We are at the Elks Lodge in Cameron, MO for the night, and we will be back in Cedar Falls tomorrow in the early afternoon. A lot of driving in 2 weeks!
But first I am going to add some pictures of the trip on I-70 heading to Las Vegas that I forgot about last time. I finally got irritated enough with my iPhone camera that I pulled out my nice Canon point and shoot. That’s where these photos come from. Note I-70 starts in Denver, CO and runs until I-25 in Utah. It goes through spectacular country in both states. In Colorado it is not completely rural, but in Iowa it goes for over 150 miles with only one spot for services. It is VERY remote there.
West of DenverLots and lots of mines along the roadSpooky cloudsRock walls in utahThe atmosphere!
Note this is not a road I would want to do in the motorhome. Not only does it have a lot of steep grades up and down, but the section in Utah has waves in the pavement that would cause the motorhome to porpoise enough to make me seasick! But it is an absolutely beautiful trip for someone in a passenger vehicle, and I highly recommend it.
Now back to more information about our way home. We spent two nights in Gallup, NM. The first night we arrived late in the afternoon, and we quickly got to Richardson’s Trading Post, an historic trading post started in 1913. It is located in downtown Gallup, and I was on the hunt for an authentic Navajo rug. Richardson’s has a huge rug room with all styles of rugs in lots of sizes. We found one we both really like, and it is packaged up in paper until we get home. More pictures when that happens.
The second day in Gallup (Sunday of Memorial Day weekend), we visited the Hubbell Trading Post National Monument. It is about an hour out of Gallup, and I have been wanted to visit for a number of years. Fabulous place. Comments with each picture.
The trading post was built over a number of years as the stonework showsThe barn with hay storage on topI like the water spouts and the stone work hereGood picture of roof construction.
We did buy some things at the store for future birthdays, so no more details there. I didn’t go into their rug room either because after one rug and the ukulele and the HUGE motorhome bill, my pockets were empty.. Kevin said it was smaller than Richardson’s, but that may have been to salve my feelings.
There are other historic sites nearby. The town of Ganado was built up due to the trading post. Hubbell invited the Presbyterian Church Mission Society to set up shop here in the early 1900s. The Presbyterian Church here is lovely.
First Presbyterian Church of Ganado
There is also a nearby mission of the Catholic Church, the historic St. Anne’s. It is still an active parish, so we didn’t do anything but look at the interesting exterior.
St. Anne’s Catholic Mission
So that is pretty much it until we get home tomorrow. We will unpack and I will make a sweet potato casserole on Saturday for a potluck at church on Sunday. Our current pastor is leaving, so there is a big party planned. Next week has some dentist and doctor appointments plus we are taking the Subaru in to get the hail damage repaired. We are also getting our roof replaced! Busy week.
Yeah, I just got rather tied up and distracted about bunches of things. Sadly it wasn’t as warm in Iowa as it was in California and Nevada, so the sandals had to come off for a while.
Giving up the sandals
We did make it to “The Lutherie” in the Des Moines area to get the ukulele crack repaired. He did a fabulous job. I am now religious about case humidifiers. I have even gotten a hard shell case which will keep the moisture inside better. The luthier recommended the sound hole humidifier shown at the bottom of the uke, so I got one of those too. No More Cracks!
Repaired ukulele
Once we got home we were quickly engulfed in grandkids’s end of year activities. All three of the local grandkids had music concerts, and most had two of them! And then came a severe but luckily pretty isolated hail storm.
The criminals
It came straight from the west and put holes in our siding on that side. We also need a new roof since it was damaged too. We spent quite a bit of time contacting roofers and getting estimates for the roofing and the siding. We definitely weren’t alone either. The roofing company signs were going up the next day, and some roofs are already repaired. Ours will be later in June.
A tiny sample of destruction
Pella is a small town that was settled by Dutch immigrants. It has a strong Dutch heritage still, and the Pella Tulip Festival is usually the weekend after Mother’s Day. We had friends who visited it earlier, and they warned us the tulips were in full bloom two weeks early. We chose to take a day trip, and I am glad we did. My FB page has a full dump of the pictures , but here is a sample. The windmill is an authentic re-creation, and it is the home of a local museum. The tulips were magical. There are thousands and thousands just in the town square, and more thousands in the parking strips nearby.
Pella windmill replicaSo intenseLove the multiple colors
For Mother’s Day I told Kevin I wanted a roasted chicken and sweet potatoes. I made the spatchcocked chicken and he did the potatoes. He also bought an adorable little tiny cake. Since I started the Mounjaro for my diabetes, I have very little appetite and small meals are the rule. We ate the chicken for 3 days LOL!
One of the things I am now determined to add to the house are window well covers. In our community, deep window wells are used as access alternatives for the basement living spaces. We have occasionally discovered mice who fell in, but sadly we are discovering baby bunnies now. We found two in the last few weeks. Both were rescued and placed back in the flower garden where they have a hole.
Oh, and I live in a very manicured suburban area without any mature trees. We were one of the first houses here, and ours is just 8 years old. We have planted trees, and neighbors have also as the other homes were built and purchased, but it will be a long time before we get any significant number of big trees. But we do get wildlife! The first year we were here, our cameras picked up a wandering mink, and we have seen possums, raccoons, rabbits, and at least 3 different cats. The deer was a first for us though.
All kind of other things are happening too. A heart murmur was discovered at Kevin’s annual physical, so he has appointments scheduled at Mayo Clinic in Rochester to further characterize the aortic stenosis the caused the murmur. He might need surgery, he might not, but we both felt more comfortable going to Mayo for a significant issue like that. I had my annual MRI to follow up on the DCIS breast cancer and lumpectomy, and a biopsy resulted showing a small area of hyperplasia. Not cancer, but it moves me into an even high risk status of future cancer. So I have an appointment at Mayo too! Lucky it is only a couple of hours away, and it is a common option for people from my small city (50,000). Sigh.
We did finally get news the motorhome was fixed, and we went to Vegas to pick it up after all the initial medical appointments. We spent one night in Fort Morgan, CO and the next night in Cedar City, UT. This is what we woke up to in Cedar City.
Looking out the motel windowAt least 4”
We were better prepared than most of the motel customers, but Kevin did go buy us some lightweight jackets the night before.
I am not thrilled with Velocity Truck Center in North Las Vegas. They did fix the engine issue, but they knocked an electrical wire out of its socket that I had to pay to get repaired (hard to prove it was all working before, but it was!). As usual with electrical issues, it took a lot more time to isolate the problem than to fix it. Then after a couple of nights at the North Las Vegas Elks Lodge again, we headed to Needles, CA for a night on our way to south of Williams, AZ where we boondocked last night and tonight. This area is full of OHV trails! We had a great ride today.
We are gradually heading back to Iowa. We will be staying in Gallup, NM the next 2 nights hopefully to look at some Navajo rugs.
I did already make one big purchase though. I bought a new super nice Pono ukulele. It is all acacia wood with the standard goodies upscale ukuleles have – geared tuners, ebony fretboard, bone saddle and bridge. It sounds divine, and I am not yet worthy! I am an advanced beginner, and this is at least an intermediate instrument, so now I have to buckle down to be worth of it. It will be fun!
We spent our last night in Ignacio visiting a bit of Chimney Rock Monument and a Native American flute player. The weather was threatening as we drove up, and it got worse. Lightening and thunder were all around us, so the planned outdoor aspects of the visit were superseded. We got to listen inside the Visitor Center, but I did get just a hint of a small ruin, shown below. The giant kiva and the Big House were out of reach this time, so I guess we will have to go back!
One of the smaller ruins at Chimney Rock
We drove to Farmington, NM where the Rocky Mountain Motorhome Association, a regional group from the FRVA, was having a rally. It was our first time at a regional rally, and it was a nice change.It was small enough (100 or so rigs) you got to meet people more easily. The Frustrated Maestros I mentioned last time were a blast! Not all were great musicians, but the purpose is FUN, and I am pretty sure everyone had a lot of that. It took me a while to get into a popular music style since I do so much more formal choral music, but I finally figured it out. Now if only I didn’t get so nervous singing a solo!
Oh, I have to mention that the Verizon service at the Fairgrounds where we had the rally was astonishing! Look at this screen shot; even Starlink could only run at about 180 or so.
I have never seen speeds like this!
In addition to singing three mornings, I also taught a class on making oven mitts. The students got to pick their favorite fabric kit, quilt the fabric, cut it with the Accuquilt, machine bind the edges, and then finish sewing. We had a blast! One of the nicest groups of folks I have ever had the pleasure of teaching, they had enthusiasm and great attitudes as you can see from this picture (yes, they gave permission). Everybody finished one mitt completely, and the second mitt didn’t need much more work but wasn’t quite finished in the two hours we had. I had so much fun picking out the fabric, and I have quite a few kits left. Guess what some of my Christmas presents will be?
We had so much fun
All good things must come to an end <sigh>. We are heading to the Red Bay, AL area for work on the motorhome, so most of the rest of the trip will be pretty boring. We spent the first night out of Farmington at the Santa Rosa State Park in NM. We would normally have planned on somewhere closer like Albuquerque, but the Balloon Fiesta is running and there isn’t a place within 100 miles at a reasonable distance. But the state park was lovely. There was a lot of water in the lake since they have had heavy rains, and the area was a lot greener than we had seen it before. Here is a picture Kevin took from our site. The only issue we had getting here was a major accident just a few miles from our exit to Santa Rosa. It took us about an hour to go 3-4 miles! Somehow a semi had destroyed their trailer (peeled the roof right off!) and crunched the tractor pretty good just at the start of a big construction zone. It was awfully tiring driving 2-3 mph. Just about everyone was well behaved, but I was glad to get to the campsite.
Santa Rosa State Park campground view
We are now in a crowded Elks Lodge parking lot in Amarillo, TX. There are 7 other MHs here, and we are parked awfully close to each other. But the price is right, and it is fine for a single overnight. I got the chance to clean up and sort all my sewing stuff, so that is good. We plan on averaging 200-230 miles a day to get to Red Bay on Saturday. We stay in a parking lot there too!
I probably won’t post again unless I get some sewing done. I have a pair of oven mitts that are partially complete that I was using as a sample, so I need to finish them. I also have the October Kona Block of the Month to finish. Oh, and all those Christmas presents!
We are still in Cortez, and we have decided to stay her a bit longer. The Elks lodge parking lot is very quiet, and there is so much to do in the area.
We decided to visit the Bar D Chuckwagon in Durango. We’ve been a couple of times, and it is always fun. Dinner was good if you like pepper, but I couldn’t eat most of the (well-cooked) steak because it was just covered in pepper! I was not a fan. The music is always fun though.
The musicians at the Bar D
Another day we visited the Canyon of the Ancients Visitor Center. The outside has numerous native flowering plants. I was amazed they still had columbines!
I love columbines
The museum was absolutely fabulous! Lovely curated artifacts from the surroundings placed in context of the land. It was probably the best Ancestral Pueblo museum I have ever been to. There are over 1.5M artifacts, many gathered when the nearby McPhee Reservoir was being built. The water is very low due to the long-term drought in this area.
McPhee Reservoir and the bathtub ring
The half-mile switchback trail to the XYZ ruins had some beautiful views. One significant view is of the Sleeping Ute Mountain on the Mountain Ute Reservation.
Sleeping Ute in the background
Once we got to the top of the hill we were able to see the Escalante Pueblo ruins.
Escalante Pueblo ruins
Another day we went to the Lowry Ruins. It is more extensive than the ruins near the Visitor Center. Part of the ruin, the taller pieces, is covered for protection against the elements.
Part is covered
Some of the ruin is two stories tall. The homes and workshops were generally accessed from the roof, and the builds were built into the ground some. The walls were very thick, and I am sure it was warm in the winter and cool in the summer. The climate was significantly wetter and cooler than it is now.
Thick walls
The main attraction is a great kiva, one of only a few known in the Four Corners area. Quite impressive!
The Great Kiva at the Lowry Ruins
We have been enjoying the little towns of Cortez and Dolores nearby. We have met friends for lunch at Montezuma Mexican Restaurant (good mole!) and other friends for pizza and beer at Dolores River Brewery. We also took a Ghost Tour of Cortez. It was more a history tour of downtown than a lot of ghosts, but, since I don’t believe in ghosts but love history, I enjoyed it.
One of the claims to fame in Cortez are their numerous murals. This one is at the origin of our tour.
Big!
There were a number of black light posters scattered around. They are lit with black lights at night, powered by solar panels.
Black light mural
We have been eating out some too. The burgers we had at Burger Boy Burgers was absolutely fabulous. The Elks Lodge has decent drinks, but the food is nothing to write home about. We are just hanging around to do some RZR trail riding and to do the big loop in the truck to Durango, Silverton, Ouray, and Telluride to see the trees some time next week, day dependent on the weather. Hopefully we will see the aspens glowing.
I have no idea why I sometimes just don’t get in the mood to post. Maybe I get overwhelmed with beautiful things, and I have trouble deciding what to show. Ok, I’ll go with that one, at least this time.
We spent four nights at Elk Creek campground in the Curecanti National Recreation Area. Nice sites with electricity, a rarity for NPS campgrounds. My youngest grandchildren had noted I hadn’t sent them any post cards (bad grandma!), so I picked some up at the visitor center. They didn’t have any way to mail them though, so we had to wait until we got to town. Gunnison wasn’t too far away, so that is where we spent some time. I came down with a UTI, so I had to spend time at a very nice clinic and the local pharmacy. Sigh. They don’t allow UTVs in the park, so we kept to the truck. Pretty country though. Kevin got an oil change on the truck and we did laundry – fascinating stuff. Not all of camping is sightseeing!
After Elk Creek we stayed at a BLM dispersed site halfway between Alamosa, CO and Great Sand Dunes National Park. We were in a large sagebrush covered area on the flanks of Mount Blanca, the fourth tallest peak in Colorado. While we could ride the RZR there, the trail got rougher than we like about 5-6 miles up the trail to the top. The area is called the Lake Como dispersed area, but we sure never saw a lake. As you can see from the photo, it is a pretty isolated area. We were at least 100 yards from our nearest neighbor. We took Minnie to a vet in Alamosa for follow-up blood work. Thanks fully everything is perfectly normal! She is acting like her old self again, and I am thrilled.
Sunset, the motorhome, and the Clam shelter.
One of the other things we did while we were here was take a long waited for ride on the Toltec and Cumbres Scenic Railway. Kevin bought tickets a few months back for the “Parlor Car.” It was pricy but absolutely worth it. It was an enclosed car with half the number of seats. Each seat faced the window and was comfortably padded. Since we went a bit over 60 miles over 5 hours, that padding was important! I can’t begin to pick the best photos from the trip, but here is a sampling.
At the stationGrandpa rock (use your imagination)Lovely canyonsSome population in the high meadowsWe had the back car
And of course we went to Great Sand Dunes. It was intermittently raining so we didn’t get out much. I am always thrilled to see just how huge the sand dunes are. If you blow up the picture a bunch you can see two people on top of the far dune.
People for scale
And like most parks, the animals get to know people won’t harm them. This doe and twin fawns are an example. They were perhaps 6 feet off the road and totally ignored us.
Not scared of humans at all
After the dry open sagebrush of Lake Como Road, we splurged on 10 days at the 4K River Ranch in Red River. We had a big site right on the river, though we did have to move for the last 3 mights a few sites farther down the row. Full hookups of course (laundry!),and green, lots of green. We had a few dozen teal ducks keep us company, and there were lots of other birds flitting around. The ground squirrels had obviously been fed by previous campers, and they would come within inches of our feet. Kevin’s sister came over for a few days, and they did some sightseeing and hiking. It was nice for Kevin to have a hiking partner since that’s something I can’t do anymore. He also took her on her first side by side ride. She had ridden an ATV before, but she agreed the SXS was a lot more comfortable.
The old Questa Church was lovely. At one point an entire adobe wall fell down, and the community spent 49,000 hours of work to rebuilt with original techniques.
Questa Church
As a change from the barren sagebrush We had grass and trees. Those led to visitors.
NeighborsMore neighbors
We also had our first significant mishap of our SXS career. There was a very deeply washed area where our tire slipped and we ended up tipping sideways. It wasn’t anything really serious; both the rig and us were fine. But it was slow going to get the right on its four wheels and get it winched out. You can’t work very hard or very long without a break at 9600’! We also decided we needed a winch with a longer work cycle. Ours had to rest 20 minutes for every 5 it was working, so it took quite a while to get it all done. Yes, we travel by ourselves a lot, and yes, we carry a full complement of self-rescue and self-support gear. Still took us (well, Kevin) two hours to get us all out. Just as we got on top of the washed out area and stashed the gear back, along comes two rigs that could have helped! It never fails.
“Kevin, I don’t think we should be lying on our side”
After Kevin’s sister left, we visited Taos more extensively. We finally got into the Taos Pueblo World Heritage Site after being disappointed three other times due to religious ceremony closures and COVID closure. Fabulous place. The church, San Geronimo, was lovely. Here is the outside. You can’t take pictures inside, but it was lovely too – very traditional southwest.
Taos Pueblo Church
The Pueblo itself is well worth visiting. We took a guided tour, and she was worth her tip. The three story adobe buildings have the homes of multiple families inside them, but no more building is allowed there due to structural concerns. Families still live in the houses, but most are only used for ceremonial or tourist businesses. Building is allowed for one story adobes, but since the homes inside the wall cane have no electricity or plumbing, there isn’t much new construction. The older ones are occupied though. Our guide said 40-60 people live full-time in the historic Pueblo, but thousands more live just outside in more modern houses.
Three story buildingsOne story buildings
When we left Red River on 12 September, we spent one night at the Sante Fe Elks so I could pick up a prescription, then we spent two nights at the Farmington Elks. The Sante Fe site was just dry camping, but Farmington had electricity. We didn’t need much because the weather has been quite pleasant. We are now at the Cortez Elks lodge, staying until Friday morning, 19 September. Then we will find one night at a FHU campground to get laundry done and generally clean up the rig and ourselves before heading to the Rocky Mountain Motorhome Association Ramble. Kevin is going to help with parking, and I am joining the “Frustrated Maestros” musical group. I am also doing a class on sewing oven mitts,
I actually have done some sewing, but not a bunch. I made a cover for a little folding table we have, but I forgot pictures. I also finished the September Kona Block of the Month a bit before the last day! As usual, it hasn’t been pressed, and I noticed just now that I have some spare threads here and there. Oh well!
I like the colorway for the month
We do have some things planned while we are here, so I will try to be more diligent at posting.
It was time to get home. Always something to look forward to, and something we regret since we love the Southwest so much. I did some serious medication and lots of heating pad use, and I was able to drive semi-comfortably.
We left Monument Valley and went to Page, AZ, staying at the Elks Lodge 4 April. It was a gravel parking lot, and they charged $15 for dry camping. I thought that was fairly high, but, then again, Page is a big vacation spot. Very friendly people though. The next night we went to the Twin Arrows Casino outside Flagstaff, AZ. It is always an easy spot to stay, free, and not too noisy. On 6 April we spent the night at Santa Rosa State Park, NM. Lovely place. It is a bit of a pain to get to, but worth it for a beautiful and quiet spot. We thought about staying two nights, but there was weather coming in, so we kept going.
Monday saw us all the way through Texas and into Elk City, OK where we spent the night at the Elks Lodge. Again it had no hookups, but we were able to find a nice spot. We got to Oklahoma City fairly early on Tuesday. We stayed at the Edmond Elks Lodge. Not very nice due to crowding. We could hear a lot of conversations from surrounding coaches! We stayed two days because a group of elementary and high school friends were getting together. I keep forgetting how little I have in common with the people I went to high school with! I think this will be the last time I try to get together with them. Life definitely does go on.
We spent 10 April on the trip at the Kansas Star Casino south of Wichita. Great place to spend a quiet night for free. The lot we stayed in was gravel, but it was pretty flat and relatively unoccupied. There is an alternative spot closer to the casino that was asphalt, but it was slightly more occupied. Our last night was spent at the Walmart in Osceola, IA. Lots of reefers running all night, but it was handy. A bad wind was coming, so we left early and headed straight home.
We got here this morning and put the motorhome at Big Woods Lake County Park. We are about half unpacked, and we will finish tomorrow. The cats are enjoying the space. Each of them is rubbing their faces over pretty much every surface, marking the place as theirs after so long.
With the new RZR and tariffs being on and off, Kevin has ordered all kinds of things for it. We had them delivered to my oldest son’s place. A lot of things are big (front and rear windshields, bumper, etc.), and our son has joked that he will give us the bill for the storage unit the items required! He also said we owe the poor UPS guy who has to walk up 20 steps or so to their front door! Kevin will be fully employed getting everything put on. I have a list of things to quilt, and I need to get them done before we leave again around Memorial Day, so most posts going forward will probably be quilt-related.
We took off on Sunday morning, 24 March, and headed toward Lake Havasu City. We had reserved 5 nights at the Elks Lodge full hookup campground. Very nice! We had an end site, and we were able to enjoy some fabulous sunsets looking over the town and lake. The place was pretty full each night with snowbirds on their migration, so advanced reservations were needed. This was definitely the biggest and most active lodge we have stayed at. Cheap drinks, decent food, and no smoking made it a hit. We came so I could attend a Staycation with the Lake Havasu Quilt Guild I joined back in June.
A quilt Staycation is like a quilt retreat except you get to go home each night! Breakfast goodies, lovely lunch, nice snacks, and prizes were to be had. I took my set of 100 4” finished triangle in a square blocks. I had to arrange them, and the big tables made it so much easier than the motorhome. I got them arranged nicely, sewn together, and then I got the quilt sandwiched nicely. I even started quilting it, but my thread got caught and broke the needle. Even though I tried all kinds of tricks to get the machine working again, I must have tweaked something wrong internally. Sigh. I really wanted to finish the quilt before I got home plus do some other miscellaneous sewing too. I have already made an appointment with a service shop.
Leaving Lake Havasu we gradually headed toward our eclipse reservation in Uvalde, TX. Or at least we tried! We made it a whole 60 miles before we had to pull off the road for wind. That had us spending Saturday night, 30 March, in Bouse, AZ at the Desert Pueblo RV Park. It was a bare bones snowbird park, but very clean and quiet. A single activity room and no pool, but it was only $500 a month plus electricity for winter. We took off on Sunday morning for Casa Grande and another Elks Lodge. This camping area was dry camping, but that didn’t bother us in the least. We stayed two nights since we wanted to revisit the Desert Botanical Gardens in Phoenix. Prepare for a photo extravaganza!
This is two shots of the wildflower garden.
The organ pipe cacti here inspired us to visit Organ Pipe National Monument a few years ago.
I love this view of a saguaro forest on a hill. I really want to come back some time in June to see them blooming.
It was an overcast day that threatened rain, so some of the flowers were curled up.
Look at this century plants (agave) putting out huge flower stalks. After blooming later in the season the plant will die.
There were numerous areas of lupines in all colors. I have a weakness for the dark oin of these.
Saguaro are not just popular with humans, but the birds depend on them. The lower bird was headed into a nesting cavity. The top bird had nesting materials in its beak.
We never did find the plant tag for this tall fellow. To compare, Kevin is 5’10”.
Barrel cacti are my favorite type. They come in a variety of shapes and spine types, but these orange flowering ones were showing off through the garden.
I am showing two pictures of these small barrel cacti to give you an idea of scale. The cacti “buds” were 2-3” high, and the flowers tiny but brilliant.
And I just think the white spikes on this succulent is interesting. The Palo Verde Tree behind it was lovely too. Palo Verde trees do their photosynthesis in their green trunks instead of their leaves.
This barrel cactus was in a container right at the entrance. It was a good opportunity to get a better view of the flowers.
These Chihuly glass sculptures were also at the entrance, sparkling even under the overcast skies.
Kevin and I both agreed we need to plan a trip to the area later in the year, heat and all, to catch more blooms.
After Casa Grande, we spent a night in Deming at the Elks Lodge. They don’t officially have a camping spot, but they said we were welcome to park overnight. Dry camping on the edge of bunch of WWII barracks foundations and across the street from an old Army Aerodrome from the same time. The lodge looks abandoned, but then, a lot of Deming looks the same way. We spent Wednesday night in the Van Horn RV Park which meant lots of laundry. They have a decent little cafe there with standard diner food but delicious home made cobblers. Ft. Stockton RV Park was the last stop before we landed in Uvalde, TX where we are staying at Qual Spring RV Park. Very nice place! Live oaks give lots of shade, and the sites aren’t bad sized. We aren’t fond of Texas, but this is definitely one of the nicer places we have stayed in the state. We won’t leave until Wednesday morning, 10 April. Clouds are expected to put a huge damper on our eclipse viewing, but that is the luck of the draw. We talked about trying to chase the totality zone to a place without clouds, but decided it wasn’t worth it.
We had a fabulous Christmas hanging with the kids and grandkids. Kevin got his 3D printer going and made some fabulous decorations. I apologize for the remnant threads; I got too excited to notice them.
The pattern describes it as a snow globe
We didn’t put up the big tree, but Kevin made sure we had our presents under a lot of trees. Most of these were actually experiments with his new printer he got (early) for Christmas. It is a newer Ender 3 that goes with us in the motorhome.
Our Christmas trees this year
We actually left the house on Boxing Day just after noon. Since we weren’t having folks over to our house for the holidays, we had more time to pack and sort. One of the advantages of having a son and DIL nearby with a big house who likes to cook is they host at least one of the big holidays. This year they chose Christmas. We ended up spending the first night in the Lakeside Casino RV park. It is only a bit over 3 hours from home so we got in early enough to put water in the tanks. And guess what we woke up to the next morning?
Snow in Osceola, IA
Yup, 2” of wet heavy snow. It didn’t get any better later in the morning. We just waited for the highway to be clear and Kevin pushed the snow off the big slide toppers. The other slides are much smaller and came in without issue. Since we left so late we on,y made it to Emporia, KS where we stayed in a Walmart parking lot. The next day (Thursday) we made it to Texola, OK right on the Texas line. It is a small and very quiet campground, and we have stayed there a few times before. All through Missouri, Kansas, and most of Oklahoma we went through small snow squalls. They were never very heavy and they never lasted long. It was tedious though. I was thrilled when we made it to Amarillo and the sun came out. New Mexico was even more clear, and we are spending tonight in the American RV Park on the west side of Albuquerque. Tomorrow we hope to boondock outside Williams, AZ, and then make it to Quartzsite, AZ by Sunday. We plan on staying there for quite a bit of the winter.
I haven’t shown many pictures of my adorable cats recently, so here you go! They are sisters, but they don’t often snuggle up like this. Minnie, the tabby, was snuggled in the blanket, and Luna, the black one, just squished herself in.
After we left Abilene, we decided to head to Monahans Sandhills State Park in Texas. It was just an overnight, but it was a relaxing stop. We got there in plenty of time to sit outside in the warm temps. The campsites are pullouts on the side of the road, and ours was listed as 40’. However it was plenty long enough for both the 40’ motorhome and the Jeep. Even better, it was deep enough that I didn’t worry about someone hitting the slide outs, something g that has worried me about other pullout spots! Here is a bit of a sample.
And the sunset was gorgeous!
We next drove the short trip to Willcox, AZ. We stayed at Lifestyle RV Resort. It wasn’t bad with level sites, but I wouldn’t call it a resort even with an indoor hot tub. The sites were crowded on a gravel parking lot. The good thing was it was relatively inexpensive, level, and all the utilities worked just fine. We managed to get all our laundry done, some shopping accomplished, and we enjoyed a few short trips.
Chiriacahua National Monument was our primary place to visit. It is a pretty small place with only one scenic drive, but it was lovely. The rock columns are the draw here, and readers should know by now I like rocks!
Columns were all along the roadRocks are definitely the drawMy favorite viewThis green lichen was on one side of a lot of the rocksColumns were all along the road
We saw lots of interesting birds including hummingbirds (no pictures), Mexican Jays, and another one I don’t recognize. We also caught a glimpse of some type of weasel, but I didn’t see enough to identify it.
Mexican jays were abundantHere’s looking at you kidWish I knew what this robin-sized bird is
The day after Chiricahua we went to Cochise Stronghold in the Coronado National Forest. Cochise and his band were able to hold out here for long enough to convince the US to let him stay after making the area an Apache reservation. More rocks!
This shows a part of homestead that is now available for rent through the NFS.There are a number of inholdings in the area
Wilcox also has a nice apple business where Kevin bought a great apple crumble pie. Nice supper treat.
We leave tomorrow for Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. I expect poor or no service, so it will probably be a few days before another post.
We finally got all the work done on the Jeep, and it was expensive. Just part of the joy of MH ownership, and we have been pretty lucky until now. There has been so much travel to Las Vegas that we really didn’t want to do a lot more travel. That is the excuse I am going to give for not hitting the big tourist spots in Death Valley this time. We didn’t even do any of the 4WD trips! We did get to some of the historical presentations, all the music acts, and some other presentations.
We also took time to buy a Blackstone grill while in Las Vegas. Kevin has been looking at them, and the Camping World there had one at last year’s price, a significant savings. So far we are enjoying it. Kevin has made hamburgers, fajitas, and grilled potatoes. It is a bit of a pain to clean, but that should get better as the seasoning improves. Kevin installed a propane tap to the MH so it is easy to attach an external device to the MH’s propane tank instead of having to use a separate propane bottle – handy.
We headed into Beatty, NV one day to go to their famous candy store. And of course we bought a bunch of nuts and candy. They have some things hard to find anywhere else. Right at the edge of Beatty we found two of the famous donkeys. They are a standard sight here, and very popular with tourists. They are truly a dreadful thing in the wild though, displacing the native big horn sleep.
Found on the west side of Beatty, NV
Heading back to the campground, I took some pictures of Death Valley at sunset.
Near the bottom of Sunrise Pass looking south
There really is no way of showing the vastness of the park. The picture above shows probably 30 miles.
Daylight view from CA 190From the Texas Springs Road showing the salt pan to the northLooking from Texas Springs Road above Sunset Campground, NPS Visitor Center foreground right.
The huge alluvial fans coming from the mountains are amazing, this one shown above is probably 5-7 miles wide. They are a very distinctive feature of the park, and they show up everywhere.
With all the beauty around us, you don’t generally stay at the campground to “camp”. It is more a place to rejuvenate, eat, and sleep. That’s good because the campground is basically a big gravel parking lot. It is cheap though – $7.00 a night with our senior pass. There are flush toilets (no showers) plus a dump station with fresh water. This year there weren’t nearly as many people attending. They didn’t even open the first overflow camp area until Thursday, and normally they have all three overflows open and occupied by Monday or Tuesday.
Sunset Campground during the Encampment
Another thing about the Furnace Creek area is the legendary fuel prices, generally the most expensive in the country.
Yup, those are the real prices
Also in the park (but regulated by NPS contract), the price for regular gasoline is $4.86 at Stovepipe Wells. Outside the park in Nevada at the casino, the price was $3.88. It is well worth the time to drive the 35 miles to Nevada! The Furnace Creek prices are the best advertisement I know of against unbridled capitalist greed. Stovepipe Wells is just as far from distribution sources, and they charge more than $2 per gallon less.
One thing nice about Nevada and California is they allow both medical and recreational sale of cannabis. I was able to refill the gummies I use to manage the residual pain in my shoulder for a much better price than I can going to Illinois at home. Using them I have been able to stop the ibuprofen that I have been on since surgery, giving my belly a much wanted relief. I take 10 mg each night, and I also take CBD gummies to reduce inflammation. The combination has really helped. I have to use the gummies because there is absolutely no way I am smoking anything!
Getting back to the Encampment, the biggest event is always when the wagon train comes in. This year they had 14 wagons travel the 100 miles from the far southern edge of the park to Furnace Creek. I will just post the pictures without captions because they are pretty self-explanatory. They are lead in by the Marine mounted color guard from 29 Palms. Each of the color guards trains their own horse, chosen from mustangs sold by the BLM. Impressive!
Marine color guard
We left Death Valley on Sunday. We spent Sunday night at the Seligman, AZ KOA. Monday we stayed at Lavaland RV Park in Grants (nice brewery associated with it), Tuesday and Wednesday we were at the Tucumcari KOA waiting out a wind storm, and tonight we are at Mustang Run RV Park on the west side of Oklahoma City. We will spend Friday night at a Boondockers Welcome site near Kansas City, then home!
