Boondocking East of Albuquerque and a Visit to Madrid

Monday, May 13

We left the Petrified Forest National Park early yesterday morning, around 7AM, ready to move further east along the I-40 Super Slab.

By 1PM we'd arrived in the vicinity of the Cedro Peak Loop Road.  We encountered way too rough of terrain conditions trying to get on the loop in a clock-wise direction to explore for campsites.

We disconnected the CR-V and gingerly made our way back onto Juan Tomas Road and found the right access forest road 522.  Just past the group campground, we found a spot along the access trail.  

Had we gone just a few more feet up this road away from the tower hill, we would have found a campground!  The sites were pretty small, as USFS sites tend to be, but there were a couple I could have squeezed Uma into with some effort.

As it was, we set up at the right spot in the end.  We rested the rest of the afternoon away, and got over the panic we'd experienced at the beginning of the loop road!  Don't take the FR542, use FR252 which takes you to the Sabino Canyon Trailhead and the Group Campground.

Of course, with the cell tower located in the hill nearby, there was plenty of cellular internet signal to be used.  It figures, I get the Starlink system and then the next few sites I don't need it.  The time will come though.

Tuesday, May 14

Since it was close by, we drove the Honda CR-V to the town of Madrid, NM.  This town was featured in the movie "Wild Hogs", which I liked a lot.  Madrid is a small "artist-oriented" town.  

A nice gate I saw...

Here's the boarding house (in reality a Mercantile Store) used in the Wild Hogs movie.

The main Wild Hogs location, built by the movie and left to the town.  The town brought it up to code and turned it into a Wild Hogs souvenir store.

I found this site with a great recap of film locations used in Wild Hogs:  LINK

It's got some more Madrid-specific info.

Another Madrid location used in film, this one in the Netflix series "Longmire", another favorite of ours.  The interior of the bar is used as the "Red Pony" Saloon in the series.  We didn't go in, it wasn't going to be open till 11AM and we were "done touring" before then:

Interesting car, sadly non-functional

Quite the decor at the restaurant near the Mine Shaft Tavern

There was, of course, a Cannabis dispensary

Madrid was preparing for their Crawdaddy Blues Festival scheduled for the coming weekend while we were there; so I imagine the crowds will be much larger than the few people we saw wandering about.

We left Madrid and got back to camp in time for lunch.  The rest of the afternoon was spent hanging at the campsite, enjoying the warm weather under the shade of Juniper trees.

I did go riding on Yagi, my TW200 to fully explore the FR542 porting of the Cedro Peak Loop.  It would have been a deadly mistake to continue up it with the VRRV!  Lots of rock ledges, big boulders, deep ruts and ironically, another campground area.

We plan on being home, back in Colorado, by tomorrow evening.