A Southern California Weekend with Brother Gus

Yes, we’ve been quite busy here in San Diego, and five weeks have passed rather quickly. And what else did we do the rest of our time on the coast of San Diego?  Well, for starters, Hector’s brother Gus joined us for a fun-filled long weekend.  Hector had been hoping that Gus could join us here in Southern California, so we were really excited about his visit.

The original plan was to spend a four-day weekend together, but Gus and his friend, Jessica, who took a connecting flight out of Miami, encountered delays and problems both in Miami and after their connection in Dallas.  Including an emergency landing in El Paso, Texas in an aircraft not meant to land in such a small airport.  But they arrived safe and somewhat sound.

And the much later arrival shortened our weekend together to three days instead of four.

These two brothers are quite a pair when they get together and this time was no exception.  Like two overgrown kids.

And, speaking of kids, Gus really wanted to visit Disneyland as he is a big fan of Disneyworld in Florida.  So Hector and I hired a pet sitter to walk and feed Angel and off to Los Angeles the four of us went on Friday for a fun and very long day.

Hector and I have a history with Disney – when we got married, we had very little money, so we had a Floridian honeymoon – driving around Florida and playing tourist at various spots:  Disneyworld, Sea World, Circus World (since gone) and others.

So visiting Disneyland had a bit of a nostalgic feeling – this is the original park and vision of Walt Disney, built in 1955 and about to have its 60^th anniversary.   Many of the original rides are still operating, albeit with some tweaking and refurbishing, and we enjoyed riding a bunch of those original rides, including some of the kiddie ones 🙂 .

The DIsneyland sign over the years

Being a kid in a fantasy world for a day is not bad, but the lines can be crazy.  Turns out that the Disney diehards have developed strategies to minimize that.  Including multiple apps to provide you with information about the lines.  So I went high tech and purchased an app to check out the waiting times in advance and we used the FASTPASS system, a must to avoid some of the long waiting times.  Which allowed us to pack in more rides.

We visited the silly but fun Enchanted Tiki Room for some sing along fun.

We went into the Haunted Mansion, got (slightly) wet in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride and had some delicious beignets (almost like the ones in New Orleans).
Gus and Hector had some fun with the other kids in the Astro Orbitor.

 

But my all time favorite part of the experience was watching the nightime parades and fireworks.  We watched three: Mickey’s Soundsational Parade, full of floats and Disney characters; the Fireworks Show; and Fantasmic, which is a combination character and light show with pyrotechnics, lasers and special effects over water, a beautiful show.

We really stretched out the day, but it meant a very late departure back to San Diego.  And Hector did a great job of driving back in the middle of the night while I chatted endlessly to make sure he stayed awake.

The next day we opted for a more mellow beachy day.  We went to a really pretty beach, Windansea in La Jolla, where we walked along the rocks and watched some surfers.

Then we drove over to the Children’s Pool, also in La Jolla to watch the seals, an activity that Hector and I really enjoy.

The seals are having pups, and we saw a pup that had been born 45 minutes earlier.  There is a ritual that apparently takes place each time a pup is born – seagulls go after the placenta – a protein source – and the mom tries to protect the placenta – she identifies it with her pup. 

It’s tough to look at the stressed out mom circling and trying to protect the placenta while also taking care of the pup.  Ultimately, the seagulls win and mom goes back to focusing on her pup only.

The pups are just adorable, and we spotted others that still had part of their umbilical cords.  And there are some wonderful volunteers watching their backs.  I spoke with one of the volunteers who was just a fountain of knowledge.   It’s so comforting to know that there are so many people looking out for these adorable animals.  And our fine afternoon ended with a fabulous sunset.

On Gus and Jessica’s last day here, we went biking and skateboarding (Gus) on the Pacific Beach boardwalk.  This is a quintessential Southern California experience and since it was a weekend, there were tons of people walking, cycling, skateboarding or just hanging out along the boardwalk.  Definitely some great people watching.

We topped it off with a walk in Ocean Beach, a neighborhood with a hippie flair.  There are lots of funky shops, quite the other side of the spectrum from the Disney experience.

While there we had lunch at Hodad’s, a burger joint that’s an Ocean Park institution.  Hodad’s had great burgers, fries, fried onions and a fabulous strawberry shake.  We did not skimp on the calories and, oh yes, it really was worth the wait in line.

So the brothers got to play together once more during a jam-packed visit on a fun-filled weekend.

~ Brenda

Honey, the Ocean is on the Wrong Side

After having spent three and a half months crossing this big continent, we’ve finally arrived at our winter destination, San Diego, California. And will stay here for a couple of months.  To think that just last year around this time we were in Fort Lauderdale, Everglades National Park and Key West,  Florida. 

And having started our westward journey at the northern end of Nova Scotia, it’s really exciting to have reached the opposite side of the U.S.  And we’re so happy to slow down the pace of travel, a welcome change after a lot of shorter stays in recent months.

I was fully prepared for cooler temperatures than we had in South Florida since San Diego’s latitude is close to that of Charleston, South Carolina, but the weather here has actually been warmer than normal for this time of year.  So we are very fortunate, especially in light of the awful weather that the rest of the country has experienced this winter.

Warmer days = happy tropical island girl.

And in our first couple of weeks, we’ve settled into the urban lifestyle.  We’ve strolled and biked along nearby beaches and their neighborhoods:  Pacific Beach, Mission Beach, Ocean Beach, and La Jolla.

The Ocean Beach neighborhood is a standout, parts of it frozen in time in the 60’s, with some rasta flavor added in.

At La Jolla, we spent a long time just looking at some adorable seals.  

And were lucky to catch a glimpse of a mom nursing her new baby underwater.   The lady standing next to us, who seemed to be in the know, informed us that the baby was one day old.

These guys make lots of funny faces and cute poses.  We could watch them for hours!

And Pacific and Mission Beaches are just around the corner, so we’ve visited a few times. We watched some beginner and experienced surfers flowboarding at the Wave House, an artificial wave machine where you can watch the action up close.

And every morning and evening we walk Angel by the shores of Mission Bay right by our RV park.  Angel is happy to be walking on soft grass and sand since some of those desert areas we visited recently were pretty rocky.

San Diego has lots of dog friendly parks by the water.  Angel visited Fiesta Island across the way from our campground, where doggies can go leashless.  And we went to the dog beach in Ocean Beach.  A really pretty place for dogs and humans.  Alas, the crab huntress found no crabs.

We also happened to catch the Chinese New Year Food & Cultural Fair.  It’s a small fair run by the San Diego Chinese Center, which serves as a cultural bridge between Chinese and non-Chinese communities.  The lion dances were especially fun and colorful.

San Diego also has lots of farmers markets, at least one every day of the week in various neighborhoods. We love farmers markets and visited four of them so far.

There are some small and some large ones and others that offer more arts and crafts than food.  Our two favorites so far are: the Ocean Beach (most funky) and the Hillcrest (most elaborate) markets.

And being food lovers, we couldn’t resist all the great ethnic food offerings and have found tasty and inexpensive Middle Eastern, East African, Vietnamese and Indian food, most at the farmers markets. And yes, we also sampled the famous In-N-Out burgers.

Oh, and Hector and I are taking some group swing dance lessons. We’d been taking ballroom dancing lessons two years ago before we left Denver but had to stop because of my foot surgeries.  So it’s fun to be back in the “swing” of things.

And the beautiful sunsets continue.

There is only one minor problem.  Hector, who has an excellent sense of direction, occasionally gets thrown off course because the ocean is on the “wrong” side.  Having lived most of our lives on the East coast, having the ocean on the west gets him turned around.  And I’m no help at all, since I’m directionally challenged no matter where I am.  But he’s getting used to it and becoming quite the California boy.  Could bleached blonde hair be next?

We’re having a fabulous time in San Diego.  This is an ideal spot to spend the winter.  Even though the ocean is on the wrong side.

~ Brenda

Beautiful Anza-Borrego

First light

We’ve been in the desert for two months, spending most of December in the Chihuahuan Desert in New Mexico, and January in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona and California.

And we arrived at what we think is one of the most beautiful deserts we’ve seen so far during our journey, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, the largest state park in California, located in the Colorado Desert, one of six  sub-regions of the Sonoran Desert.

The park is named for Juan Bautista de Anza, who, in 1776, led about 300 people over 1600 miles from New Spain (Mexico) to colonize Alta California (San Francisco) for the Spanish.  Since they started in Nogales, Arizona, it seems that we’ve been crossing their path (actually a 1200 mile National Historic Trail) a number of times since we arrived in Tucson.  And seeing his name many times along the way.

And borrego is the Spanish word for bighorn sheep.  Rocky slopes just above the desert floor here are habitat for peninsular bighorn sheep, also known as desert bighorn sheep, an endangered species which has declined from human overpopulation encroachment.  Alas, we didn’t see any during our brief stay here.

Boondocking is very popular here, and there are a several areas that allow RVs to boondock for free.  In the state park, the main rule is that the RV needs to be no further than one car length from the nearest road (paved or dirt) although this rule appeared to be subject to multiple interpretations.

And one area is apparently in contention as to whether it’s public or private, and RVs have been boondocking there for a number of years, ignoring a couple of no trespassing signs.

We found a pretty good spot a good distance from most other RV’s and with great views all around.

We noticed that the areas where RVs boondocked had less plants than the rest of the desert.  So it’s important to be mindful of the vegetation; drive on established paths and camp in areas that are already cleared of vegetation so as to minimize impact on the remaining plants.  Many of these “campsites” have fire rings which makes them easier to locate.

We were greeted on our first afternoon with the first of several fabulous sunsets.  Desert sunsets are the best!

The rest of the desert was rich with plants, although this desert doesn’t have the mighty Saguaros, which we saw throughout Arizona, most notably in Tucson.  

Many other plants that we first learned about in Tucson are found here as well.  The most predominant are the creosote bushes, but we also saw palo verde trees, and those other iconic desert plants, the ocotillo and, of course, lots of cacti.

There are lots of cholla cacti here, seven varieties in fact, of which my favorite are the teddybear cholla.  But beware the spines of these adorable cacti.  There is also one type of prickly pear cactus in this region as well as barrel cactus.   And a couple of varieties of short, “clumpy” (my scientific description) cacti known as hedgehog.  And there are others that we’re still learning about.

The town of Borrego Springs also has several farms around its perimeter.  A couple are tree farms, with palms growing all around them.  There are a few remaining native palms, which are accessible via short hikes, but we didn’t get a chance to go see them.  And, this being California, there are several citrus farms.

So we bought fabulous pink grapefruit as well as extra juicy tangelos at a couple of fruit stands.  One of the stands was not manned but had an honor system; you picked up a bag (or more) of grapefruit and left your money in a metal box.  Love it!

And we made the most delicious vodka and toronja (spanish for grapefruit) drinks with fresh grapefruit juice, a perfect drink for the desert.  A shout-out to our friend Bob (Bob-A-Lu), who introduced us to vodka and toronja while we were living in Puerto Rico.

As for the animals, we’ve not had much luck spotting animals in these parts, except for some hawks and lots of jackrabbits (to Angel’s delight).   But we’ve heard the coyotes often, many times at dusk, and, in fact, we’ve been hearing them pretty consistently since the Chihuahuan Desert in New Mexico.

Anza-Borrego Desert State Park is surrounded by mountains. To the east are the badlands, dry areas with very little vegetation and rocks and soil that have been eroded by wind and water, forming steep slopes and other interesting formations.  If you were trying to cross this area in a wagon or a horse you would certainly describe it as “bad”.

There are many fossils buried here and volunteer paleontologists regularly help to collect and preserve them.

As we drove to the badlands for a hike, we noticed some RVs boondocking near the main road right by the cliffs, an interesting option for those that really want to be in a remote place (except for the slight traffic during the day).

We also noticed the State Vehicle Recreation Area with tons of trails for specialized off-highway vehicles and the Truckhaven 4×4 Training Area, a frightening looking obstacle course for street legal 4x4s.

But we were searching for Palm Slot, a slot canyon we’d read about on Nina’s blog and in the park brochure.  The state park doesn’t get a lot of points for signage, as we missed the turnoff for the trail and had to stop and ask state park staff for directions.

What exactly are slot canyons?  They are deep, narrow canyons in areas with low rainfall which are formed by specific patterns of rainfall that create rushing water in particular types of rock, most commonly sandstone and limestone.  There are a number of well-known slot canyons in the Southwestern United States.

And we ultimately found the entrance to the four-wheel high clearance road that led to our trail and also happens to access the Calcite Mine trail.  This mine was the only site in the United States where optical-grade calcite crystals were extracted for use in gunsights during World War II – in fact the marker highlighting this was the only way we found the road to Palm Slot.  The mine was later owned by Polaroid.

We walked a ways down the road and since signage hadn’t been so great just walked into the first slot that had footprints leading into it.

It was a cloudy day and we were keeping a close eye on the weather, as a slot canyon is not a place you want to be in when it rains.  But the clouds were pretty light and we continued.  I had a nagging feeling that this wasn’t the Palm Slot (it didn’t look like the photos I’d seen).  So we turned back to the road after awhile.

Even though it was still cloudy, we walked a bit further down the road and found a sign!  An actual Anza-Borrego Desert State Park sign.  This was the Palm Slot.  We hiked in and it was amazing.  The rock had a pinkish hue and was much smoother than in the previous slot canyon.  But it was getting cloudier so we only hiked for a short while.

Jimmy Durante Rock

Neapolitan Rock

These were our first slot canyons, and they won’t be our last.

After the fact I found a pretty good description of how to get to Palm Slot here.

Whale cloud

As we drove back to our boondocking spot, however, we noticed sand blowing in the distance.  The winds had started up and were blowing some big dust clouds in particular areas of the desert (fortunately not directly over Island Girl).

The next day remained windy, and we decided to stow our exterior stuff that morning (we were leaving the following day).  And we took it easy that day and didn’t do much exploring.

That evening, there was a beautiful, stormy sunset, with lots of sand being blown about.

The winds continued to blow and increased during the night, so I didn’t exactly get a good night’s sleep (Hector sleeps like a rock no matter what).  Island Girl was shaking around a bit and I wondered about those RVers boondocking by the cliffs in the badlands.

Fortunately, the next morning the winds stopped.  And we left this beautiful place vowing to return again next winter.

~ Brenda

Sky Art in the Desert

“Blessings are meant to be shared” – Dennis S. Avery

Borrego Springs is a small town of about 3500 with many seasonal residents, which is actually an unincorporated area of northeast San Diego County about 100 miles from the city of San Diego.  It’s in a really dramatic setting surrounded by mountains and badlands.

The town was California’s first dark sky community, and has no stoplights. So it’s quite beautiful when the stars come out at night.  And the town’s surroundings are part of the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, which, at 643,000 acres, makes up more than half of the land of the entire California State Park System.

But Borrego Springs might be best known for the life size sculptures found scattered all over the desert around the town on parcels of private land (Galleta Meadows Estate) owned by the recently deceased Dennis Avery, millionaire heir to the Avery labeling fortune, philanthropist and visionary.

The sculptures are crafted of metal by sculptor Ricardo Breceda of Temecula, California, who welds scrap reinforcement bars, wire and metal together, and uses hammers to pound texture into the patches of metal.

Mr. Breceda, sometimes referred to as “the accidental artist” was a carpenter until he fell from a second story during a construction job.  While selling cowboy boots for a living, he traded a pair for a welding machine, and then began to “play” with it as a hobby.  He created his first sculpture, a Tyrannosaurus Rex, when his daughter asked for one after watching “Jurassic Park III”. He continued making sculptures as a hobby for a few years prior to selling any of his works.

In 2007, Dennis Avery happened to drive by Ricardo Breceda’s studio and spotted a 30 foot T-Rex leaning over a fence.  Mr. Avery owned about 3,000 acres of noncontiguous parcels in Borrego Springs that he wanted preserved from development, and had opened his land to the public.  A paleontology buff, he had financed a book cataloguing the fossil treasures of the Anza-Borrego Desert.

The philanthropist and artist shared an obsession with the prehistoric, and, in 2008, Mr. Avery commissioned Mr. Breceda to create some of the prehistoric beasts from the book, animals that had roamed this area millions of years ago when it was a lush jungle.  They brainstormed the project and Mr. Avery named it “Sky Art”.

I love a great partnership, whether business or personal or both.

Over the years, the sculpture collection grew to include prehistoric creatures not from this area, then historical incidents and characters, desert wildlife and mythical creatures.  There are now more than 130 sculptures.

Although Mr. Avery passed away last year, Galleta Meadows LLC remains, and a fund was set up so that when any of the sculptures are damaged, Mr. Breceda can repair them.

Hector and I love outdoor sculptures and set out to see all of them.

They are dispersed throughout the desert near town, to the north and the south and most are located within sight of the Borrego Springs Road.

For those wanting a closer up view, there are a number of dirt roads from the main road leading to the sculptures and though some of these dirt roads are made up of softish sand, most are flat and hard.

And, of course, I wanted to get REALLY close and walked over to many of them.  There is a lot of detail that can only be appreciated once you are close up.

There are enormous birds, prehistoric horses, camels and elephants.  There is a wonderful, giant Spanish Padre, an Indian Head, and a jeep going over rocks.

Not to mention a sculpture of farm workers working a grape field.

One of the most impressive sculptures is a 350-foot sea serpent with various parts emerging from the sand and seemingly crossing the road.

Fabulous!

Sky Art is the most unique art project I’ve ever seen.  How wonderful of Mr. Avery to have commissioned these unique sculptures and opened up his land so that the public might enjoy them.

~ Brenda

RV Care … A Side Trip to Yuma

We’d planned an overnight stop in Yuma, Arizona to have Island Girl washed and waxed for a very cheap rate that we found out about on the Wheeling It blog.

And we were very satisfied with the service provided by Robert’s RV Wash, Wax & Carpet Cleaning.  Not quite like a wax job we’d do ourselves (we are persnickety) but certainly very well worth the price they charge.  There are multiple companies doing the mobile wash and wax that you can find either online or in the “White Sheet”, a little pamphlet listing all manner of local services.The going rate seems to be $1 a foot for a wash and another $2 a foot for a hand wax. This is less than a third of what we’ve seen in other parts of the country.  All 39′ of Island Girl got scrubbed and waxed for a mere $125!  She looks wonderful.

But right before we left Quartzsite, we had an unwelcome surprise.  As mentioned in the last post, our most expensive purchase by far was a SeeLevel Gauge, an external tank sensor and monitor to measure our fresh water supply and gray and black water volume in the holding tanks more precisely, specifically when we are boondocking as here in the desert.

Ok for the “newbies”, boondocking essentially means you are self-reliant, with no electric, water nor sewer connections and likely in a remote location.  So if you plan to boondock for more than a few days, it’s important to manage your electric and water usage.  RVs have tank level monitors that provide information on current tank volume of the fresh water, grey water (sink and shower), and black (toilet) holding tanks.

Unfortunately the original sensors, which live inside the tank, often stop working due to gunk buildup. This is a VERY common problem, even in newer RVs.  Island Girl is a 2004 model we bought in 2011 and her tank level monitors have never worked properly.   Even after multiple cleanings with commercial cleaner and various other products and combinations of products including Borax, Calgon, Dawn, and even a trip with ice cubes in the black tank we were unable to get them to work.

Thus the expensive purchase.  But we apparently didn’t do enough research, a caution to all.  The SeeLevel Gauges claim on their website that “with nothing inside the tank all the usual problems of corrosion and clogging are eliminated”.   And the day they were installed, it seemed that they were.  Not so much.

A couple of days later, after we dumped, the readings remained at full.  Ugh!  When we called the installer, he said that on older coaches there is sometimes enough buildup inside the tank walls to prevent their externally mounted sensors from reading properly.  Surprise!  So now we were stuck with these non working sensors.   With the advice that we should clean the inside of the tanks.  Nice.

Okay, now that I’ve totally bored those who are not interested in RV holding tanks, here comes the somewhat happy, though expensive ending.

We contacted a company that pressure cleans the insides of RV tanks, Royal Flush in Yuma with a one day advance notice to see if they were available to clean our tanks.  Hector got a good vibe from the lady on the phone who said they were available and that “her boys would stay until the job was done”.

And they did.  As it turns out, the three guys who came out are grandfather, father and son.  They had to get creative due to some challenges caused by the design of the plumbing in our coach, but they stayed until those monitors worked.  And they were friendly and nice and courteous.  And funny too.

And we thought that calling them “my boys” was just an expression, but the lady answering the phones was grandma.  It’s wonderful to see a family working so well together.

$200 more dollars later, we finally have working sensors.

A learning for owners of older motorhomes considering external sensors.  They don’t always work and you may wind up having to pay for a professional cleaning if you get them.  And we didn’t appreciate that there was no mention of this possibility at time of purchase.

The good news is Island Girl is sparkly and clean, and we can tell by 5% increments how full each of our tanks is.  And thanks to this being Yuma, the winter home of a zillion RVers and lots of companies to service them, our total expense to wash, wax the outside and clean her tanks was still less than the exorbitant prices some folks wind up paying for just washing and waxing their RV’s elsewhere.

~ Brenda

Tips for Quartzsite Newbies

When we arrived in Quartzsite (the “Q”), we really weren’t sure what to expect and went in search of information about basic services.  And we found the ladies at the Chamber of Commerce at 101 W Main Street, across from the Post Office, very helpful, they answered all of our questions, gave us a business directory and a directory of vendors for the various shows, as well as some other event and tourist information.

For those that prefer to get their information in advance, I compiled a short list of various services that we used and were satisfied with below:

Grocery Stores – The Roadrunner Market and The Quartzsite General Store both on Main Street offered produce, meats, a limited wine and beer selection and other basic foods but the Roadrunner Market was larger and had by far the best selection.

If you need a full grocery store, there’s an Albertsons at 840 East Hobson Way in Blythe, about 20 miles west, just across the California state line.  There is a border patrol checkpoint on the way there and back, and, although we sailed through, we noticed traffic held up on the opposite side so be prepared for a possible delay.

Mail –There is a Post Office at 80 W Main Street, however, my understanding is that the lines can be quite long.

Ironwood Outpost at 225 N Central Boulevard will receive Fedex and UPS packages.  We left our name and phone and they called to notify us when they received our package. They charge a $5.00 fee, but we thought it was worth it to avoid long lines, especially since we only had one delivery while in Quartzsite.  This company provides other services as well.

Laundry – Main Street Laundromat and Showers at 205 East Main Street is a huge laundromat– they have Wi-Fi and a restaurant (didn’t try this one) next door.   They also offer showers, including towel, bath mat, soap and shampoo for $6.00, though we didn’t try those out. 

Bars/Restaurants with TVs – Hector needed a place to watch the Denver Broncos playoff game, and we went to The Quartzsite Yacht Club, 1070 W. Main Street, a place with a very colorful history.  A yacht club many miles from the nearest water.  Funny.

We were not thrilled with our food choices, but it has a large bar, lots of TV’s (some of which are dedicated to off-track betting), and is seemingly very popular with locals.  Another (smaller) place that has TV’s and supposedly good food (per one of the town cops) is The Grubstake on Central Boulevard.

Trash and Recycling –  The Refuse Transfer Station on Central Boulevard on the left hand side headed north of Quartzsite a bit past the Fire Station.  It’s free but open limited hours (7:30 to 2:30) Sunday through Wednesday only so plan accordingly.

Holding Tank Dump Station, Potable Water Tank Fill and Propane – The RV Pit Stop at 425 North Central Road.  They have a filter attached to their fresh water fill.  They also offer reverse osmosis water for drinking water refills as well as ice though we didn’t use those services.  A very convenient and well organized all in one set up.  You drive from station to station.

Campsite selection.  Full hook ups or boondocking?  The “Q” has several commercial campgrounds with hook ups.  Most looked ok if simple, but frankly the desert called to us so we didn’t look into the campgrounds in town.  

Bureau of Land Management (BLM) allows dispersed camping on various public land areas nearby.   So, how did we choose which BLM area to stay in?  The BLM web site nicely identifies where all the camping areas are on the map, and we read RV reviews, but the descriptions were pretty basic so we couldn’t really tell which one offered what. Two things stood out on many of the reviews – there’s lots of dust and highway noise can be a problem.

There are several free BLM areas (14 day max stay within any 28 day period).  These have no services, pack it in/ pack it out. And a Long Term Visitor Area (LTVA) for $40 for 14 nights or $180 for seven months. Cheap! Staying in the LTVA includes access to potable water and a dump site and there are dumpsters and some vault toilets throughout the areas but the places are still basically open desert.

North of town are Hi Jolly BLM (5.5 miles) and Plomosa Road BLM (10 miles).  East is Scaddan Wash (3.5 miles), West is Dome Rock Mountain (3.5 miles), South is RoadRunner (5 miles) and the La Posa LTVA  (2 miles) which is broken up into several areas.  La Posa West and North are right near town and La Posa Tyson Wash and La Posa South (where the dump and potable water are located) are a bit further south.

Choosing a spot depends on your priorities.

Traffic noise carries quite easily across the desert, so if you really want to avoid it plan to drive somewhere as far from I-10 as you can.  Perhaps La Posa South, Hi Jolly or Plomosa Road.

Dust is mostly created by traffic, so to get away from it you should park away from the access roads towards the back of the area you select.

If access to the shows in town are a priority La Posa West is right by the show (walking distance), but you are pretty packed in.

Privacy or Party?  If you want some privacy you might try the Dome Rock Mountain area.  This is hillier terrain so the flat places suitable for camping are fewer and more spaced out.

We drove around several dirt roads looking for our specific campsite and ultimately found a cozy one, a little close to the dirt access road so we got a bit of ATV traffic zooming through but not much other traffic.  You could hear I-10 traffic in the distance but not too disturbing.  

This did mean driving Island Girl SLOWLY down an uneven dirt road.  And several of the roads were clearly not suitable for larger RVs so scouting is a must.

We really liked our spot with vegetation on both sides and our very own Saguaro and we even entertained a couple of times.

Some other BLM areas seemed flatter and less interesting to us, but campsite access seemed easier and lots of groups were gathered in the flatter areas. So if you want a place to arrange multiple rigs in a giant circle and have a giant fire ring, there is plenty of open flat space to choose from.  Some groups place the rigs in a circle, others prefer a rectangle, many are just sort of scattered across the land.

Campsite Services – One nice thing about having such a density of RVs is that they provide business opportunities for service providers. There are several mobile RV repair guys in town, and apparently you can also have water delivered and your tanks pumped out at your site as well (for a fee of course).

So all in all Quartzsite is a great place for boondocking with lots of moral and technical support available for newbies.  We weren’t sure what to expect.  But we sure had a wonderful time and learned a lot about boondocking during our Quartzsite experience.

~ Brenda

The Merchants in the Desert

We have arrived.

Quartzsite is a tiny town of 3,500 year round residents located between Phoenix and Los Angeles, 20 miles from the California border. 

It was once a gathering place for pioneers traveling to the gold fields of California as well as other travelers and then agates, limonite cubes, gold and quartz were found nearby, so the town itself became a destination for the “rock hounds”.

And nowadays, between November and March each year, known as the season, snowbirds, rock hounds and others converge here to escape the harsh winters elsewhere and to shop at various indoor and outdoor swap meets that began 40 years ago.

The majority of these swap meets take place during January and February when thousands of merchants also come here to sell their wares.

We are here in January and during our ten day stay there are eight of these events in town, including “world famous” gem and mineral shows and the Quartzsite Sports, Vacation and RV show.  January is known here as “the largest gathering of RVers in the world”.

The little white dots are RVs

Many of the RVers come to stay in the desert, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) public lands as far as the eye can see.  There are five BLM areas here.  With free camping for fourteen days in one 28 day period.  And there is also a Long Term Visitor Area (LTVA) that charges $40 for two weeks and $180 for seven months.

“Boondocking”.   No electric, no water, no sewer.  Just open land, pick your spot and set up camp. Beautiful sunsets almost every day.  And lots of stars at night.

We are joined by RVers of all stripes; the ATV crowd with their desert toys, the hippies and ex-hippies, the young, the old and the oldest – quite a few of those rocking their mobility scooters and walkers down the dirt and gravel. Hector says of this latter group  – “I admire them, they are still after it”.

And all of those merchants.  We are all here.  

So people plan massive get-togethers; members of clubs, small groups of friends, people with common interests, you name it.  They lay claim to an area of land and circle their wagons.

Others, like us, find a cozy little spot somewhere as far from the crowds as possible.  A place to escape from the crowds and enjoy the desert.  “Our” own little spot, with “gardens” on both sides and a great fire ring.

And we have our very own Saguaro, which now has a circle of white rocks around it that Hector “created”.  And we also “enhanced” the fire ring with additional pinkish/brownish rocks. This rock thing is contagious.

The Travelocity Gnome … campsite protector !

 

And with so many people around it’s a pretty sure bet that you’ll make some new friends.  RVers form strong communities, and it’s really evident here.   This is a great place to connect with old friends and to make new friends.  And we did both.  Including meeting some fellow bloggers that we’ve gotten to know over time on the internet.

First, we got together with Amanda and Tim, who write the blog Watsons Wander that we’ve been reading for quite awhile.  We figured out they were staying at the same BLM area, Dome Rock, as we were and invited them over for happy hour.  They have a beautiful Airstream that they’ve renovated and polished (I miss Luna … our first RV, also an Airstream).

It’s great to see younger people like Amanda and Tim make the choice to travel while working, they are smart to do that early in their lives, and we admire them for it.  Oh, and their blog is great as well.

Of course, we head to the shows to shop on various days while we’re here.  There is lots to choose from;, some low quality old stuff, even stuff covered with dust.  But as they say, one man’s junk is another man’s treasure.  There’s lots of cheap new stuff made in China. And nice vintage stuff and some fun buys.  Something for everyone.

On the high end, there are beautiful gemstones and jewelry and multi-million dollar RVs.  Like I said something for everyone.  For the RVers, there’s a big white tent which houses most of the RV show.  But there are lots and lots of other vendors at other shows in several locations throughout the town.  Rows and rows of vendor stalls all over town.

In spite of attempts at restraint we made quite a few purchases including:

Best bargain – three kitchen knives professionally sharpened for $8

Most fun buy – a metal roadrunner sculpture for $20

Most impulsive buy – a knife with etched petroglyphs on an elk antler handle and a triple flow obsidian blade – this is our official “rock” memento from the “Q” -$45

Biggest buy – A See Level II tank sensor system to monitor holding tank levels. $385 installed – ouch!  

Hector dreaming of installing our new Oxygenics shower head

Terry, the guy who fixed the boo boo Hector made installing the shower head

Contrary to what some may think, many RV products are not available here and some items are actually more expensive here than online.  Shoppers beware and do your research before making your purchases.

Aside from the buying, for me it’s always fun to see the amazing product sales pitches, these are a reminder of another time.

The whole thing has an air of “only in America”.  And it’s kind of hypnotizing.

And there are lots of interesting characters here.   A historic character is Hadji Ali, who quickly got nicknamed Hi Jolly, a camel driver from Jordan who became a legend around these parts.

He came to Arizona in 1856 as the lead camel driver during testing by the U.S. Army for possible use of camels for transporting of supplies across the desert during the Civil War.  About 80 camels were brought to the area and apparently did very well, but this particular strategy ultimately was abandoned.

Mr. Ali served for over 30 years in the army, became a U.S. citizen and married a woman from Tucson.  He moved to Quartzsite where he mined and did some work for the U.S. government.  He died here in 1902.

In 1935, a monument was dedicated to him and the Camel Corps at his gravesite, which is now the most visited location in Quartzsite.  As well as the inspiration for naming many town businesses, who use the “Americanized” version of his name,  Hi Jolly.

And, speaking of characters, there is also a bookstore in town whose owner Paul wears nothing but a sock on his naughty bits on warm days (almost every day).  Reader’s Oasis Books is actually a fine bookstore and an interesting place to visit.

We found a few other characters prospecting just across from our campsite; searching for gold.  I don’t think they were finding much, but they seemed to be having fun looking.  I guess it’s the thrill of the search.

Other local characters showed off their classic cars at a local “auto show” in a Shell gas station in town on Saturday night.   Hanging out talking cars and engines and stuff like that for a few hours.

Okay it was no Barrett-Jackson but good community fun (50 cent hot dogs!).

The Wheelin It folks.  Nina is on the left, Paul far right. The tall one is Mike from Bear Tracks Blog

Later in the week, we met Nina and Paul.  Nina writes the blog Wheeling It, by far the best RV blog we’ve read. We’ve been reading it for years and it is a great resource for us and all RVers.   Nina and Paul have a LOT of followers on their blog and arranged the meet and greet to create an opportunity for all of the people that reached out to them in Quartzsite to meet them and each other.

Tim and Amanda were there

We had a great time meeting Nina and Paul and some of their many fans, including Mike and Linda, another adventurous couple who write another fun blog that we’ve been reading for awhile, Bear Tracks Blog.

That’s W for Watson

Mike and Linda from Bear Tracks Blog in the center

One night, we joined George, the owner of RV Driving School and my RV driving instructor from last year, and his wife, Valerie at one of their campfire gatherings.  So nice to connect with them again.

We ended the week with a potluck dinner with Amanda, Tim, Nina and Paul (Paul is the OTHER Cuban-American full time RVer, I wonder if there is a third out there somewhere) and their sweet dog Polly.   Good food, great conversation, lots of laughs, another big campfire, oh and yes a little rum.

Quartzsite may not be for everyone, it can be dusty, crowded and dizzying.  But it’s one of those “you should do it at least once” kinds of events for RVers.  And who knows, the lure of the desert, the rocks, the shopping and, especially, good friends may bring you back again and again.

As we publish this blog we’ve left Quartzsite.  We had a blast at the “Q” and were sad to leave, knowing that we might never stay at “our” campsite in Quartzsite again.  Or maybe we will.

~ Brenda

Circling Phoenix

As much as we’ve traveled, we hadn’t realized how enormous the city of Phoenix is.  It’s the fifth largest city in the U.S. and per the Phoenix Business Journal “the Phoenix metro area’s population surpassed 4.3 million in 2011”.  More than one person we met compared it to Los Angeles minus the ocean.

So the campground that we chose to stay in, McDowell Mountain Regional Park, although quite pretty turned out not to have been the best choice in terms of getting around this huge and extremely spread out metropolitan area.  On the plus side, it was located in a large county park with lots of trails.

But our priority was to visit family and friends, so first things first.  Our first visit was to Jon, Hector’s cousin son, who lives in Scottsdale.  And Scottsdale just happened to be the closest town to Fountain Hills where we stayed.

We met in the very trendy Old Scottsdale for some food and drinks.  This area has lots of great restaurants and nightclubs.  And Jon took us to one of those “secret” bars that is not recognizable from the front, this one was accessed through an unmarked door in an alley.  The place had a great mix of people and cool music.  But I cannot divulge its location.

The next day there was a Denver Broncos game, and Jon invited us over to his place to watch the game.  So we spent a nice afternoon watching the game in good company.  And, as an added bonus, the Broncos won!

Once again, we really enjoyed spending quality time with one of our family’s younger generation and are really impressed, though not surprised.

In between visits, we hiked and biked a little around the campground.  While with Hector, Angel got a thorn from a cholla cactus in her paw.  Those thorns can be extremely hard to remove, but Hector was able to get it out incurring only slight pain himself. But it served as a reminder to carry a comb and tweezers in the desert.

Next we visited Hector’s ex-boss and friend, Simon and his wife Janet at their lovely home in Litchfield, a suburb west Phoenix,  very, very far from our campground.  They moved back to the Phoenix area recently from New Jersey and are enjoying the weather tremendously as evidenced by their fabulous yard complete with pool, outdoor barbecue and wood-fired pizza oven.

We took Angel who got to run around the house with their two pups.  Dinner included a couple of different pizzas from the wood-fired oven, delicious!

We’d reserved one day for a drive around the area and chose the Apache Trail for our journey.   The trail was originally used by Apache Indians and was later built up as a road to get building materials through the Superstition Mountains to the Roosevelt Dam, which was completed in 1911.

The Apache Trail begins on the east side of Phoenix and continues to the town of Globe, covering 48 miles of road, mostly unpaved.  It crosses through the Superstition Mountains and the Tonto National Forest through mountains covered by desert plants.   The beautiful drive also passes by three man-made lakes.  We stopped at Canyon Lake, a beautiful little spot.

We also stopped at the small town of Tortilla Flat, described as “an authentic remnant of an Old West town”, with a population of six.  It was a stagecoach stop starting in 1904 and still serves as a stop for many of those traveling across the Apache Trail.

And we were happy to become one of those travelers, stopping for a late lunch at the Superstition Saloon and Rest Area.  The place had lots of character, with dollar bills lining the walls, real saddles as bar stools …

and the cutest bathrooms ever!

The unpaved part of the road becomes quite steep and narrow at points, but the views of the cliffs and rocks are well worth it.  Not recommended for RV’s though.

Towards the end of the drive we reached Theodore Roosevelt Dam, built of bricks, and still the world’s largest masonry dam at almost 300 feet tall.  An impressive sight.

Once we passed the dam, the sun started to set and the moon was rising, a pretty sight just a couple of days before the full moon.  But since it was getting dark, we decided to head back on the highway, which was a looong drive.

We passed through Miami, Arizona. A faded copper boomtown.

The Apache Trail was truly a stunning place though, and very much worth the long drive.

On our last afternoon in the Phoenix area, I visited my friend Marisol.  We met in Tempe and had a wonderful Lebanese dinner together, catching up on many events that have taken place since we last got together.  So much so, that the restaurant started to turn off the lights while we were there 🙂

All too soon, it was time to move on, as we were on a bit of a schedule headed to the big RV show in Quartzsite, Arizona.  And as our visit to Phoenix ended, we realized that we never actually set foot inside the actual city limits of Phoenix.  But we really enjoyed circling the town.

~ Brenda

 

Cool Cars

Our plan for Phoenix included visits to several people and other activities as time allowed.

But, coincidentally, we arrived in the area at the same time as “The World’s Greatest Collector Car Auction”, produced by Barrett-Jackson, “the world’s leading collector car auction and automotive lifestyle events”.  In addition, our RV campground was in Fountain Hills, very close to the location of the event, Scottsdale.

So we decided to go to the show on its first day, which was also the least expensive option as it was prior to the start of the actual auction.

The locale was just massive, and for us to have been able to see all of the cars would have required at least an entire day.  

But Hector and I spent a few hours there and focused on the classic collector cars in the main tent area. Even though there were several tents we never even entered, we still saw a dizzying array of autos.

Although I don’t know a lot about collector cars, I do know what I like.  I like antique cars, and I liked a lot of the cars we saw. There were some truly artistic people designing automobiles in the United States years ago.  They paid such attention to little details, many of which are still standouts.

The colors were truly amazing, the brightest colors I’d ever seen on autos.  And, of course, all of the cars had tons of clear coats applied on top of the paint to make them ultra-shiny.

 

There were tons of people cruising through the show, but Hector still managed to get some cool photographs.  One really fun area was full of old automotive memorabilia.

Since I am a simple girl at heart, I selected a simple white little roundish number as my favorite.  But there were some bright colored beauties that could have won me over as well.

 

This was definitely a spontaneous choice by us, and not something we expected to do, but we figured we might never coincide with The World’s Greatest Collector Car Auction again.  And it was a really fun afternoon.

~ Brenda

Earthy Sedona

Sedona is a unique place, when we visited several years ago we really loved the look of and the new-agey feel of the place.  Sedona offers luminous shamanic healing, detoxification, past life regression, spirit guide readings, spiritual hypnosis, to balance your aura and chakra system, reactivate your meridian lines and energy points, access your subconscious blocks, and a host of other metaphysical and spiritual services.  What’s not to like?

But Hector and I opted for a cost-free option; hiking to some of the vortexes.  What exactly is a vortex?

According to the Sedona Chamber of Commerce, the scientific definition is “an area of enhanced energy flow” which is either “flowing upward out of the earth” or “flowing inward toward the earth”.  The New Age community defines the vortexes as “energy centers” with “remarkable spiritual powers”.

The term was first used to describe Sedona’s four popular meditation sites – Bell Rock, Cathedral Rock, Airport Mesa and Boynton Canyon. This energy “resonates within a person,” and may offer “spiritual awareness as well as healing experiences”.

A few years ago while hiking to the Cathedral Rock vortex, located by Oak Creek at a place called Buddha Beach, Hector definitely felt the energy.  Which is funny, because he is definitely the more skeptical of the two of us.

This time I was intent on visiting several vortexes.  And we started by going to Cathedral Rock / Buddha Beach once again.  On the way there, literally in Oak Creek, there is an amazing view of Cathedral Rock that Hector wanted to photograph.

This meant wading through extremely cold water twice, which the intrepid photographer did.  To quote some folks picnicking nearby, “hard core”.  As for me, after crossing over one pretty shallow place, I decided to dry out my hiking shoes while sitting across from the rocks where Hector was taking photographs.

After some photography, we walked over to Buddha Beach to once again see the largest number of cairns we’ve ever seen in our lives.  There were tons of cairns on the ground but more daring folks built cairns on tree branches and other less stable areas.  You must see it to believe it.

 

And guess what, this time I got a huge surge of energy and joy.  It was pretty cool.  And Hector:  nada.  Interesting.

In between vortex hiking, we stopped in at the Chapel of the Holy Cross, set in (literally) the Mystic Hills.  Marguerite Brunswig Staude, a sculptress, student of Frank Lloyd Wright, philanthropist and devout Catholic conceived the idea of the church, which was originally going to be built above the Danube River in Budapest.  Because of World War II, she had to give up on those plans.

Years later, after falling in love with Sedona, she re-focused on building the church here.  It was completed in 1956 and less than a year later received the American Institute of Architects National Award for religious structures in 1956.

The exterior is striking, looking like it was carved into two rocks, with a large cross as its prominent feature.  The interior is very simple, but looks out onto beautiful Sedona.  The church welcomes travelers from all faiths.

Moving on to more vortexes.  Next we headed to Boynton Canyon.  It was a fairly easy hike, and we took Angel along.  Once near the vortex, you begin to see cairns that people have assembled.  And as we walked to the site, Hector once again had a very strong reaction.  Me:  nada.  Angel:  nada.  Oh, well.

Then we hiked on Airport Mesa.  This was a relatively flat hike with a short climb at the end.  Here the vortex energy is supposed to be around the entire trail.  I felt a little bit of an energy surge.  Hector:  nada, Angel:  a little.

The last vortex we visited was Bell Rock, which is supposed to have very strong upflow energy.  We again had Angel with us, so we hiked around the bottom of the rock, because the climb to the top is very steep.  But the vortex is supposed to be felt throughout the rock.  This time – Hector:  nada, Me:  nada, Angel:  well she walked over four miles, which for her age and after two ACL surgeries is pretty great.

But later that day we went on another hike, this time, not to a vortex, but to a very cool place called Devil’s Bridge.  We’d hiked over four miles around Bell Rock that morning, and took a midday break.  We started our second hike quite late, around 4, but it was supposed to be a short, though rather steep, hike.

But we hadn’t read enough about the trail and it turned out that the last portion of the road to the trailhead only allowed high clearance vehicles.  So we had to walk about a mile to the trailhead.  It was  getting pretty late, but now I got a surge of energy and started climbing the trail pretty effortlessly.  At the top, there are a few short but steep climbs, and after two of these, I realized it was 5 p.m.

Hector was wisely saying we should turn around and not risk a tricky descent in the dark.  Even though I had one headlamp, I agreed with him.  So we headed back down while the sun was going down and reached the main road before dark.

Walking down the road at dusk was actually very cool, there was no one else around, we were surrounded by forest and it was really quiet.  And our eyes adapted to the darkness slowly, so I didn’t have to use my headlamp until the very end.

Sometimes it’s just about the journey and not the destination.

~ Brenda

Missions of Southern Arizona

Beginning in the 16^th century, Spain established missions throughout New Spain, in an area known today as Mexico and the Southwest United States.  This was part of their effort to colonize the region.  These religious outposts didn’t necessarily have a church, but were settlements to establish Spanish presence and convert the Native Americans.

Many of the remaining missions and remains of missions are some of the oldest structures in this part of the country and represent an important part of the history of the area.

The church at Mission San Xavier del Bac is the oldest intact European structure in Arizona.  The Baroque church is called the White Dove of the Desert. 

As we approached the mission, I found it to be somewhat ostentatious because of the stark contrast between it and the surrounding area.  Upon closer inspection, however, I discovered many beautiful details in its exterior.

The interior, thought to have been decorated by artists from Queretero, Mexico is also quite striking.

This mission was founded in 1692 by Father Eusebio Francisco Kino. Father Kino, who was born in Italy and joined the Jesuit order in his 20s, went to Mexico at the age of 36 and was “assigned” to the Pima, or O’odham as they called themselves.  He gained the respect of these Native Americans due to his lack of dogmatism and helping them by introducing wheat, livestock and fruit trees into their existing farming practices.

In 1756, a small church was built at the mission.  Then the Jesuits were expelled from New Spain around 1767 for political reasons, and Franciscans were sent to the missions to replace them.  A Franciscan missionary hired an architect and started construction of the existing church in 1783. Many of the O’odham helped in the construction and the church was  completed in 1797.

After Mexico gained independence, Spain withdrew all of its aid to the missions.   The Spanish Franciscans began to leave the mission then, and the last Franciscan left in 1837, almost ten years after Mexico ordered Spanish born residents to leave the country.  In 1854, the mission became part of the United States as part of the Gadsden Purchase and four years later, became part of the Santa Fe diocese.

The diocese began repairs on the mission, but an earthquake damaged the structure.  After further repairs were made, the Franciscans returned to the mission in 1913.  The church façade was restored in 1953, and the mission became a National Historic Landmark in 1963.

Located in the Wa:k village of the San Xavier District of the Tohono O’odham Nation, about nine miles south of Tucson, the church holds regular services and is the parish church for the Native Americans in this area.

Native Americans were selling fry bread just outside the church by the parking lot and of course we had to try some before leaving the area.  We had the fry bread with cinnamon, it was delicious!

We then continued driving south about 45 miles to the oldest mission in Arizona, Mission San Jose de Tumacacori.

On the way to Tumacacori, we made a brief stop at the village of Tubac, which features over 100 shops and world class galleries.  A very scenic spot.

Mission San Jose de Tumacacori was also founded by Jesuit Eusebio Francisco Kino, who apparently really got around, in 1691 in a Pima settlement on the east bank of the Santa Cruz River, 18 miles north of present day Nogales.  The mission was moved once after a Pima revolt to its present location.

A small, modest church was built there in 1757.  Then, in the early 1800s, the Franciscans began to build a large church, one that would match the Baroque glory of San Xavier del Bac.  They had a master mason leading a crew of Indian and Spanish laborers, but didn’t have enough funds to complete it, leaving one bell tower unfinished.   After Mexican independence, and the departure of many of the Spanish born Franciscans, only some native born priests remained.

In 1848, after an increase in Apache attacks and also after aid from Mexico was cut due to war, the last residents abandoned the mission.  In 1853, the mission became part of the United States as part of the Gadsden Purchase.

We took a self-guided walk around the grounds.   The original roof of the church was destroyed, and the interior was subjected to weather and souvenir hunters for many years, so there is very little of the interior remaining.   There is now a replacement roof, but the structure has not been restored.

The interior has a nave, altar, remains of a choir loft, a baptistery, sacristy and sanctuary.  Then behind the church are the remains of a granary, mortuary chapel, cemetery and lime kiln.

There is also a reconstructed O’odham house and a mission orchard that has been planted in accordance with the time period when the mission was active.

We finished our walk and headed back to Tucson.  Since we were coming from the South, we had to cross yet another immigration checkpoint.  Once again we put on our “game faces” and got ready to answer the question “What country are you citizens of?” with “U.S.”.  Once again, we passed the test.

~ Brenda

Pima Air and Space Museum

McDonnell Douglas F4E Phantom II in USAF Thunderbirds markings

Airplane geek alert!!  Tucson is home to the Pima Air Museum.  This is one of the largest private aviation museums with over 300 planes on over 80 acres and in several enclosed hangars.  Brenda was having a hard time containing her excitement at being dragged to yet another aviation museum. 🙂

They have an extensive collection of military aircraft organized by the branch of the service and the theaters of operation.  Docents are stationed throughout, almost always older gentlemen with obviously personal connections to the artifacts on display.

A docent will drive you around the outdoor exhibits in a tram with a narration of the alphabet soup of naand a tidbit of history along the way.

B24 Liberator

Boeing B17G Flying Fortress

Boeing B29 Superfortress

Boeing B52G Stratofortress

There are lots of rare and unique planes in the collection.  Including the oldest B52 still in existence and only the third ever built.  This B52A is also interesting in that it was the launch platform for the X-15 spaceplane flights.  Each flight is marked on the side of the fuselage. Way cool.

Boeing B52A Stratofortress – with X-15 launch cradle under right wing

Convair B36J Peacemaker. The last of the piston engine bombers.

Lockheed SR71A Blackbird

Convair B58A Hustler

Fighters galore – with examples of both “good guy” and “bad guy” contemporaries.

Grumman F14A Tomcat

Mikoyan-Gurevich MIG-21 Fishbed

McDonnell Douglas F/A18A Hornet

North American F86H Sabre

Grumman TAF-9J Cougar

Mikoyan-Gurevich MIG-15 Fagot

Northrop T38 Talon – a favorite of NASA astronauts

Choppers as well.

Some oddball stuff …

This museum is adjacent to 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG), also known as the “Boneyard.”.  Thousands of planes are stored at this facility taking advantage of the dry desert climate.  Bus tours are given daily but were sold out the day we were there.  Next time …

There are some commercial airliners in both civilian and military versions …

Boeing VC137B in “Jackie Kennedy” paint scheme

Boeing VC118A Liftmaster. This one served as Air Force One for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson and was the last propeller plane used for that purpose

Lockheed C121A Constellation. This “Connie” was Air Force 1 for President Dwight Eisenhower

Lockheed L-049 Constellation in TWA colors

North American P51D Mustang

These are only a few examples of the amazing collection.  A great place to spend the day for anyone with a love of airplanes.  Wear comfy shoes!

~ Hector

Raptors and Monsters and Snakes – Oh My!

It seemed as if everyone that had ever been to Tucson and everyone that lives in Tucson recommended that we visit the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.  The Desert Museum is actually a combination of a zoo, a natural history museum, an aquarium and a botanical garden.

We were especially interested in seeing the raptor free flight presentations where multiple handlers get the birds to fly outdoors in nature but up close to the guests.  There are two a day, and we caught all of one and most of the other – they were amazing.

It was the New Years holiday week so the museum was packed, in fact, one of the  ladies working at the gift shop told us this was the largest crowd she’d seen – yikes!  Fortunately, the only place where it felt super crowded was actually the raptor free flight, as people were packed into two specific areas.  Even so, the way this demonstration was set up, each bird flies back and forth and perches on different trees all around various spots where the crowd is gathered, and so everyone has an opportunity to get multiple good views of each bird – well done!

The Desert Museum is the only zoological park that features plants and animals from one region, the Sonoran Desert, demonstrating their interdependence.   Since a large part of the desert is in Mexico, the museum collaborates with organizations in Mexico to provide educational programs and conduct research.  This place is awesome!

Beep Beep

The museum also has lots of very knowledgable docents spread out throughout the exhibits.  All docents complete a rigorous 15 week training, and they are very friendly and informative.

One of our favorite exhibits at the museum was the hummingbird aviary; I never knew there were so many types of hummingbirds! Another was the desert loop trail, which has lots of agaves and palo verde trees, and coyotes and other animals in their natural settings.

And my favorite animal from the desert loop trail was the javelina (pronounced as if in Spanish havelina).  Javelinas are peccaries and they are members of the same suborder as pigs, Suina.  They have tiny dainty legs and big eyelashes and are truly adorable.  We keep hoping to see them in the wild since they are not aggressive.

Last, but not least, we saw an interesting presentation about gila monsters and rattlesnakes.  Both animals were brought out and placed on a table while the presenters provided fun, interesting and scary facts about them.

Since the audience included kids, part of the presentations was a bit basic, but it was cool to see these very dangerous animals up close.

One basic thing I learned was how to spell gila monster – I always thought it was helimonster!  Ok, the rattlesnake was cool but I found the little gila monster – named Diablo – pretty cute.

We also learned that about 3/4 of the incidents of people getting bitten by gila monsters or rattlesnakes are caused by the person wanting to interact with the animal.  What???!!!  And the three most common characteristics of the majority of those unfortunate people are:  1.Male 2.Young and 3.Intoxicated.  Gila monsters are actually shy and slow moving, but, if threatened, they will clamp on very tight, and, what probably makes them so scary, they have to chew in order to release their venom.  That’s one way to sober up!

Unbelievably, after about seven hours at the museum we still missed quite a few exhibits.  So, along with tons of others, I highly recommend a visit, but do plan to get there early and stay late!

Update:  We’re currently in Phoenix, having visited Sedona after Tucson, but are catching up on the blog and two more posts on Tucson area visits are coming up – lots to see there!

~ Brenda

Tucson and the Sentinels of the Desert

As we arrived in Tucson and headed towards our RV Campground, we found ourselves surrounded by mountains covered by saguaro cacti.  It was an astounding sight.  This area is part of the Sonoran Desert, and near the north eastern most habitat of the saguaro (they only grow in Arizona, California, and parts of Mexico).  As a result, if you arrive from the east as we did, you don’t see any along the way until you arrive and then they are everywhere!

The ranger at Saguaro National Park, which is actually two parks, one to the east and one to the west of Tucson, informed us that there are about 1.8 million Saguaros within its borders.  And I’m sure we’re looking at thousands at one time.

We found the area so fascinating that we decided to extend our stay, it’s so nice to have that flexibility.  Originally, we were planning to spend New Year’s Eve in Sedona, but we changed our reservation to stay in Tucson until after the New Year.

We drove into the city a couple of times.  There is lots of interesting mural art in Tucson, which we love.  One mural, which spells out the word Tucson, is a recent work that was a collaboration of six artists (one for each letter).  Each artist has strong ties to the city and incorporated political or cultural messages into their art.

We also visited the Tucson Museum of Art and Historic Block.  Our favorite exhibits were the Western Art permanent exhibit and a temporary exhibition by wildlife artist Bob Kuhn. Another favorite was the Historic Block, five properties built between the mid 1800s and the early 1900s, that along with the museum, are located in what was once the Presidio of San Agustin del Tucson, established by the Spanish army in 1775.

One of these houses displays “El Nacimiento” a massive Mexican nativity scene that combines the Christmas story of the bible with scenes from traditional Mexican village life and more, created by Maria Luisa in memory of her mother.  It’s by far the most intricate nativity scene I’ve seen.  The art museum is small but worth a visit.

We spent Christmas in Tucson, and Hector cooked another wonderful meal.  Our families usually have Christmas Eve dinner, but when not with family, we prefer Christmas dinner.  It was kind of a quiet day with no friends nor family nearby, but it was also very relaxing.

Our RV park was adjacent to Tucson Mountain Park and had several trails leading out of it, so were able to hike and mountain bike from the park.  We also had a very nice view of the sunset over the mountains right out our front window.  And I saw my first road runner – on two different days, hanging around the campsites, and Hector got a few photos of him.

The day after Christmas, we had Ingrid and Al over for dinner.  Ingrid and I “met” each other through our blogs – but the story has one more layer.  Back on Prince Edward Island in Canada, Hector and I had dinner with fulltimers and bloggers, Mona Liza and her husband Steve after Mona Liza and I also “met” though our respective blogs.  Mona Liza wrote a really cute blog post about our get together, and Ingrid, who follows her blog, linked to our blog.  When I noticed Ingrid’s comments on our blog, I linked to her blog and that is how we “met”.   We live in interesting times.

Anyhow, we all had a great time together, kind of a progressive dinner, with happy hour and the entrée in Island Girl, and then wonderful homemade desserts (yes that was plural) in Ingrid and Al’s fifth wheel.  A little wine was consumed as well 🙂

Continuing on the social circuit, a few days later we had a great dinner at Jean and Jerry’s.  Jean and Jerry are friends of Scott and Mary, friends of ours from Denver.  When Scott and Mary realized we were going to stay in Tucson, they introduced us via e-mail.

We had such a wonderful time with Jean and Jerry that we went hiking together the next day.  The hike was on the Yetman Trail, which goes through a lovely valley and over a pass.  It’s about six miles one-way, and, since we were able to park one car at each end of the trail, we only had to hike in one direction.  This allowed us to take our time, and for Jean and Jerry to share their vast knowledge about the plants and other features of the valley along the way.

Among those tidbits was the fact that many of the saguaro are able to survive only when they grow under nurse trees.  These nurse trees are frequently palo verde and mesquite.  The saguaros are slow growers, at fifteen years they’re only about twelve inches tall, so the nurse trees provide protection from extreme sunlight, winter cold and small animals.  But many saguaros don’t make it.  

And there is a strong connection, which began with Native Americans, between the people here and the saguaro cacti.  In fact, while we were on the trail, Jean made it a point to surround one little one with branches to protect it from the cold.

Of course, there are a lot of other spiny, thorny cacti in the desert and we learned about them as well.    We heard that some people go out into the desert “with a plastic comb and a pair of tweezers” – tweezers are not good for pulling certain thorns out and combs are said to do the trick.  I, for one, did not intend to find out.

Still, it’s hard to imagine how animals survive in this harsh environment, but they do.  As evidenced by some birds nests we discovered in the cacti during our hike.  All in all it was a great hike with great people.

We returned to Saguaro National Park a couple of times.  Saguaro East-Rincon Mountain District was established first and has the oldest saguaro forest and some of the biggest saguaros.  However, there are less total saguaros in this park than in the Saguaro West-Tucson Mountain District.  The reason is that the east side of the park is about 1,000 feet higher altitude than the west, and so many more saguaros are killed by frost.  In fact, that is one of the reasons that the Saguaro West park was established – in order to protect a larger area of saguaros.

 

One afternoon, we hiked up to Signal Peak, a popular sunset watching spot for locals.  The trail continued past the sunset watching spot and we followed it into a more remote desert area surrounded by mountains to watch the sunset.

Meanwhile, I’d done research on things to do on New Year’s Eve.  We wanted to celebrate our amazing year in style.  So I found a very interesting venue called the Whistle Stop Depot.  The Whistle Stop Depot was a 5,200 square foot warehouse that was refurbished with materials handcrafted from reclaimed, recycled and salvaged materials.

This venue was hosting a salsa dance party with a nine piece band that included some of the best musicians from various local Latin bands who would be playing together for the first time.  This sounded perfect, and indeed it was, we danced the night away to great music in a beautiful space.

Now back to the saguaros – they are the largest cacti in North America, and can live to 175-200 years old and 70 feet tall.  They often outlive their nurse trees.  The saguaros branches or arms, if they grow at all, start to grow only after they reach 75 years.

As I looked out over the saguaro “forest” on the mountain, they looked like sentinels of the desert.  They really do resemble people sometimes, with diverse shapes and sizes.  And with their “arms” waving in all directions.

Some, which are extremely rare, produce a fan-like form which is referred to as crested or cristate.  I think they are very intriguing.

And they frame the lovely city of Tucson very nicely.

~ Brenda

2013 … A Dream Year

What a year!  We traveled a total of 9,448 miles in Island Girl, from Florida to Maine to Canada, then south and west reaching Arizona by the end of the year.  We visited 18 states and 4 Canadian provinces.  In October we reached a couple of milestones:  one year of fulltiming and one year of blogging.

Whew!  Here’s a month-by-month recap of our dream year:

January – visited with friends and family in Miami and Ft. Lauderdale.

February – stepped back into nature at Everglades National Park.

March – a nice long stay in Funky Key West for ocean fun and an awesome air show.

April – a busy month: first north and west to the Gulf Coast of Florida for more family time, then back east to the John F. Kennedy Space Center and the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, north to St. Augustine, and north again to the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia and the low country of South Carolina, and finally to Atlanta to see old friends.

May – visited the Smoky Mountain National Park in Tennessee, the Outer Banks of North Carolina, Washington, D.C., then ended the month in New York City and upstate New York where we visited more family and friends.

June – a quick stop in Boston and then on to beautiful Maine.

Here was our route for the first half of the year.

July – crossed the border into Canada on the 1^st, and spent the month in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.  Discovered absolutely astounding people and places.

August – visited idyllic Prince Edward Island, buggy Kouchibuguac National Park in New Brunswick, then over to Quebec to the gorgeous and oh so French Gaspé Peninsula.

September – visited the St. Lawrence River in Quebec where we saw an amazing number of whales and concluded our fantastic Canadian summer in charming Quebec City, then crossed the border back to the U.S. to enjoy the beautiful Vermont autumn.

October – continued leaf-peeping in Vermont, then began our westward journey with stops at Niagara Falls, then Cincinnati, Ohio, Louisville, Kentucky,St. Louis and Kansas City, Missouri, visiting friends and family along the way.

November – a stop in Denver, where the journey began, to get annual checkups for all and check in with friends and family.  Then south to Santa Fe, New Mexico.

December – another busy month.  Traveled around New Mexico, south to Albuquerque, then further south to the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge and Las Cruces, then crossed the border to Arizona and ended our most unforgettable year in Tucson.

And here was our route for the second half

Some things we learned:

We ran a little hot this year, with an average stay of 8 nights at our 45 stops, not complaining, it was fabulous, but we’d like to slow it down a bit this year and try staying longer in each place.

We set a goal of no more than four hours driving time between stops and for the most part kept to it; averaging 185 miles per trip, but a couple of the trips were still way too long.

We stayed too far north too late into the year, and plan to head south earlier next year to avoid frigid cold and snow (although the falling snow was beautiful).

Crossing from the east coast to the west coast really took a toll on us, we were tired puppies by the time we reached Denver, and plan to stay in the West next year.

Our planning paid off in some fabulous campsites, on the other hand, we discovered that it’s best to have a balance of planned and unplanned stops.

Re-connecting with family and friends, and making new friends along the way has been one of the most important parts of our journey.

And we learned to be grateful each and every day, we are so fortunate!

We wish you all a very Happy  and Healthy New Year in 2014!

~ Brenda, Hector and Angel

Las Cruces and the City of Rocks

We camped in the city of Las Cruces, New Mexico, primarily because we were interested in visiting places both on the west and the east of the city.  Las Cruces is the second largest city in New Mexico.

We toured around the city, mostly in the downtown area and also visited the adjacent town of Mesilla.  Mesilla is a picturesque town with a lovely plaza, which is a National Historic Landmark.  The plaza is surrounded by art shops and galleries.  And the entire scene was beautifully decorated for Christmas.  This was our favorite spot in the Las Cruces area.

We also visited the local Farmers Market, as is our custom.  It’s a pretty small market, and, at least at the time we were there, was mostly an arts and crafts market, with very few food products.  Still enjoyable, and very friendly people.

And there were some food trucks at the market.  We sampled food from one of them “Luchador” with a “Lucha Libre” wrestling motif, and it was excellent!  This truck is at the library most days, and at the Farmers Market on Wednesdays and Saturdays.  Check them out if you’re in Las Cruces!

Driving out of the city was quite picturesque, as Las Cruces is bordered by mountains.  The surrounding mountains also made for some nice sunset views.

We drove to City of Rocks State Park one day.   A number of rock formations were formed over 30 million years ago after a volcanic eruption and jut out from the surrounding landscape.  The state park has formal trails, great little picnic nooks, a desert botanical garden, wildlife viewing, and night-sky viewing.  There’s also a very nice looking RV campground inside the park.

We ignored the formal trails and just walked into the rocks per the recommendation of a group we met there that seemed to be pretty familiar with the place.  It was fun to just wander around climbing the rocks and making our way around them.   And City of Rocks is definitely worth another visit.

We then drove over to Silver City, the adjacent town, for a quick look. It had a few interesting buildings but was a pretty small town.

As we left, we decided to drive back to Las Cruces on a different road than the one we drove in on, going over the mountains.

After winding, turning and climbing a while, we found that the road was closed!  They’d had snow at the top and it wasn’t plowed.  This crazy winter weather surprised us once again!

So we doubled back to City of Rocks State Park and entered the park again.  It was sunset, and the rocks looked completely different, but it was pretty dark.  It seems that this is more of a morning light kind of place, so we left after a short drive through.

We returned to Las Cruces and had a chance to see a stunning moon rise from the parking lot of a pet store.  Sometimes we come across beautiful sights in the most unexpected of places!

Back on Island Girl, we prepared to leave New Mexico and continue west to Arizona.  So long for now, New Mexico, we shall return!

~ Brenda

White Sands and Missiles

Once again we encountered more of the contrasts of New Mexico.  White Sands National Monument is a beautiful place with soft white dunes and beautiful vistas.  It happens to be surrounded by the White Sands Missile Range, whose mission is to “provide Army, Navy, Air Force, DoD, and other customers with high quality services for experimentation, test, research, assessment, development, and training in support of the Nation at war”.  In fact, the road leading to White Sands National Monument and between Las Cruces and Alamagordo is regularly closed due to due to testing of missiles and other scary devices.  The Trinity SIte, where the first nuclear bomb was detonated, is located at the far north end of the missile range (closed to the public).

Interesting that when approaching the national monument, all cars were diverted to an immigration checkpoint.  The monument is about 100 miles from the border with Mexico, and we drove from Las Cruces, which is south and west of there. The guard just gave us “the look” and asked about our citizenship.  When we replied “U.S.”, he waved us off.  He didn’t ask Angel, who was in the back seat, any questions.

As we got closer, I was amazed at how suddenly the landscape changed and mounds of white seemed to appear out of nowhere.  We had arrived at the world’s largest gypsum dune field, covering 275 square miles.

This area was covered by a shallow sea 250 million years ago.  Pressure from colliding tectonic plates pushed up land eventually forming the Rocky Mountain Range about 70 million years ago.  Millions of years later, part of the mountains collapsed, creating what is now the Tularosa Basin.

Gypsum, which is dissolved by rain and snow from the mountains, is normally carried out to the sea in rivers.  Since the Tularosa Basin had no outlet to the sea, this mix of water and snow carrying gypsum was trapped in the ground and also formed pools.  At the lowest point of the basin, it formed Lake Otero, which eventually became a mostly dry bed, called a playa, and now named Lake Lucero.

When the water that had accumulated in the lake evaporated, it left gypsum in a crystalline form, called selenite, on the lake floor.  The selenite was eventually broken down by the elements into smaller and smaller particles and ultimately eroded to sand.  This sand was then moved by the prevailing winds which eventually formed dunes as the sand accumulated.

As the sand continued to accumulate in the dunes, their steep edges were eventually pulled down by gravity, moving them forward.  Strong winds in the area, at their strongest in the spring, continue to cause many of the dunes to move around the park.  Some travel between twelve to thirteen feet per year, others, on the edges of the dune field, move inches to a few feet per year and are firmly held in place by a various desert plants.

We visited the National Monument on two different days.  The monument has a visitor center housed in a historic adobe building, and a gift shop offering authentic Native American crafts and other items. 

A loop road leads from the visitor center eight miles into the heart of the dunes and to four marked trails, all of them manageable in less than one day.   Getting out into the dunes reveals a different world.  The one down side is that most wildlife generally stay in burrows during the day, with the exception of lizards and some birds.

In fact, the only evidence of life we saw in two days was two dead crickets and some tracks.  This attests to the harsh living conditions in this area.  The (few) plants and animals that do live here have had to adapt to the conditions.

In the case of plants, some grow extremely high so when dunes collapse they are able to remain in place, others create an anchor at the base of the dune so they can remain on the “sand pedestal” when the dune moves.

Many of the animals here, mostly small and medium mammals (there is not enough food source for large mammals), snakes, lizards, birds and many insects, have also adapted.  Some of the mice and lizards have developed lighter skin to blend in with the sand.

The first day we visited was clear, cool and lovely. Although we didn’t do it, a fun thing to do here is to buy or rent (or bring) a sledding disk and slide down the dunes.  This is allowed as long as you don’t roll over any vegetation.  We saw both small and big kids enjoying this activity.

Another thing the park allows is pets on a leash throughout the trails.  This is because of the lack of wildlife, and the ability to see for miles around you.  Absolutely a great perk for a national park.

We also discovered that  “backcountry” camping is available.  The trail to the camping area is just over two miles long so it’s a short way to the sites.  This is something I’d love to do one day, to hear and maybe see some of the wildlife as they come out during the night.  And the dunes must be beautiful at dawn.  But not recommended in the summer.

On our second visit, there was a storm rolling in and some pretty interesting clouds rolled in.  I’m not sure how much (if any) rain eventually came down, but the preview was the same as if a huge rainstorm was to follow.

It’s interesting how this place changes its look based on the weather and time of day.  I imagine it’s just a little bit different each day, especially with the dunes moving.  The park service does have to plow parts of the loop road frequently (both days we were there).

I’ve never been in this type of environment, and that feeling of being surrounded by sand and nothing else was pretty amazing.  I could imagine what it must be like to be stranded in a desert with no end in sight.  This national monument is truly like entering another world.

Although we were staying in Las Cruces, which we thought was a better location for our varied interests in the area, Alamagordo is the closest town to the park.  We drove to the town for lunch one day.  It’s a pretty small town, but close to the national monument.

There is a large military presence as it’s adjacent to an Air Force Base, which is the largest employer there.  As we toured the town we discovered both a Cuba AND a Puerto Rico Avenue, and couldn’t resist getting a photo by them.

Then, as a last quick tour, we visited the New Mexico Museum of Space History, reflecting the importance of this area in space research and systems testing.

There is an interesting space park outside with displays of rockets, missiles and rocket engines.  Inside, the museum exhibits include events across New Mexico that advanced exploration and knowledge of space, artifacts including a “moon rock”, scale models of spacefaring craft, spacesuits, a space toilet, a shuttle lander simulator (Hector crashed twice), pioneers of space, satellites, and the SpaceShipOne competition.

There is also a small museum, the Museum & Missile Park, at the entrance to the White Sands Missile Range Army base.  Security is tight, no photos except for narrowly defined areas, show ID, etc.  If it is pointy and rocket powered and explosive, they have tested it here.  

Military ordinance, space craft rocket elements, rocket science, targeting etc.  It all started after WWII when over 300 boxcars full of German V2 missile components were delivered to White Sands. These components as well as the German scientists such as Werner Von Braun and others helped start the U.S. efforts that led to the space program.

And, once again, the desert of New Mexico continued to reveal its contrasts.  We were duly impressed.

~ Brenda

My … what a Very Large Array you have there …

New Mexico is a study in contrasts.  It offers beauty and culture that enchants; massive landscapes, gorgeous sunsets, diverse wildlife, rich cultural history, interesting architecture and beautiful art, and also science that fascinates and challenges: various types of scientific research facilities, military testing, a space shuttle landing strip and the Very Large Array (VLA).

The VLA is located 50 miles from the nearest town, Socorro, and 20 minutes from the village of Magdalena (population 1,200) at 7,000 feet on the plains of San Agustine.

 

Some of you may recall seeing the VLA in the movie “Contact”, starring Jodie Foster, about listening for sounds from alien life in space.  But that is not at all the function of these radio antennas that are spread out throughout this area of the desert.

There is a visitor center that provides lots of information in a compact location.  The visitor center also offers a very informative and interesting 45-minute film about the VLA narrated by Jodie Foster.  And some mind numbing technical videos narrated by several geeky scientists :-).

And the very best part is a short walking tour (pets are allowed!) that brings you up close and personal with one of the antennas and provides even more information.  In fact, when we walked up to the dish, it, along with all of the other radio antennas, began to rotate.  The direction that the antennas faced changed about four times during our short visit!

I’ve included some information from the VLA brochure and website in my comments below.

The walking tour begins by “The Bracewell Radio Sundial”, a large metal sphere mounted atop a slim metal post.  Ronald N. Bracewell made major contributions to developing the mathematical techniques for combining the radio signals received by multiple antennas to produce detailed images of astronomical objects. 

Concrete piers from Bracewell’s Stanford radio telescope serve as markers.  Bracewell invited his peers to sign these, and many of the signatures belong to the early pioneers of radio astronomy.

The Very Large Array (VLA) is one of the world’s premier astronomical radio observatories and consists of 27 radio antennas in a Y-shaped configuration, tuned to a kind of light, radio waves, that is outside the range of visible light.   Each antenna is 82 feet across, over 90 feet in height and weighs over 230 tons.  The signals from each antenna are combined electronically to act as a powerful telescope.

Radio waves reveal previously unseen activities of stars, galaxies, and planets and map the chemical workings of the gas and dust clouds that create them.  Optical telescopes cannot see into these places, because those same clouds block their view.

The VLA is an interfermometer; it operates by multiplying the data from each pair of telescopes together to form interference patterns.  The scientists take these patterns and use a mathematical technique called the Fourier transform to make maps.

Unhindered, radio waves can travel for billions of years across the vastness of space.  They provide the VLA with the data that help construct a timeline of the Universe – from its ancient past to its possible future.  Since it first began watching the skies back in 1976, the VLA has observed nearly 43,000 different cosmic objects.

Discoveries of the VLA have ranged from the surprising detection of water ice on Mercury, the nearest planet to the Sun, to major contributions to our understanding of active regions on the Sun, the physics of superfast “cosmic Jets” of material pouring from the hearts of distant galaxies, the mysterious central region of our own Galaxy, and the atmospheres of other stars.

Every four months, the configuration (separation between the antennas) is changed.   The different separations yield different views that can be combined.  At its widest separation, the merged observations of the VLA have the qualities of a giant telescope with an eye 22 miles across.  There are over 40 miles of railroad tracks and multiple giant transporters used to relocate the antennas across these tracks.

Most of the astronomers who are awarded observing projects on the VLA are located elsewhere around the globe.  On their behalf, a telescope operator controls the VLA as it observes the sky for 5,000 hours every year, both day and night.

In 2012, the VLA was transformed by a new suite of receivers, a supercomputer, and the replacement of its old wiring with nearly 3,000 miles of fiber optics while maintaining the external antennas to save on costs.  At that time the VLA was rededicated in honor of the father of radio astronomy, Karl G. Jansky.  

It’s quite a sight to see all of these antennas in the middle of nowhere and such a great learning experience about the tools scientists use to learn more about the Universe.

~ Brenda

The Birds of Bosque del Apache

Bosque del Apache is Spanish for Forest of the Apache or Apache’s Forest.  Hector and I had never heard of the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge until I read an article about the refuge in Escapees Magazine.  With such an intriguing name we couldn’t pass this place up.

Church, San Antonio, N. M.

The wildlife refuge is home to hundreds of species of mammals, birds, reptiles and fish.  But the biggest draw for us was the fact that tens of thousands of birds including ducks, geese and Sandhill Cranes winter there.  We were especially interested in seeing the cranes.

Sandhill Crane

This used to be the land of the Apaches, and it’s hard to erase their tragic story from our minds as we travel around this area.  But the wildlife refuge is one success story:  the refuge has restored much of the previously depleted habitat, succeeded in attracting wildlife back to the area, and continues to protect the habitat and wildlife.

Ross Geese

As we’ve traveled around the country and discovered wildlife refuges, we’ve really grown to appreciate birds more than ever before.

Ferruginous Hawk

During our visit we camped at the Bosque Birdwatchers RV Park, in San Antonio, New Mexico, which I also read about in Escapees magazine.  

The campground is basically a plain gravel parking lot with hookups, but we had a corner to ourselves, a great view of the mountains and the owner was extremely nice to us.  And the best part is that it’s only ten minutes away from the entrance to the wildlife refuge.

Northern Harrier

The wildlife refuge straddles the Rio Grande, which was once a powerful river.  The river overflowed during heavy rains and sometimes changed its path as the waters rose.  This produced lush vegetation and food sources for wildlife and birds.

Bufflehead

When people inhabited the area they eventually decided that they needed to control the river to protect their livelihood.  So they built dams and irrigation ditches to manage the flow of water and divert it for crops and livestock and to protect their properties.

Eventually, the river became just a stream and much of the plant life was unable to survive the drier environment.  This in turn caused much of the wildlife to leave the area in search of food elsewhere.

Then, in the 1930s the Civilian Conservation Corps began work to restore the floodplains and in 1939, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt established the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge as part of a national system of lands dedicated to wildlife protection.

Staff at the refuge manages water to create wetlands, using gates and ditches to move the water from the river through fields, marshes and ponds, emulating the time when the Rio Grande flooded.  This creates habitats that support both year-round and migratory wildlife once again.

Great Blue Heron

They also grow crops like corn and even mow the cornfields to create a more open area for the birds.  This makes the birds feel safer as they are feeding as it allows them to see if predators such as coyotes are approaching.  All of these efforts have paid off with many birds returning to the area.

Ross Geese at dawn fly out

We witnessed the “shows” that occur each dawn and dusk.  In the morning, the birds are in the water, having spent the night there to protect themselves from predators. When the sun comes up, Snow and Ross’s Geese geese all fly out in unison out to the fields to feed. Shortly thereafter the Sandhill Cranes fly off in smaller groups.

It’s incredible to see and hear thousands of birds taking flight and flying over your head.  In fact, I had an “incident” of bird poop falling on my head one day, fortunately I was wearing a hat (see photo of hat with bird poop above).   And I wore my bird poop hat religiously after that.

In the evening, the reverse occurs.  As the sun goes down, large groups of geese fly towards the water.  You see long strings of them in the sky, and slowly the water fills with birds.  The birds spend the night in the water, then, the next morning, the show begins again as they fly back out to the fields.

Curve-billed Thrasher

Red Tailed Hawk

There is a loop drive in the refuge that allowed us to get a different  perspective of the geese and cranes.  They were all busily feeding throughout the fields of the refuge. And we saw lots of   other birds, especially raptors.

Sandhill Cranes after all the geese flew off

Moonset

We got up before sunrise every day to witness the bird “flyover”.  Although those early mornings meant braving some colder temperatures, it was well worth it.  Even without the birds, this place was just beautiful, especially in the morning and evening light!  And we were fortunate to be there until the day before the full moon.  The moon was spectacular.

Starlings

Northern Harrier

We also joined in one of the ranger programs – a raptor tour.  A ranger and some volunteers, all experienced birders, amazed us with their knowledge and skill at spotting raptors.  Our sightings included Northern Harrier, Red-Tailed Hawks, Ferruginous Hawks, Bald Eagles, and Kestrels.

American Kestrel

Once back on our own, we spotted more raptors plus Blue Heron, more ducks and mule deer.  It’s great to see that the work the refuge is doing has been so successful.

Coopers Hawk

I will never forget this place and the incredible birds.  If you love birds, wildlife, and/or nature, you should plan on visiting this wildlife refuge.  But do wear a hat!

~ Brenda

Merry Christmas!!

We’re now in Tucson, Arizona, having finally reached a warm spot, just in time for Christmas!  It’s a stunning background with enormous Saguaro cacti, more on that soon …

We want to take a moment to celebrate this holiday and thank all of our friends and readers for sharing our journey.  We hope you are having a very Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday season.

These photos are from the “Luminaria Beach Walk” in Elephant Butte State Park by the town of Truth or Consequences (look it up), New Mexico.  I happened to read about this event while we were in the town of San Antonio, New Mexico, about an hour away.

I love luminarias (sometimes called faroles), and this sounded like a unique event and an opportunity to see the largest reservoir in New Mexico.  So we drove down to check it out that evening.

As we approached the state park, we started to see the luminarias, literally thousands of them, lining the park roads and every walkway, impossible to convey by photograph, but just beautiful.

Once at the park, there were food booths (all free … just neighbors sharing holiday cheer), decorated vehicles, hayrides for the kids, and huge bonfires everywhere.  This event benefited the Make a Wish Foundation, and each booth was accepting donations for the organization.  There was lots of great food, the folks here obviously all worked really hard to cook all of the homemade goodies.

We walked around, sampled the great food, watched a beautiful boat parade, went right up to a hot air balloon whose owners were lifting kids up onto the basket for photographs and sampled more food.

The people of Truth or Consequences (referred to as T or C by locals) really know how to put on a great event, impressive.   And it truly exemplified the spirit of Christmas, which is about giving and sharing.

May you experience the joy of giving today and always.

~ Brenda

Bandalier National Monument

We waited for the warmest day (in the 40’s) during our visit to Albuquerque to drive out to the Indian Pueblos again, this time to visit Bandelier National Monument.   Bandelier National Monument is a 33,677 acre U.S. National Monument preserving the homes and territory of the Ancestral Pueblo People. 

Adolph A. Bandelier, a self-taught historian and anthropologist, first visited this area of Frijoles Canyon in 1880, guided by some men from Cochiti Pueblo.  He was so Impressed by the beauty and distinctive cave-room architecture of this site that he made it the setting of his novel, The Delight Makers, which depicted Pueblo life in pre-Spanish times.  Bandelier continued his work in Peru and Bolivia and also studied early Spanish records of the Americas in Seville, Spain.  Bandelier’s pioneering work is one of  the foundations for much of southwestern archaeology.

Archaeological surveys show that there were at least 3,000 sites in Bandelier, but not all were inhabited at the same time.  For generations the Pueblo Indians lived in scattered settlements of one or two families each, but as the population grew, larger groups came together in these settlements. By the mid-1200s, villages had grown to include up to 40 rooms.

For the next 250 years, the settlements continued to grow.  The villages of Tyuoni and Tsankawi and their adjacent dwellings sometimes exceeded 600 rooms. After over 400 years, the land here could not support the people any longer.  These difficulties were compounded by a severe drought and by the mid-1550s, they left this area and settled into new homes along the Rio Grande River.  Even though no written records exist, the memories of the homes where the  ancestors of the Pueblo Indians lived continue in their oral traditions.

The Pueblos of Cochiti, San Felipe, Santo Domingo, San Ildefonso, Santa Clara and Zuni all have strong connections to Bandelier.  Representatives from each of the Pueblos work closely with park staff when decisions affecting their ancestral homelands have to be made.  

The park has only three miles of public road and the rest is an extensive trail system.  We hiked the Main Loop trail, which takes you to the Tyuoni dwellings.  There are dwellings on the valley floor as well as cliff dwellings, and visitors are allowed to enter those that have ladders.  Toward the end of the trail, we saw a number of petroglyphs and some pictographs.

The Main Loop Trail connects to another short trail to Frijoles Canyon and the Alcove House.  This part of the trail is more primitive and because it’s in the shade, it still had snow on it.  And it felt pretty cold on this section of the trail, but it was beautiful with the ice on the river and the snow on the ground.

Several fires in the area deforested the area at the top of the canyon and now floods have become a major problem.  There was lots of evidence of the most recent flood (last September) on our trail in the form of overturned trees, large branches on the ground and other debris.  The state park has a lot of work to do.

Alcove House, an elevated site once home to approximately 25 Ancestral Pueblo people, is now reached by four wooden ladders and a number of stone stairs.  There is a reconstructed kiva, viga holes (for the posts that held the roof up) and niches of former homes in Alcove House, and it’s one of the most spectacular sites in the park.

Unfortunately, the ladders had ice on them so the area was closed at this time.  Such a drag, but we enjoyed the short hike and were able to look up at the impressive site.  We must return during warmer weather, but for now, we have to say goodbye to this beautiful place and head to an area that is just for the birds.

~ Brenda

Shaking Bad

We continued our journey south, hoping to escape this harsher than normal early winter weather, with Albuquerque as our next destination.

A quick tour of Albuquerque reveals that Route 66 runs through the heart of the city.  It’s now called Central Avenue, but its history is still evident.

We had snow on our first day here, fortunately just a dusting, but I’m really getting pretty tired of this cold weather.  And we are really testing Island Girl.

One afternoon before sunset, we took the Sandia Peak Aerial Tram to the top of Sandia Peak.  The gentleman in the entry booth told us that this was the perfect time of day to ride up the mountain since we would get to see “the Milky Way” – the lights of Albuquerque – light up.  It’s 2.7 miles to the top of the 10,378 foot mountain, with beautiful views along the way.

And lo and behold we discovered a ski area on the other side of the mountain with lots of snow on the ground at the top.  Fortunately, we bundled up before taking the tram, since we certainly know how weather can change as you gain altitude.

The visitor center provides information on the flora and fauna on the mountain, hiking trails, and conservation efforts.  With canyons, forests, bear, bobcats, mule deer, eagles, hawks, ravens and lots of other wildlife, this mountain is worth exploring.  But that is for another much warmer time.

There’s a restaurant at the top, and appetizers and wine while watching the sparkle of the city lights against the sunset was much more our speed.  The food was good too, although expensive.  But the view is stunning.  It was getting colder so it was time to get off the mountain. And the ride down was just as scenic.

The next day we visited the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center.  Today, the Pueblo people are located primarily in New Mexico, although at one time their homeland extended in to Colorado and Arizona.  There are 19 Pueblos, with three distinct language groups, five separate languages and many discrete dialects.

The museum exhibits contain historical information about each Pueblo, objects of different mediums including jewelry, textiles, baskets, photographs, prints, paintings, murals and archaeological objects, and an extensive collection of pottery, both contemporary and historical.

There’s an exhibition that reflects upon the human experience behind enacted policies and laws on Pueblo communities by other governments and how they have dealt with all of those challenges.

Another exhibit shows the history of the Albuquerque Indian School, a boarding school which gave Native students a place to integrate cultural diversity while learning trades and skills that could be used in their home communities or within surrounding towns.

And yet another exhibit displays retablos – small folk art paintings depicting religious, historical or everyday events.  These were on wood and were created by renowned santero (carver and painter of images of saints) Charles M. Carrillo.  The Franciscan fathers who missionized New Mexico in the late 16^th and 17^th centuries named each Pueblo for a different Catholic saint.  It’s believed that each of the patron saints was likely chosen for any of several reasons, including proximity to a specific date, the patron or devotion of the founder of the mission or the Franciscan friar, or the usurpation of a Pueblo ceremony.

These retablos depicted the patron saint of each Pueblo and each was bordered by a design from pottery made in that specific Indian Pueblo.  The art is an interesting mix of the Pueblo’s traditions and the imposed Spanish religious traditions.  And they were lovely.

Dances are also important traditions in the various Pueblos and the museum has a different dance every weekend.   We saw three dances: a corn, buffalo and eagle dance all performed by members of the Laguna Pueblo.   The nephew of the drummer/singer/narrator, a tiny dancer, was just beginning to learn these traditions but was out there for every dance.  Cute!

One evening we met our friend Linda who traveled here on business and her friend Marion for dinner.  It’s so nice to meet friends in unexpected places and catch up.  A quick, but fun visit.

More driving around Albuquerque revealed more neon and other interesting signs on Route 66.

The city has become more well known since the show “Breaking Bad” (which we’ve not watched) aired on TV.  But we heard about the show because it has been a big deal in Albuquerque and tours of the city now include where the show was filmed.  Breaking Bad is about a science teacher who’s been diagnosed with cancer, and in desperation and to support his family starts a meth lab.

Definitely the dark side of the city, but Albuquerque has much more to offer, as we discovered.

Our timing, we also discovered, left much to be desired as the temperature dipped to five degrees one night, very unusual for Albuquerque at this time of year.  Fortunately, we were in a park that has full hookups and were able to run the heat at max.  We also have a propane heater that we use while we’re in the coach, with a window cracked open of course.  And we run a small electric heater in our bathroom, since it never seems to get warm enough because it has a skylight and a fan which let in cold air.

After this extreme cold we had a bit of a scare when we realized that our fresh water tank was frozen, and, according to Hector, “water was sprouting from places where it shouldn’t sprout from”.  Oops.  A heater vent goes to the tank compartment, but apparently did not generate enough heat for this level of cold.  And the fresh water tank was near empty, as we’d been drawing our water from it rather than the hose (not sure if it would have helped if the tank had been full or near full).

In any case, Hector placed our little electric heater in the wet bay that next morning.  The temperature was rose to (just) above freezing, so several hours later the tank thawed out and there was no sprouting water.  We were lucky, things froze but nothing broke.

We checked the RV forums (love the forums) and found out that placing a work light in the wet bay helps keep the area warmer, so we bought one and placed it there the rest of our stay.  And continued to enjoy the city.

I, of course, was not amused by this unexpected extra cold weather, and thus OUR “tour” of the Breaking Bad city will be forever known as “Shaking Bad”.

On to the more fun stuff; we visited the Albuquerque Art Museum.  It’s a small museum, but very enjoyable.  Collections include “Albuquerque along the Rio Grande”, “Common Ground:  Art in New Mexico” and “African American Art”.

One of my favorites was a photographic exhibition “Bob Christensen:  Vernacular Architecture of New Mexico 1973-2013″; about 50 black and white photographs that of a variety of buildings such as garages, barns, gas stations and bars.

There is also a fabulous sculpture garden outside the museum.  At $4 per person ($2 for seniors over 65), the Albuquerque Museum is a real bargain.

In the evening we happened upon the Christmas Parade in Corrales (a village now a suburb of Albuquerque).  Santa arrived in the town fire truck.  I love these small town parades, they are such fun.

Last but not least we met some friends from Taos and Albuquerque, Sharon and Norman, for dinner at a great sushi restaurant in town.  I would not have thought that you could find good sushi in Albuquerque, another nice surprise and a really fun evening.

We just loved Albuquerque and hope to return for the Balloon Fiesta next year.

~ Brenda

Thankful for Santa Fe

Our first stop on the way south from Denver was Santa Fe, New Mexico.  It probably would have been smarter to continue driving south and get further away from the harsh winter weather we’d been experiencing but we love this city. And we really wanted to spend Thanksgiving in a place that was special to us.  Santa Fe was that place.

My plan was to eat out.  The restaurants in Santa Fe are fabulous and had very interesting Thanksgiving menus.  But most of the nicer restaurants’ reservations were booked, and Hector really wanted to cook.

So we went shopping to two of our favorite places:  Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods.  Someone at another store had “warned” Hector that the aisles would be clogged at the grocery store not only because everyone was out shopping but also “everyone here knows each other” and they would all be hugging.  And, indeed, there was tons of hugging going on!  And these were not one armed hugs and air kisses either.  They were the long squeezing and stroking kinds of hugs.  It was really fun.

Thanksgiving arrived, and Hector prepared his menu:  braised short ribs, sweet potatoes with pecans and marshmallows, broccoli with pancetta and apples and a beautiful tangerine jalapeno and avocado salad.  It was a lovely dinner and a perfect Thanksgiving!

We spent most of those first couple of days inside Island Girl.  It was still pretty cold, in fact it had snowed in Santa Fe the day before we arrived.  Slowly the weather started to warm up, I never thought I’d be happy with temperatures in the low 40’s!  But the warmer temperatures created a mud pit at our campground.  As we (gingerly) walked out to the car one day, we met Katie, one of our blog’s readers, who was staying at our same campground and was nice enough to introduce herself.  She and her husband have been full timers for ten years!  Impressive!

Thanksgiving weekend is when the “Lighting of Christmas Decoration on the Plaza” takes place in old town Santa Fe and we headed over to see it.  It was a pretty informal event with some nice live music and a warm festive crowd.  The mayor and the city council arrived to kick off the actual lighting of the plaza.

Mercifully, the presentation was brief, and then the plaza became aglitter with a rainbow of lights.  It was really quite beautiful.

Afterwards, we had some tapas and cocktails at a Spanish restaurant nearby.

The next morning we headed to the local Farmers Market in the Railyard District.  This market had a nice mix of produce, meats, breads, salsas and other great foods plus natural skin products and soaps and a small arts fair.

Since we’ve been to Santa Fe quite a few times, we skipped some of the more well-known tourist attractions and chose to just walk around and take in the town.  And we had lunch at one of our favorite restaurants, Cafe Pasqual’s.

The next few days, we explored some areas outside of town.  First, we drove out to the Indian Pueblos (there are 19 total) to visit some cliff dwellings.  The Pueblos each have different rules about visiting and taking photos, so one needs to be mindful.

Puye Cliff Dwellings were home to 1,500 Pueblo Indians who lived, farmed and hunted game there from the 900s to 1580 A.D.  They then moved into the Rio Grande River valley and became the ancestors of today’s Santa Clara people, who now live at Santa Clara Pueblo, 10 miles away.

We opted for the tour of the cliffs and the pueblo on the mesa.  A guide drove us to the top of the mesa with another guide that would climb down the cliffs with us.  The 360 view from the top was stunning, it seems as if you can see forever.

There are many ruins of dwellings on the mesa, some of which have been partially rebuilt.  These were part of a single, multi-storied complex built around a large, central plaza.  The total number of rooms is unknown, but the south part of the complex had 173 rooms on the ground floor and multiple stories in various places.

The central plaza was the place for many summer games.  A kiva, a ceremonial structure, has also been rebuilt, and we climbed a ladder into this structure.

Religious rituals, dances and meetings that involved important decision-making are said to have taken place in the kivas.

The Pueblo Indians also built a reservoir on the mesa to collect water and they even devised a process to filter the water.

There are tons of beautiful pottery shards throughout the area, as these are protected and cannot be taken away from the site.

We finished touring the beautiful mesa top and climbed down the cliff to view some of the cave dwellings carved into the side.  There were some very long ladders connecting the different layers.

The Pueblo Indians carved the stone, called tuff, to form caves.  The caves held heat in the winter and stayed relatively cool in the summer.  Tuff is a soft volcanic rock, which made it easier (relatively speaking) to carve with wood and stone tools.  The Pueblo Indians also built stone dwellings in front of the caves, as the cliff ledges allowed.

Many of the dwellings were two stories high, as holes located where wood beams that held the roofs up indicate.  The first story runs the length of the mesa, and is over one mile long and the second story is about 2,100 feet long.  Paths and stairways were cut in the face of the rock to connect the two levels and allow people to climb to the top of the mesa.  Amazing.

These impressive cliff dwellings were named a National Historic Landmark in 1966.

For a totally different perspective, we drove to the town of Los Alamos.  It was Sunday, and we didn’t have much luck finding a good place for lunch, it seemed all of the restaurants in town were closed.  So we settled for fast food at a Sonic, and as we drove in, we noticed none other than Santa Claus sitting in a Miata next to us.  He was, of course, spreading good cheer.

On to our destination; the Bradbury Science Museum.  Los Alamos was the location of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, established in 1943 as part of the Manhattan project, the nation’s top-secret program to develop the atomic bomb.

The museum contains exhibits for the timeline beginning with the inception of the project and ending with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the end of World War II.   Exhibits include historical documents and artifacts and replicas of the atomic bombs and their components.

What I found most interesting about the story of the Manhattan Project were the stories of the people involved.  The government created a town in an area that previously only had a boys’ ranch, then recruited over 120,000 individuals  including construction workers, plant operators and military personnel.  Most people didn’t know the type of work that would be done in the lab, except that it was “work to help end the war and perhaps all future wars”.   Because it was a secret, Los Alamos was referred to as “Site Y” or “the Hill”.  Birth certificates of babies born in Los Alamos during the war listed their place of birth as PO Box 1663 in Santa Fe.

The museum also contains exhibits about the laboratory’s ongoing science and research.  The laboratory’s central mission is “to ensure the safety, security , and reliability of the U.S. nuclear deterrent while reducing the global threat of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and help our nation respond to significant global threats, making the world a safer place”.  But it also conducts leading-edge research in many areas of science and technology to help solve national problems related to energy, the environment, infrastructure, and health.

When we left the museum, we spotted a very unique Mitsubishi 4-wheel drive van in the parking lot.   Upon closer inspection, we saw lots of writing on it including “Around the World in Ten Years” on the back and “La Cucaracha” on the side.  We waited a bit to see if we could meet these interesting sounding folks but it was getting a bit late and we had a long drive back so we took off.

Once back home, I looked up the website address written on the car. It’s written in Spanish and includes some fascinating snippets of the travels of Pablo and Anna, from Argentina and Spain, who’ve traveled throughout Southern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Central and South America, Mexico, and Canada in their van and are now in the thirteenth year of their journey.  I sent them a message to see if we might meet and Carlos sent back a very nice response stating that they were on their way to visit Florida and Puerto Rico and perhaps we would cross paths another time.  They’ve published two books, their first has been translated into English and is on the home page of their website.

We drove through Bandelier National Monument to scope it out as we intended to return another day.  It’s in a beautiful setting surrounded by mountains.   

Another day we drove down the Turquoise Trail, a National Scenic Byway that connects Santa Fe to Albuquerque.  In the town of Cerrillos, we stopped in at the Casa Grande Trading Post, a 28 room adobe building that houses a gift shop and a mining museum.

The proprietors, Todd and Patricia Brown are the registered claim holders of the Little Chalchihuitl Turquoise mine in the nearby hills.   The Cerrillos mining district is home to some of the oldest and most substantial turquoise working in North America.

For a mere $2 each, we toured the museum which contains turquoise of all kinds, rocks and minerals, antique bottles, insulators and barbwire, local history displays, and dioramas.  I can truly state that I’ve never seen anything like it.  And what’s most impressive about this extensive collection is how well they have organized it.

Afterwards we stopped briefly in the town of Madrid (pronounced MA drid, instead of Ma DRID), another cute town that is an artists’ haven. 

Our plan to return to the Pueblos to see more cliff dwellings was not to be, the weather didn’t cooperate.  Another cold front was on its way, and Santa Fe’s temperatures were going to dip into the single digits.  So we decided to head a little further south to Albuquerque.  Albuquerque is also 2,000 feet lower than Santa Fe so it’s generally about ten degrees or so warmer.

And even though we cut our stay in Santa Fe short, we were thankful for having experienced this beautiful city and the surrounding high desert of New Mexico so rich with art and history once again.

~ Brenda

Coming Full Circle

Angel on Halloween

Reaching Denver was kind of surreal, as this was the place we left from just over a year ago, and it was also our home for the past eleven years.

Our time here was a bit hectic, with visits to doctors and to the dentist for the humans (one root canal for Hector), medical tests, a visit to the vet and a vaccine for Angel, a visit to Freightliner and the RV interior shop for Island Girl, and a visit to the Subaru dealer for our toad.   All of us checked out fine except for Island Girl who had leaking wheel seals.  More on that in our next post.

The fun part of our visit was getting together with friends and family.   There wasn’t enough time to see everyone that we wanted to see, but we made the best of it.  We enjoyed several lovely dinners hosted by dear friends, had a gathering of the wine tasting group we were part of when we lived here, saw work colleagues from when we did that working thing, and generally had a wonderful time catching up with friends.

We stayed with Hector’s cousin Roy and his wife Cindy at their lovely house while Island Girl was in the shop, which made life a lot easier.  But we got homesick for Island Girl!  She is such a cozy little home.

When we got Island Girl back, we moved to Cherry Creek State Park while waiting for one last medical appointment.  This park is where we stayed the first couple of weeks that we moved into Island Girl, so it was another surreal experience.  But the park is beautiful and while there we saw deer, eagles, hawks, and one wandering coyote.

Once we were ready to leave, we got snowed in!  This was a big test for Island Girl, with one 9 degree night (BRRR!) and she did well considering the circumstances.  Not the kind of weather we want to deal with on a regular basis, though.

The storm that came through Denver decided to head south on the exact same route that we planned to take to New Mexico, so we had to wait a few more days for the weather to improve on the roads and at our destination, all of which got snow.

The day we left was clear and beautiful, and we had a great sendoff with more deer and eagles at Cherry Creek State Park.

Hector had a big smile on his face as we drove away heading to the next phase of our journey.  And we followed the birds south for the winter.

~ Brenda

I Like Ike … Abilene, Kansas

“The hope of the world is that wisdom can arrest conflict between brothers.  I believe that war is the deadly harvest of arrogant and unreasoning minds.”  D. D. Eisenhower 

No, this is not a political post.  It’s just that we really enjoy visiting the presidential libraries/museums.  And we realized that Abilene Kansas, where the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library is located, was on our way from Kansas City to Denver.  This was the fifth presidential library we’ve visited.

The libraries and museums provide a unique insight into the presidents’ personal and political lives, and into the years that they served.

One of the things I enjoy is that each presidential library is different, since the presidents (except for John F. Kennedy) were personally involved in developing them.   Each president’s character is etched into their library.

The Dwight D. Eisenhower Museum itself is located on the original site of President Eisenhower’s childhood home.   The home and land were donated to the Eisenhower Foundation, which maintained it until it was given to the Federal Government in 1966.

The Presidential Library site includes the boyhood home, the library, the museum, and the Place of Meditation.

The Place of Meditation – This chapel is the final resting place of President Eisenhower, his wife, Mamie, and their first-born son, Doud Dwight, who died at the age of three from scarlet fever.

The meditation space is where, according to President Eisenhower’s wishes, it is hoped that visitors would reflect upon the ideals that made this a great nation and pledge themselves again to continued loyalty to those ideals.

The Boyhood Home – President Eisenhower lived in this (then) six-bedroom house with his parents, David and Ida, and five brothers from 1898 until he enrolled in the United States Military Academy in 1909.

Although President Eisenhower was not born In Abilene, the years he spent here were amongst the most important in his life.  His father moved to Denison, Texas where he worked cleaning train engines for a living after having lost his business, but moved back to Abilene so he could take a better job at his brother-in-law’s creamery.

From this modest upbringing, the six brothers went on to successful careers: a bank vice-president, a lawyer, a pharmacist, an electrical engineer, a university president, and of course, President of the United States.

The Museum – When touring the museum, what struck us most was the emphasis on World War II.  More than half of the museum is dedicated to detailing the situation in the various regions of the world just prior to the war and to the events that led to the war.

This reflects Eisenhower’s distinguished military career, and his important role in the D-Day invasion and the eventual victory in the Europe.

Later we learned that after his Presidency ended, Eisenhower preferred to be addressed as General rather than President.

And of course, as a two term President from 1952 to 1960, his accomplishments were many.

Amongst them, he; signed civil rights legislation in 1957 and 1960 to protect the right to vote, contributed to the end of McCarthyism by openly invoking the modern expanded version of executive privilege,  continued New Deal agencies and expanded Social Security, launched the Interstate Highway System, created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), signed the National Defense Education Act providing loans for college students and funds to encourage young people to enter teaching careers and encouraged peaceful use of nuclear power via amendments to the Atomic Energy Act.

And, as always, the First Lady, Mamie Doud Eisenhower, was a fascinating woman in her own right.  She moved to various army posts in the United States and around the world during his military career and was known as a gracious and popular First Lady.  From 1952-1961, she appeared in Gallup Poll’s list of the “Ten Most Admired Women in America”.

And because of his strong military background, General Eisenhower was an advocate for peace.  In his 1961 farewell address to the nation, Eisenhower expressed his concerns about future dangers of massive military spending, especially deficit spending, and coined the term “military-industrial complex”.

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”  Farewell Radio and Television Address to the American People, 1/17/61

“Having established as our goals a lasting world peace with justice and the security of freedom on this earth, we must be prepared to make whatever sacrifices are demanded as we pursue this path to its end.”  Remarks at the Fort Pitt Chapter, Association of the United States Army May 31, 1961

On reflection of his eventful life, General Eisenhower declared:  “The proudest thing I can claim is that I am from Abilene.”

A fascinating man.

~ Brenda

A Weekend in Kansas City

We stopped in Kansas City to visit our friend Theresa once again.  We had a great time last year when we stopped here, and she had some fun plans for us this time as well.

Our first stop was the Kansas City Farmers Market.  This continues to be one of the best farmers markets we’ve been to, although due to the lateness of the season, it was somewhat smaller than during our last visit here.  But the spice guy was still there and Hector stocked up on some fun spices.

There are also various ethnic eateries surrounding the market, and we had some yummy Middle Eastern food for lunch.

Then we went for a drive in the surrounding country.  We stopped at a The Farmer’s House Farm Market in Weston.  Proceeds from The Farmer’s House Farm Market are used to expand programs at The Farmer’s House, a non-profit whose mission is to offer an opportunity for youth and adults with developmental disabilities to learn practical vocational skills in a community integrated hands on work environment.

The market has special activities for the fall, and there were lots of kiddos around.  As for us big kids, we enjoyed the cut-outs and the costumes.

Weston Bend State Park just outside the city has various easy but pretty hikes throughout the park.  We hiked on a trail that had views of the Missouri River and lots of trees.  Even though the fall colors hadn’t reached their peak yet, it was still a really beautiful hike.

We also visited Pirtle Winery, one of many wineries in the state.  Many of Missouri’s wines are sweet, and we prefer drier wines, but we did like a few of these wines.  The blueberry wine, while pretty sweet, was actually quite good with extra sharp cheddar cheese from Vermont.

We headed back to town to visit Oklahoma Joe’s once again.  This restaurant is located in a gas station – yes a working gas station – and is fabulous.  Anthony Bourdain listed Oklahoma Joe’s as one of “thirteen places to eat before you die.”  Check.

Angel had a short visit at one of the local dog parks and then we drove over to an overlook that features The Scout, a famous statue that depicts a Sioux Indian on horseback surveying the landscape.  The statue was dedicated in 1922 as a permanent memorial to local Indian tribes.  And there’s a lovely view of downtown from the statue.

The next day was our 35^th wedding anniversary and we planned a quiet dinner so we could get an early start the following morning on our westward drive.

So Hector and I went out to a romantic dinner that evening to celebrate our anniversary.  It’s been a wonderful and happy 35 years!  And this extraordinary journey is the best anniversary gift we could wish for.

And it was great to see our dear friend Theresa again and enjoy her hospitality in fun and beautiful Kansas City once again.

~ Brenda

The Gateway to the West

Continuing our westward drive, we made an overnight stop in St. Louis, which was about halfway between Louisville and Kansas City,  where we were headed next to visit a friend.

This was our first casino overnighter, and we chose the Casino Queen because it was centrally located and accessible to a little touring and dining nearby.   I was impressed when a security person immediately drove over to check us out.  He was very courteous and directed us to the specific area where we should park.  It was a gravel lot, level, and fairly large.  There was one other RV and one truck already in the lot in the early afternoon when we arrived.

It was Hector’s birthday and we planned to visit the Gateway Arch and go out to a nice dinner in the evening.  We settled in and walked Angel on a big grassy field behind the gravel parking lot.

Next we headed over to the Arch, which I’d never seen.  It’s an impressive and lovely symbol of the role of the city of St. Louis in the westward expansion of the United States.

The Gateway Arch is the centerpiece of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, which is a memorial to Thomas Jefferson, who bought the Louisiana Territory in the Louisiana Purchase and made westward expansion possible.

The Memorial encompasses a total of 91 acres, which includes the Old Courthouse, Luther Ely Smith Square and some surrounding streets (managed as easements).  The 62 acres that include the Gateway Arch structure and the surrounding landscape were designated a National Historic Landmark in 1987.

The Arch itself is made of steel and concrete, stands 630 feet high (63 stories) with a span of 630 feet at ground level between the outer sides of the legs, and weighs 17,246 tons.  It’s really quite beautiful.  And the story of its construction is also fascinating.

The Museum of Westward Expansion, located inside the Arch, preserves some of the rarest artifacts from the days of Lewis and Clark.  The exhibits explore the world of the American Indians and the 19^th century pioneers who helped shape the history of the American West.  The museum was fascinating although it closed before we were able to get through it.  Definitely worth a longer visit.

We returned to our temporary “campsite” to change, and gave Angel her second walk on the nice grassy area behind us.   There is an RV campground (owned by the Casino) on the other side of the field, but it  was closed for the season.  But we still enjoyed the field.  So far, I was pretty happy with our free overnight.

The birthday celebration continued at a barbecue restaurant that evening.  The restaurant had the second World Series game on.  It was fun to see a small crowd of St. Louis fans rooting for their team, who won that game (but ultimately not the Series).

The birthday boy had his fill of barbecue and free dessert and we headed back to Island Girl.  A couple of other RV’s and trucks were camped for the night.  Both the lot and the field were (very) brightly lit, so Angel got an evening walk on the grass.  We’d planned to have a drink at the casino (we don’t really gamble), to patronize the place offering us a free night, which is a “rule” we normally follow.  But, alas, we were too tired and pooped out.  So, I’m hoping this nice review of our overnight at the Casino Queen will slightly make up for that 🙂

The following day, we continued to head west, following the footsteps of many before us.

~ Brenda