DAY 3: What kind of Jeep is that?

Luckily, it stopped raining by morning and the tent was dry for the most part. Cody made bacon and sausage and cheese biscuits with hot chocolate for breakfast…in the woods none the less. I think I have a keeper :) It was a cool morning after the rain, which was really nice waking up to and I slept so good. I think we truly got lucky with the weather…until we got to Colorado. So we packed up around 8am and headed west again! We hit up 3 states in one day and it was my first time to go to Texas and New Mexico! 

When we got off the interstate to get gas, a man pulled off with us and followed us to the gas station to tell him how much he liked it and ask if Cody would sell Maria. Without hesitation, Cody said no and the man moved along only for the man behind us to ask tons of questions, like “What kind of Jeep is that?” That was definitely Cody’s favorite question and I couldn’t help but cringe and laugh everytime. It turned out his son went to Ole Miss…as if I couldn’t have guessed that with his chacos, button up, mountain hardwear vest, croakies and southern tide visor…for a road trip. Sounds about right. We moved into Texas at a swift rate of 60mph and continued west, stopping at a rest stop that had a sign to beware of rattlesnakes…yikes!, and having some somersausage and cheese at a picnic area right off the interstate. Cody checked the bronco about everytime we stopped and this time he found an oil leak so he tightened some bearings and told me to find the nearest campground. 

We saw a sign for Ute Lake in New Mexico and followed the signs to it…kind of. After running way too low on gas, my phone took us to this gas station….we about died when we saw it.

 It was like a horror movie, especially since we only passed about 5 cars, some cows and a ton of “Ranch” signs on the way in, with no houses, water, buildings or many people. Not to mention we lost all cell service for awhile, we weren’t at the campground we had originally planned so no one knew where we were and we had to guess how to get in and out of there. Once we arrived, we set the tent up and took a nap. Well, Cody set the tent up. I, like an idiot, tried to get in his bronco by jumping so I wouldn’t get my wet and muddy feet all over the floorboard after we went down by the lake. Obviously underestimating how high I could jump, I smacked my head on the roof and still didn’t make it in the bronco…I felt so dumb, haha. Long story short, I just chilled out while he played superman and set everything up. Besides that, Ute Lake was really neat. Even though we couldn’t camp by the water, we could drive the bronco out away from the campground to the water’s edge and we were really close to the bathrooms/showers. 

The wind blew most of the time there and it wasn’t too hot so that was really nice. Cody also caught a smallmouth bass so that made his night and we got some pretty sweet pictures of Maria! We watched the sunset over the lake, as we did at all of the other campsites and it was truly majestic…definitely one of my favorite parts of this trip. 





Even after staying there, we still don’t know how to pronounce Ute right…I say “ooot” and Cody says “ewtee” hahaha…who knows!  We fell asleep and woke up to raccoons on top of the bronco. I know they would have been dead if there wouldn’t have been other people camping nearby! They didn’t do any damage though, thank goodness!