We headed out in our new mini-motor home on
Friday, April 16 at about 10:30 AM. The
trip was great until Wednesday night or
was it Thursday morning, but wait I'm
getting ahead of myself.
Friday afternoon we stopped at Sugarite
Canyon State Park. It is just a little
north and east of Raton, NM. It is a
very pleasant little park and we were
happy to stop there for the night. I am
still learning how to cook with no oven
and only two burners, but it works and
certainly easier than over a campfire!
Saturday, April 17, 2010
In the morning we stopped at Springer
and visited their Santa Fe Trail Museum.
It is an amazing little museum especially
for the size of the town. The manager of
the museum who has been there about a year
is an inspiration and a real talker. She
has taken a couple of history courses on
New Mexico history since she got the job
and she was very avid in her descriptions.
She did talk almost non-stop such that it
was hard to get a question asked; perhaps
she was afraid we'd ask a question she
couldn't answer? In any case we had a
good time listening to her. It seems the
town is running a deficit so they have to
close the out door swimming pool for the
summer or the museum and she is assuming
they'll close the museum.
We went on our way from Springer, south
and stopped at Villanueva State Park where
we camped along side of the Pecos River.
The river was really flying by. Too rapid
to think of canoeing in it and yet Robert
said that was about how fast the Chena
was flowing when we canoed it in Alaska.
But, then, we also dumped three times before
we gave up.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
By now it is Sunday and when we arrived at
the White Sands National Monument we were
startled to see do many people. It turned
out that not only was it Sunday, but for
the rest of the week all the National Parks
and Monuments are free.
We drove through the sand dunes and found
our very own dune to hang out upon. It is
always amazing to see the dunes and how
white the sand is and, compared to regular
sand it is very cool to the feet. While
While we were enjoying our dune a lady
from another dune came to join us and said
that when she and her husband traveled she
always liked it if someone would take a
picture of the two of them so she had come
to do that, if we'd like. Her husband has
been assigned to the base there for 19 years
so she feels like she really knows the area.
She did take our picture...
By the time we left the dunes it was too late
to go to Sunspot and the National Solar
Observatory so we went to Dog Canyon and
stayed at Oliver Lee Memorial State Park.
On our way there we saw a road runner. I have no
recollection of ever having seen one before. It
was fun to see one although this one was
definitely not running. He was sauntering.
Monday, April 19, 2010
The next morning we drove up to Cloud Croft
which is in the Sacramento Mountains. There
are many National Forest Campgrounds up there,
but it was high enough that we didn't think
we wanted to camp there and it was a good thing
because the campgrounds were all closed.
The Observatory is interesting and especially for
Robert since he had been there when it was
just getting started about 53 years ago. It is a
booming place now, with many buildings
and obviously many people. He did think he found
the house that our friend Elske and her
husband had lived in when they were there as young
PhDs. At that time the house was on
the edge of the cliff (well, it still is) and you could
see for miles to the white sands, but
the trees are tall now so it wasn't clear that
the view was still available.
At the little museum at the observatory we watched
a great movie called "Solar Max." It had been produced
for the I-Max theaters and they did a fantastic job.
We really enjoyed it.
We came down out of the mountains and headed for
Carrizozo. There was a road block where we were
flagged down and told that a prisoner had escaped.
They gave us his description and told us to call 911
if we saw him. We continued on to Carrizozo and decided
to spend the night in the Valley of Fires recreation area
(with the doors locked). Nothing happened...no
bad man came to our door.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
In the morning we walked
on the nature trail through the lava beds of the
Valley of Fire and then headed on our way north and west.
We drove through Soccoro and then west and passed
by the VLA radio telescope site. We had visited there
earlier when our friend, Bill Erikson was working there
so we had a great tour.
At Quemado we headed north toward and then east again
toward Grant and through Navajo land. We camped on
BLM land in Malpais.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
The next morning we headed north and then west to
El Morro National Monument. What a fascinating place
that is. It is an Oasis in the middle of the desert. There
is a catch basin there, no spring, but 2000 gallons of
water caught from run off of the cliffs. The cliffs are
200 ft high and called Inscription Rock because on
those cliffs are many signatures of previous
travelers, the earliest dated 1605 by Juan de Onate,
governor and colonizer of New Mexico. There were
several more dated in the early 1600s and another
bunch from the 1800s. Some of them are really ornate.
One, was by a 12-year-0ld girl, Sallie Fox. I bought a
book about Sallie at the visitor center. Two Ancestral
Puebloan Villeges once thrived atop this mesa. Remains
of an 800 room dwelling from about the 13th century
have been partly excavated. This was the outstanding
visit of the trip, for me.
Most of the trip we had rain late in the afternoon and
sometimes wind. Today, Wednesday, we had wind!
It was blowing furiously all day as we headed north
to the Bisti Wilderness area that we had heard about
from our friends, the Mosburgs. We had directions to
the area of interest, but they were not too clear. However,
with the GPS we felt we could find the place Earl
had referred to us. We pulled into a dirt road and turned
on to a better gravel road for a ways and then off through
a dried mud flat and parked at the edge of the Wilderness
fence in a some what protected area, from the wind. By
this time it was quite late so we decided to explore in the
morning. We had a late dinner and then as we were going to
bed Robert said, "I hope it doesn't rain." Well, of course
we had just been asleep a short time when we were
awakened by more wind, thunder and rain! Oh, my gosh...
that dried mud flat that we drove through and which had
blown sand into everything would get wet and we'd be
right here until it dried out again. We dressed quickly and
drove slowly out of our sheltered area into the wind and rain
and found a place to park when we realized that the rain had
turned to snow and that we still had a dirt road that had shown
signs of being muddy not too long ago. Slowly, slowly along the
gravel road we crept until we found the dirt road we had come
in on and then again, slowly, slowly out to the highway.
We made it! Now, should we head south and plan to go home via
Albuquerque or north toward Gallup and Wolf Creek Pass???
All the time looking for a place we could safely spend what was
left of the night. We finally found a school bus turnaround..and
parked at the back of that. By this time it was snowing hard,
but we were just to the side of a traveled paved road and would
worry about the snow in the morning.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Moments later, it seemed, it was 5 AM and Robert
was getting dressed so we could get out of the school
bus area before the sheriff came to hassle us out
of there.
We decided to take our chances with Wolf Creek Pass.
If it was closed we'd camp somewhere and wait.
It was reassuring through all of this that we had food,
water and fuel such that we could hang out for quite
a while waiting for the weather to change. We just
preferred to pick our place to hang out, rather than
being forced to stay put because of weather or mud.
As it turned out by the time we got to Wolf Creek
Pass it was no problem. We decided to stay overnight
at Lathrop State Park which is just west of Walsenburg.
We hadn't slept much and thought it would be nice to
stop early and relax. No such luck, the campground
was closed because of work being done on the dam.
That didn't make too much sense, but we didn't argue,
closed is closed. They did give us a list of other choices
one of which was Pueblo Lake State Park. That was still
quite a way to go, but we decided we'd go and spend the
night there. And there we had electricity which was nice.
It was chilly so we used our electric heater.
Friday, April 23, 2010
In the morning, after breakfast, we took a walk through
the campground and down to the lake. We checked out
the boats at the marina and the store and admired the
sun on the mountains to the west. Hopefully,
it would be clear here, too.
But, no, as we drove out of the park it started to rain and soon
it was pouring and soon after that it was snowing again. I won't
belabor the point. It was 12:30 PM and I-25 was a parking lot.
We left it and tried for another road going north, but in less
than a couple of miles on that it, too, became a parking lot.
We returned to I-25 and slowly crawled north. It did keep
moving. We saw plenty of cars off the road including a
large motor home with car attached being pulled back
up onto the south-bound highway by a huge tow truck
while hundreds of cars backed up waiting. It seemed
they might have left it there until the traffic was
less..perhaps at midnight.
I called Vernon and he reported that it had snowed, but our
road was clear although it looked like it was starting to stick.
He called back about 4 or 5 hours later to report the road to
Salina was fine and where were we? At that point we were
on US36 nearing Baseline Road in Boulder.
It is always nice to get home, but especially nice this time
because a lovely garden of pansies was sitting on the porch
awaiting our arrival. What a nice welcome home! Thank
you, Julie.
