Tadd Layton, Robert Cook, and Brandon Vedder met us in Los Alamos, New Mexico, just after midnight to get a sneak peak at the new 6.4L. They're laughing because they can't believe how packed the new engine compartment is.
Day 3: New Mexico Closes Down
We woke up on Friday morning expecting to dig our F-250 out of a snow bank and go searching for some tire chains for our 20-inch Goodyears. Turns out the snow hadn't shown up yet, but the threat of it was enough to cancel the flight that was going to bring the rest of our staff out from Los Angeles. So from here on out, we were driving solo.
With a fresh 526 miles on the odometer from our trip across Texas, we decided to avoid the eye of the storm and head north through New Mexico to get above the blizzard. Since we'd be within 30 miles of White Sands Missile Base, we thought a tour of its museum would be in order. That plan was nixed when White Sands sent all nonessential employees home for the day to keep them out of the snow. Man, were we being dumb trying to drive across New Mexico when everything was shutting down left and right.
The worst snow we saw was coming out of the hills in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It's never a good sign when you're the only vehicle on the road.
The CNN channel on Sirius Satellite Radio was predicting 10-24 inches of snowfall in the mountains west of I-25, but the radar showed we just might be ahead of the storm enough to get up to Albuquerque, New Mexico, before the heavy stuff hit. We locked the Dana 60 front hubs just to be safe and set the cruise control at 65 mph for our 270-mile morning drive.
Near Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, the snow really started coming down. The two lanes going north pinched down to one sort-of-plowed lane that made passing slower traffic impossible, even with our 8,000-pound, four-wheel-drive, diesel truck. We finally broke out of the storm near Socorro, New Mexico, so we stopped for lunch and checked out the quaint town that's about 75 miles south of I-40.
At this point, our F-250 had gathered quite a bit of attention. The most impressive spectators were Tadd Layton and Robert Cook. The two, who after making an impressive showing at last year's Diesel Power Challenge West with their 700hp, 6.0L Super Dutys, had gone on to form their own diesel company based out of Pueblo, Colorado. Tadd and Robert decided it would be well worth the 330-mile drive to meet us in Los Alamos, New Mexico, if they could check out the new 6.4L, dual-turbo engine. Tadd and Robert both drove the truck and bought us a late, late dinner at Denny's (or would that have been breakfast?) before heading back up to Colorado around 3 a.m.
Things were awfully quiet at Ford's Arizona Proving Grounds on Sunday morning. We couldn't hear any diesels out on the test tracks.
Day 4: I-40 Across Arizona
There was no way we were going to make it to Ford's facility in Yucca, Arizona, by noon, so we decided to take a lazy route back out of New Mexico and ease our way across the I-40. The threat of snow was still ever present, but the worst part was the ice on the highway in areas people wouldn't suspect. We counted five cars that had been tossed off the road and wondered, "Why aren't we sliding all over the place?" The farther west we went, snow turned into plain rain and we were able to make some time. As we climbed up in elevation toward Flagstaff, Arizona, we found the snow one final time and paid $1 more per gallon for diesel than we did in Texas.
We motored to the end of I-40 and cut down I-15 into Los Angeles, racing the sun across the Santa Monica Freeway to the Pacific Ocean. Covered in the tattoos of the road and salt from our trip through the New Mexico snows, we reached the end of the road and were in desperate need of a car wash.
Day 5: Route 66 Into California
We've never had the pleasure of driving the entire length of Route 66, but I-40 parallels much of the Mother Road. We like to pop off onto Route 66 as much as we can to taste some of the old, famous flavor, but clearly, a dedicated Route 66 diesel road trip is in order.
Crossing into California brought us back into reality and the stresses of the huge metropolis that are so easy to let go of when you're on the road. We did manage to get stopped at an agriculture checkpoint where they check for anything that might harm California's precious produce crops. The officer on duty was thrown off because we had Michigan plates on the truck and we told him we were from Texas after handing him a California driver's license. It all worked out fine. He was a Super Duty owner and just wanted to check out the truck before he traded in his '99 for this model.
As the sun set on us, we somehow managed to slip through the Los Angeles traffic jams in that sacred window of time when it's too early for Californians coming from Las Vegas to be on the road but late enough to have people staying in for their Sunday dinners. Since we began our trip on the coast in Corpus Christi, we thought we'd drive the F-250 all the way to the Pacific Ocean and dip a tire in the sand.
On our trip up I-25, we stopped in Socorro, New Mexico, to check out a piece of the Manhattan Project legacy. This piece of steel is part of a larger vessel called Jumbo, and it's on display in the town square. | 
Jumbo was actually 800 yards away from ground zero. | 
Here are full-scale models of Fat Man and Little Boy (the world's first nuclear bombs) on display in the Bradbury Science Museum in Los Alamos. |
This was the only truck we saw in 3,000 miles that made us envious. When you're ready to trade in your job for life on the open road (and trails), check out www.earthroamer.com. | 
I-40 at 80 mph through Gallup, New Mexico: The Ford's satellite radio is warning us that a new cold front is headed right for us. |  |