New Mexico Road Trip - Chama to Raton, NM

Sunday, October 20, 2024

Today we are traveling east from Chama to Raton, New Mexico.  Raton is A small town of about 6,000 that is located in northeastern New Mexico, about 7 miles south of the Colorado border and 85 miles west of the Texas panhandle.  There is no particular reason we want to visit Raton except it is a convenient overnight stop on our way to scenic drives we wanted to explore.

We had a long drive ahead of us today, so we were up at eight and the first thing we noticed was that it was raining.  I looked out the window and even though it was raining pretty hard, I could also see blue sky, so we hoped for the best.

This is our planned route today to get from Chama to Raton.  As you'll find out later, things didn't go exactly as planned

Before I go on about today, I want to mention something about the photos in this blog.  Because this is a road trip specifically for doing scenic drives, we will be spending most of our time driving and unless there are places where we specifically want to stop, a lot of our photos will be shot through the car windows that might be clean, but most likely will have raindrops, bugs or dirt on them.  I am attaching my GoPro to the 4Runner roof and am shooting a lot of video every day, but more than likely I won’t be posting any of those on the blog.  I do have the ability to grab a frame from the video for a photo and have done a few of those in this post, and will continue to do it, but the GoPro is sitting out in the rain and elements, so the lens isn’t always clean. The point of this overly long explanation is that some of the photos posted may not be of the highest quality, but they’re the best we can do on a trip like this.

We hit the road by nine and sure enough the rain had stopped and there was quite a bit of blue sky.  As we did yesterday, we drove south out of Chama, but today when we reached Tierra Amarilla, we turned east on US Highway 64 and that was the start of Scenic Byway #4 called the Brazos Summit.  It was a beautiful drive climbing up to the 10,500 Brazos Pass.  It was mostly sunny, and there was still quite a bit of fall color showing.  As we drove up towards the pass, we started to see snow and by the time we reached the summit the snow was quite heavy but luckily the road was clear.

We continued east towards Taos, but instead of turning south to Taos we headed north towards the small town of Costilla near the Colorado border where we would turn east on Scenic Byway #32.  Unfortunately, we were headed right into some very dark, heavy cloud cover and it started to rain.  About halfway to Costillo we stopped in the town of Questa as we had a decision to make.  The scenic byway heading east out of Costilla was 90 miles of unimproved (dirt) forest service roads.  It promised to be a very scenic drive, but we had no idea of the road conditions since it would be all dirt roads and there were flash flood warnings in the area.

Normally in dry weather this would be an easy if not slow drive, but we just didn’t know what it would be like in the rain.  After much discussion, we decided that the wisest thing to do was to pass on this scenic byway and head east from Questa.  We would be driving part of Scenic Byway #2 called the Enchanted Circle so the scenery was quite beautiful, but it was disappointing not being able to do what we originally planned.

The new plan, we don't do Scenic Byway #32, but instead continue on Scenic Byway #2 and then get on Scenic Byway #33 to Cimarron and then on to Raton.  Disappointing, but safety first as we don't want to put ourselves at risk.

We passed through the resort town of Red River and then up and over the 9,800-foot Bobcat Pass.  This drive was done mostly in the rain and it was pretty hard at times, but the roads were good and traffic was light so we didn’t have too much trouble.  

At the town of Eagles Nest we left the Enchanted Circle drive and took Scenic Byway #33 down through Cimarron Canyon.  Before starting the drive through Cimarron Canyon we did stop at a café for lunch that we wished we hadn’t chosen.  Being Sunday and late in the season there wasn’t much to choose from so we didn’t have much choice.  This place was a bit rundown and not very clean, but we were hungry and ate there anyway.  The food wasn’t too bad, but we won’t be stopping there again.

This was a beautiful drive with lots of fall color, but the heavy rain continued so we didn’t stop.  We did encounter one spot where quite a bit of water was running across the road and there was road equipment there monitoring it, but we had no trouble.

As we came down out of the canyon the rain let up and we reached the historic western town of Cimarron that was known as the “Heart of the West where the Rockies Meet the Plains”.  We stopped at a spot where there were some historic markers marking the Santa Fe Trail crossing and other historical information on Cimarron.

 

This is the St. James Hotel that dates back to 1872.  It is still open today, but I believe it is in the process of changing hands so I don't know its exact status.

Getting ready for Halloween.

When looking at our drive today I saw the town of Cimarron on the map, but didn’t realize this was “the” Cimarron of history and Western movies and TV.  It was a very interesting stop and I’m glad we took the time to do it.  There is a self-guiding tour through the historical part of Cimarron that we did before getting back on the main highway and heading towards Raton, the end of the trail for today.

After coming down out of Cimarron Pass we left the Rockies and were out on the plains.  We had dropped about 3,000 feet from Bobcat Pass, and it was a little warmer and the rain was letting up.  This route was shorter than the one we had originally planned so we reached Raton around three and checked into our hotel room.

Out on the plains and heading for Raton.

After settling in, we reviewed our route for tomorrow and then relaxed for a bit until it was time for dinner.  We ate in the hotel restaurant and the food was actually pretty good.  After dinner I did my usual blog update and downloaded the pictures from the day (there weren’t many since we didn’t get out in the rain too much) and then relaxed for the rest of the evening.  Tomorrow, we start out on another scenic byway heading east before turning back west and heading towards Santa Fe where we’ll spend the next five nights.

Scenic Drives Completed: 5 of 35

Scenic Drives Missed: 1

The overview showing our progress.