Rick & Carol's Journey (DL)

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This installment covers Saturday (October 6) through Tuesday (October 16)

On Saturday we toured downtown Santa Fe. We saw a museum in the Palace of the Governors (which was a little disappointing) and visited the Museum of Fine Arts. There are a lot of Native American vendors in front of the Palace of the Governors, but they are higher priced than the roadside ones in Utah and Colorado.

On Sunday we went to Museum Hill and visited the International Folk Art Museum and the Museum of Native American Art. The first features a large private collection of folk art that was collected all over the world. The highlight of the Native American museum is a series of exhibits about the early Indians in New Mexico. There are a lot of short films of modern Native Americans talking about the oral history of their tribes and their experiences growing up in the Indian culture. No photos were allowed in any of the Santa Fe museums.

Monday was a rest and recuperate day. In the morning, Carol took the car and went shopping and got her hair cut while I researched health insurance on the Internet. In the afternoon we went to the local shopping center where we had an early dinner at Applebee’s and I got an unexpectedly short haircut.

On Tuesday we drove to Carlsbad, New Mexico. Much of the day was flat or rolling desert landscape with a straight road. At various points I was able to see the road from 10-11 miles ahead. We arrived in Carlsbad about 3:30 and departed soon after in the car for the 5:00 p.m. ranger program at Carlsbad Caverns (25 miles south) on the evening flight of the New Mexican free-tail bats. The ranger (a native New Zealander) talked for about half an hour, then answered questions for another hour before the bats finally flew at about 6:40. The bats flew continuously up out of the cavern, then formed into large groups and flew off into the distance for their evening of eating moths. The bats ultimately migrate south for the winter, and by November the evening flights will stop until next May. No photos are allowed of the bat flights.

On Wednesday we drove back to the caverns, where we took the self-guided Natural Entrance Tour, a mile-plus walk down a series of deep switchbacks which terminates about 750 feet underground. We then connected with the mile-plus Big Room Tour, which goes around the perimeter of a 65,000 square foot room the size of 14 football fields. The caverns were not crowded, and the pace was more leisurely than on what I remember of previous ranger-guided tours.







On Thursday we made a short trip to Fort Davis, TX, where we visited the Fort Davis National Historic Site. Fort Davis was used both before and after the Civil War to provide protection to the wagon trails to California. The reason we stopped here – the middle of nowhere – is to take a tour tomorrow of McDonald Observatory.




On Friday morning we drove to McDonald Observatory (operated by the University of Texas) and saw a program on the sun, then toured the observatory’s two largest telescopes, one of which is the fourth largest in the world. After lunch in the observatory café, we drove the remainder of a 74-mile scenic loop through the Davis mountains. In the late afternoon we returned to the observatory for their evening program. The evening started with a presentation on the planets in our solar system. This was followed by a combination of an outside program on the constellations, and the opportunity to look through six telescopes at various celestial features. These included the Andromeda galaxy, Jupiter, a nebula where stars are being formed, a red star that is in the last stages of life, and a nebula with thousands of old stars. This program had been recommended to us by one of the other couples on our caravan, and was well worth the two-day detour to Fort Davis.





On Saturday we drove to Big Bend National Park in extreme southwest Texas. The temperature hit 103 in the afternoon, and we did nothing today but try (unsuccessfully) to stay cool.

On Sunday we drove the car throughout the Big Bend National Park. We visited the Chisos Basin, surrounded by the Chisos Mountains which are wholly contained in the park, ate lunch at the Chisos Basin Lodge, walked a couple of very short trails – including one to the Window, one to Mule Ears, one to an abandoned stone house, and one down to the Rio Grande River – and got a lot of pictures of the colorful mountains.









Monday and Tuesday were the first two days of our four-day sprint home. On Tuesday we drove interstate loops around both San Antonio and Houston. There was a lot of construction in the Houston area, with narrow lanes, and the drive was very harrowing. When we arrived at the campground, we discovered that our passenger side outside rear tire was flat. We never heard a blow-out, presumably it occurred on the trip through/around Houston. After calling a number of local tire dealers, the best we were able to find is a used tire which we are having installed first thing in the morning.

Wednesday and Thursday, which haven’t happened yet, will take us on I-10 from Beaumont Texas, home to Tallahassee. Hopefully today’s flat tire is the last of our “adventures.”

This is the last installment for this summer’s trip. At this time, we are planning an Alaska trip next summer, and will post again when that trip begins.

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This installment covers Thursday (September 27) through Friday (October 5).

On Thursday we drove from Flagstaff to Monument Valley. There was no real sightseeing en route – other than some new views of rocks. After arrival at Gouldings Campground in Monument Valley, we caught a ride with Dwayne and Carolyn into the Monument Valley Visitor Center where we toured the exhibit on Navajo Code Talkers, the small museum, and visited the gift shop. On our return to the campground, we stopped at Navajo Village, a collection of small roadside shops. This evening the tail-enders treated us to a sloppy Joe dinner, followed by a short talent show.

On Friday our group boarded three large truck-mounted tour vehicles and did an all-day tour of Monument Valley. About a third of the tour was on roads open to single-family vehicles, the remainder was on 4-wheel drive roads open only to tour vehicles. In the morning we saw several small cliff dwellings, and drove beside a number of mesas. At lunchtime, our drivers cooked hamburgers in a remote valley. In the afternoon we stopped for a short visit to the visitor center, then drove into the park of the park that has a lot of tower-type monuments and a fair number of arches. We also stopped to tour a small Hogan where a 91-year old Navajo woman was carding wool, spinning thread, and weaving rugs. The trip was very dusty, and we all returned to the campground covered in fine red dirt.










Saturday was our final group travel day, from Monument Valley to Durango, with a stop at Four Corners, where Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado meet at a single point. It was very windy today – gusts were forecast to be 55 mph. Just before we arrived at Four Corners, our awning started to bounce in the wind. We limped into Four Corners, where we reset the awning. We then had our picture taken with Carol in two states and me in two others, kissing. This started a trend, and several couples who had already had their pictures taken came back and took one kissing. We did not shop at any of the Navajo shops, but did buy fry bread tacos for lunch. About 20 miles after leaving Four Corners, the awning began to bounce again. This time we pulled off the road and, with help from Joe Frey (who earlier had completely lost his awning to the wind), duct taped the arms and the ends to prevent further damage.



Sunday was an all-day tour of Mesa Verde. Our group took four 11-passenger vans to the park, which is about an hour and a half drive from the campground. In the morning we toured several sites of early dwellings – starting with pit houses and working up to an overview of the famous cliff dwellings. After a picnic lunch, we toured the park’s museum and took a steep, but paved, self-guided trail down to one set of cliff dwellings called Spruce Tree House. The tour of the park ended with a ranger-escorted tour of Cliff House, where we went down stone steps to the pueblo. Leaving the pueblo involved climbing up three flights of ladders. We had seen Mesa Verde with our kids in 1991, but this was our first climb down to Cliff House.






On Saturday group rode the Durango-Silverton railway, which travels about 55 miles through some outstanding mountain scenery. Because we have taken this trip twice before, however, we took very few photos. After a couple of hours for lunch and shopping in Silverton – an old mining town which now exists solely to sell things to folks who take the Durango-Silverton train – we returned to Durango by bus. In the evening we had our farewell dinner in downtown Durango at the historic Statler Hotel.

After coffee and donuts in the campground on Tuesday morning, we drove from Durango to Taos. The route took us over the mountains, and at 10,500 feet we hit the highest point (in the RV) of our trip. We are temporarily burned out from sightseeing, so we took advantage of a couple of slow days in Taos. On Wednesday morning we toured downtown Taos where we continued shopping for gifts and souvenirs. On Thursday morning we did errands, including laundry, shopping, and vacuuming and cleaning the inside of the coach. Both afternoons we relaxed in the RV and in the evenings we watched some television.

On Friday we drove from Taos to Santa Fe. En route we detoured to Los Alamos where we visited a science museum about the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The museum covers everything from the development of the atomic bomb to current day missions such as ensuring (without weapons testing) the reliability of our nuclear arsenal, developing strategies for carbon capture, and performing sophisticated computer modeling. Our campground in Santa Fe has good Internet access, so I will update the blog this evening. The next stops (after 4 nights here) will be Carlsbad Caverns and Big Bend National Park in remote SW Texas. The next update will likely be over a week away.