Crossing Navajo land

 

Heading back to Los Alamos

May 31 2025 Saturday

We left Arizona and Pacific time this morning. This is a little confusing, Most of Arizona does not participate in daylight savings time so for part of the year it has the same time as Pacific time even though are in the Mountain time zone. 

Entering Navajo reservation

It's a long way thru the reservation


From Kaibab National Forest we back tracked 111 miles to Tuba City. From there we turned onto 264 and traveled on it for 180 miles to Gallop New Mexico. This route took us through Hopi and Navajo Indian reservations for most of the way. It is mostly barren desert, there are no sizable towns along its length, just the occasional small Indian village. There are a few gas stations, mostly on the southern half, but you’d better be safe and calculate your fuel usage. You’d be waiting a long time for road service out here.



If you’ve ever seen the Netflix series called Dark Winds, this is the area and the people that are depicted in the series. Spoiler alert: Much of the series is actually filmed in Pojoaque, New Mexico.

From Gallop we traveled 80 miles to Sky City Casino. As is our preference we shunned the interstate highway, instead we traveled historic route 66 as much as we could. There were two short stretches where the historic route does not exist anymore and we had to use I-40. We are overnighting in the Casino RV Park, $21 for FHU pull through site.

371 miles was our total for the day, this is more than our preferred 200 to 300 miles per day.

Driving on old route 66 alongside interstate 40

Over night at Sky City Casino



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