Another day of just driving and not sightseeing. We drove from Las Vegas to Grants and would love to have explored El Malpais and the surrounding area for a few days but with the Governor’s lockdown orders we can’t. Oh well.
Grant is known as the “Uranium Capital of the World” and is about 80 miles west of Albuquerque off of I-40. It is in close proximity to El Malpais National Monument (badlands, lava fields, lava flows, cinder cones) and Bandera Volcano Ice Cave which is also known as Zuni Ice Cave. The Ice Cave is a collapsed lava tube from the Bandera volcano which occurred some 10,000 years ago. The whole area is surrounded by lava fields. Grants is also along historic route 66 with several motel and cafe Route 66 icons along the road including the Route 66 Neon Drive-Thru which is big enough for an RV to drive through!!!
The Grants KOA is directly off I-40 but far enough away to not be bothered by highway noise.
RV Park: Grants KOA
Location: Grants, Colorado
Site: 26 – pull-thru
Cost: $37.97
Services: FHU
Comments: An easy access RV park off I-40 with great proximity to El Malpais and the Bandera Volcano Ice Caves. There are some lava beds in the RV park next to the sites.
COVID Awareness: 7 out of 10. I had to go into the office to register (even though we had paid for the online reservation). KOA insists that you come in to get your map, car passes, etc. The employees were wearing masks. There wasn’t any sign regarding number of people allowed in the building (many other places say only one allowed at a time) and there were no social distancing “circles”. Check-in was painfully, I mean painfully slow but they were very polite and could not have been nicer wanting to offer you everything and anything. This KOA provides meal delivery service to your RV and she even read the menu to me. It sounded terrific and any other time we might have taken them up on their offer but not this time.
They were kind enough to give us a site with a tree to have some kind of shade (as it was quite hot out) and also to allow us to receive satellite TV. The park was quite empty when we arrived early in the afternoon but filled up quickly by evening. Here are some of the lava beds in the RV park close to our site (at the entrance to the RV Park).
We want to make sure to stop by this area another time to better explore everything this town has to offer.
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