New Mexico Trip, Chapter 1: Oklahoma City and Parts West

It's been 12 years since my last ghost-towning trip out West, and that, my friends, is too long!  But I've just returned from a ghost-towning adventure more successful than I ever could have imagined.  Like all previous trips, this one began in Oklahoma, where my only ghost-towning buddy lives.  Here's a scene from that hot-mess-of-a-state: My friend's car stuck on the long driveway of the guy who loaned us a metal detector for our trip.  (We ended up not even using it.)  Just look at this place, nothing but red clay and miles and miles and miles of thorny brushland.

The cheap, retro motels in Tucumcari, New Mexico, are part of the fun...even though we did camp out most nights.

So, I flew into Oklahoma City and spent a night at my friend's place there.  Afterward, we drove west to Tucumcari in an old Ford Focus that he borrowed from his son.  His Pathfinder is out-of-commission and possibly totaled.  I had to listen to him moaning for days and days about how much better the trip would be if we could have used his car...but the little Focus got us there and back. Actually, I'm glad he had the car to complain about because, if it hadn't been for that, he might have found a more annoying topic to bewail. 

This is what they call Tucumcari Mountain.  It's one of the easternmost buttes that begin to rise out of the Great Plains as you travel west into the "Land of Enchantment."  We start all our ghost-towning adventures in Tucumcari in part because there are just so many abandoned town sites nearby.  But there's a sentimental reason, too, for starting in Tucumcari.  When my friend and I were attending college in Oklahoma City (which is NOT where I'm from), we made our first big road trip only as far west as Tucumcari, and we limited ourselves to the exploration of that town and its eponymous butte.  

Tucumcari itself is a hardscrabble little place and probably at least half abandoned, with an ever-decreasing population of about 4,000--for now.  But these days, we tend to branch out and look for other places to discover.  We often find an old town site on Google Earth or on an outdated map, and then we spend a few years planning a trip to that place.  

The second night on the road--unable to get permission to trek across the private ranch where our first ghost town destination is located--we camped in the Santa Fe National Forest close to Hermit's Peak, which is pictured here.