It’s time to hit the road again as today we are taking two more of the scenic byways on our list. We were up at eight and by the time we got ready, had some breakfast and packed a lunch, it was 9:30 and time to hit the road.
We headed east out of Santa Fe on I-25 and then got off and drove into the historic town of Pecos. Pecos didn’t seem to have preserved their history like Cimarron did, but it was still interesting to match the legend with the location.
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| Our first scenic drive of the day is Scenic Drive #9 that follows the Pecos River to its headwaters north of Pecos. From there we will take Scenic Drive #34 south to Vilanueva State Park. The drive actually goes all the way south to I40, but we didn't have time to do the whole drive today. |
Our first byway, Scenic Byway #9, was called the Pecos River Byway as it followed the Pecos River up into the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to its headwaters. The drive on Utah highway 63 from Pecos to the end is only 19 miles, but the road is very twisty and gets quite narrow as you near the end, so the going is slow. When we reached the very small town of Tererro (only one building that is supposed to be a general store) we decided to take a side trip that followed the Holy Ghost Creek up to the Holy Ghost Campground in the Santa Fe National Forest.
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| Utah Highway 63 north of Pecos. |
It was a beautiful drive with a lot of fall color still evident. The dirt road was very narrow with a lot of twists and turns, but luckily there was very little traffic since it was the offseason. Surprisingly, there were quite a few vacation homes along the creek, and we wondered how they would have every gotten materials and equipment up this narrow road, but evidently they did as some of the homes looked quite nice. I think these homes were strictly for summer use as they appeared to be mostly empty.
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| We followed this side road out of Tererro all the way to the Holy Ghost Campground that was at the end of the road. |
We reached the end of the road at the Holy Ghost Campground, and it looked like a great place to camp, but it was empty this late in the season. We got out and stretched our legs a bit and walked along the creek, and then headed back down to Tererro and the main road.
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| The end of the road, time to get out and stretch our legs. |
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| The Pecos River |
From Tererro we drove on to the slightly larger town of Cowles that was almost to the end of the road. We never made it to the headwaters of the Pecos River as the only way to get there was by a rough four-wheel drive road. Normally we would give that a try as we were driving my offroad capable 4Runner, but we just didn’t have the time today, so we turned back and headed back down to Pecos. On the way back we stopped at a nice campground and ate our lunch. The weather was great and it was nice to be able to eat outside without being cold or rained on.
We made it back to Pecos, but instead of turning back the way we came in,
we drove all the way through Pecos as we were still headed east and had to
continue our drive on I25.
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| The town of Pecos, not very picturesque, but full of history. |
A few miles before we reached the interstate, we saw a turnoff for the Pecos National Historical Park and decided to check it out. It has a very nice visitors center and very informative displays. We had no idea of the history of the area that dates back to the very early inhabitants of North America who later became the Puebloans. Their life was disrupted by arrival of the Spanish who enslaved them to do their work and forced them to convert to their religion destroying the local culture. There was even a Civil War battle fought in the area. There were some trails to some of the historical sites including one that we would have liked to have taken to the Pecos Pueblo ruins, but we just didn’t have time. If we are ever in the area again, we would definitely stop here again and explore it more fully.
From there it was back to I-25 until we reached our second scenic byway of the day, Scenic Byway #34, a drive along Utah Highway 3 following the Pecos River to Villanueva State Park. The state park was about 25 miles south of I-25. It was an interesting drive climbing in and out of valleys with the Pecos River running along the road in places. There was more fall color which added to the drive. We went through several small towns, but didn’t see any services, just clumps of houses. One of the towns did have a post office. It did make us wonder what people did to make a living in this area. There did appear to be some farming, but not enough to support all the homes we saw.
We finally reached the town of Villanueva and turned off the highway onto a road that led to the state park. The park was very nice as the Pecos River ran through it and there were quite a few people camping. I have to again mention the weather today, as it was wonderful, the best we’ve had on the trip. Blue skies with temperatures in the mid-sixties at the higher elevation to the high seventies down lower. It was nice not to be cold and wet.
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| The town of Villanueva where we turned off the main road to visit Villanueva State Park. |
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| Entering the park. |
Even though the park was very nice, there wasn’t much to do unless you were a fisherman, at least as far as we could see. We took a short hike along the river and took some pictures of the fall color, but we didn’t stay long and headed back to Santa Fe.
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| The Pecos River |
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| Back on Utah 3 headed north to I-25 and Santa Fe. |
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| One of several small towns on Utah 3. |
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| Back in Santa Fe, that's our building on the left. |
We were back in our apartment just before five and after relaxing a bit, we headed out to find a place to eat. We decided on a New Mexican style Mexican restaurant that was just around the corner and had a good dinner. There was a French restaurant down the block that we had seen yesterday that had some tasty looking pasties, so we walked to that for dessert, but they had closed early so we gave up and returned to our apartment.
The rest of the evening was spent relaxing, and I downloaded our pictures, updated the blog, and backed everything up. Since this has mostly been a driving trip we haven’t taken many pictures, but I have mounted a GoPro to the roof of the 4Runner with a magnetic mount, so I do have many minutes of video of these scenic area we have driven.
Tomorrow will be another driving day and we’ll be visiting the Santa Fe ski area high in the mountains and then driving to Bandelier National Monument and the Jemez Pueblo.
Scenic Drives Completed: 11 of 35
Scenic Drives Missed: 1
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