turn onto state road 485, and it drove through a little village I didn’t recognize. Also the road became rough rather quickly and was just old asphalt covered in red dirt with potholes and areas where it had been washed out from recent rains. Hmmmm. I kept on because I was still going north and I knew that’s where the campground was.

I thought it was strange that we saw no one else on this road and dusk was fast approaching. I drove onward and soon we entered into a steep sided canyon with a deep drop-off into the Guadalupe River down below. Of course, most of the one way road had very few guard rails either. I was thankful that we weren’t driving through this section at night.

(Borrowed photo of this section taken during the winter)

But soon we were confronted with tunnels, like something you’d see in Lord of The Rings…narrow, long, rocky tunnels into the darkest Netherworld. Driving through we had to go slow because they twist and turn and you can’t see if any other cars are coming towards you from the other side.

 

If it had been earlier in the day, I would have gotten out to take photos as there were some pull-outs on both sides of the tunnels. But darkness was falling, so I borrowed some photos from the internet to show you these tunnels, which are called The Gilman Tunnels.

I had heard of these tunnels and this beautiful, off the beaten path scenic roadway before, but had never had the opportunity to come this way to explore. And now we can’t wait to go back during the day.

By this time, though, I was telling my kidlets, “Ummm, this can’t be the right way. How in the world would folks with RVs be able to drive through those two tunnels? They are too narrow”. Hmmmm.

Once we were on the other side of the tunnels, that little one lane road road turned into a rough washboard gravel road as it continued to climb.

And a little ways after my previous comment about the narrow tunnels, our headlights shone onto a boulder the size of a large refrigerator laying on it’s side in the one lane gravel road. Uh oh!

Apparently it had fallen from the cliff above us.

I didn’t even think we should try it, as there appeared to be no one else on the road and my cell phone had no bars. I prepared to turn around, just as a truck drove up. I flagged it down and asked the guy if that was the way to Fenton Lake, past that boulder in the road, and he laughed…….

Yes it was, he said, but it was another 12 miles up the gravel road, and another 5 miles on a paved road. But he recommended we still keep going that way because the alternative, turning around and going back, would add twice as much roadway to travel and more driving time.

Like an Angel sent from heaven, he told us to follow him around the refrigerator boulder and he would wait until we passed safely to the other side. It looked like someone had taken a sledge hammer to the one side of the boulder to chip off enough of it so that a vehicle could get past, but barely.

We had to go up and over a sandy, rocky hill to go around it, and a stupid sage bush ended up scratching the paint on the passenger side of my van, but we did manage to get around it safely. Whoohoo!

The guy told us that Fenton Lake Campground was full and he was camping out with friends alongside forest road 376. We were with the Boy Scout Troop though and had reservations, so I knew we could get into the campground…….

We followed him for a while but he was driving a 4-wheel drive truck while I was….not. And the washboard road kept causing us to fish tail anytime we got above 25 mph, and with the steep drop-offs and sparse guard rails, I preferred to go at a slower, safer, steady pace. So, we lost sight of him as he drove off down the gravel road.

Soon, it was pitch black dark and we started noticing many camp fires on either side of the road in the forest. They were comforting and like beacons encouraging us to drive onward.

There were sections of the road that had been partially washed out and we had to stay on our toes to avoid the washed out sections, huge potholes, and crumbling edges of the roadway.

At one point, we drove up over a small hill and almost ran right into a brown and white cow standing in the center of the roadway. My reactions were fast enough to swerve to the side and go around him slowly, but after that little scare, I was even more cautious as we drove into the night.

(Photo taken last year driving up to Angel Fire, NM)

Soon we noticed that the camp fires were even more frequent, and we finally came upon our first vehicle on the road driving towards us. It was a truck pulling a camper looking for a place to camp for the night, probably after trying to get a place at Fenton Lake first.

Not long after that, the forest road came to an end at a paved road and we turned in the direction the man in the truck had told us and drove another 4-5 miles up that road.

Ironically there were no signs for Fenton Lake, only a large sign that said “Unimproved Road Ahead. Drive at your own Risk”

Nice.

Thankfully, we soon came upon a turn-off with a sign for Fenton Lake and we drove right in. We looked at a campground map but couldn’t find any group site, but soon another boy and a scout leader drove up and asked if we knew where everyone was. Yikes!

Fenton Lake Campground is large and spread out  so we drove around the campground for about 20 minutes, to no avail. By this time it was close to 9 pm, and we couldn’t help but ooh and aah at the moonlight brilliantly shining on the lake as we kept driving past it.

Could we be the only boy scouts who showed up for the Camp Out?

Where was everybody? 

The campground was full. Where would we be sleeping tonight?

(To be continued…………….)