Tuesday – October 4
Michael – its morning and I’m glad this is not a travel day. I slept in until almost 7:00 am today and the first cup of coffee tasted soooo good. Its in the 50’s outside so I fired up our electric fireplace which soon took the chill off the living room. I also decided that today is probably a jeans day and not a shorts day. So many decisions.
I had a slice of cranberry bread with my coffee and then while Vicky attended the weekly Tuesday Skyway meeting, I wandered over to the adjacent Billy the Kid Museum to pay our camping bill ($30 per night for two nights) and look around. The museum is very interesting, and I will need to go back to take it all in. William Bonney was something of a character but very short. It is cool to see a lot of the tools, and furnishings of that era. Then I went across the road to the Daily Grind Restaurant and Coffee Bar where I had eggs, bacon, potatoes, toast and coffee. Very good. I brought some back for Vicky.
There are a few things we want to accomplish today: clean the windows, measure the outside area where we intend to create a cat condo, check out Fort Sumner a bit, visit Walgreens to get some personal supplies that failed to make it into the rig, and so forth. It is supposed to rain later and I will be interested to see if our leak repair keeps water out of the storage bay. We had thought of traveling to Santa Rosa (30 miles down the pike) to visit the Route 66 Auto Museum there, but that may need to wait for another day.
It did rain for a while overnight. Quite a nice shower for a while. Sleeping in a slide out means that the roof is only two feet over your head, and you really hear the pitter patter of the drops. I was glad for the rain because it washed off our solar panel.
Wednesday – October 5
Michael – not all travel days are fun. We have learned to block Ziva’s favorite hiding spot so that it only takes five minutes to corral her instead of half an hour. With the cats packed, we did the departure checklist and were able to hit the road around 9:45 am. Vicky had several meetings to work, so we reduced our speed a bit to cope with the roly-poly roads. Because of our size, getting into and out of fueling stops can be a challenge. We can’t always pull into the place with the cheapest diesel. At one such stop; we pulled in behind what I am guessing was a well drilling truck and then we sat there. The driver disappeared inside the building. So we sat. And then we sat. And then we sat some more. I went inside, but the lady there had no idea who or where he was. It was a dedicated diesel island and while it was bidirectional, the pump on the side away from the well digging truck was bordered by one colossal pot hole. It was so big, that the management had put cones and safety tape around it.
After getting tired of sitting, I backed up the rig and pulled around the station building to come at the pump island from the other side. I figured I had just enough room to avoid the pothole. That worked well except for the fact that the pickup truck accompanying the now refilled well digging truck was blocking the path. These guys were incredibly insensitive to how their actions affected other people. Anyway, we got diesel – although the pump had an automatic cut off at $100) and continued on our way.
It rained on and off for much of the trip and when we reached Farmington, there was a steady and chilling shower falling. Vicky and I got set up in record time. Once inside, I was about to strip down and take a shower when Vicky mentioned that there was no water. Well, back out into the rain and sure enough, I had failed to set the Y connector to on. Once inside, I then commenced to track down the reason that none of our outlets were working. I have installed a large, 3000K inverter that allows us to power the entire RV where connected to shore power or not. Since we were connected to shore power I could not understand what the problem was. We had power for the microwave and fireplace, but not a singe outlet was working. Then it dawned on me, they are all CGFI and there is usually one outlet with a breaker in it. So we hunted for that outlet, found it, reset the breaker and had power. Yeah! So I stripped down to take a shower and then realized that I had not turned on the propane. I could either go out into the rain stark naked or Vicky would have to turn on the gas, something she has never done before. Being the trooper that she is, Vic went outside and soon the gas was flowing. This just goes to show that when you hurry, you end up taking more time than ever to get stuff done.
Thursday – October 6
Michael – Once again out onto the movie landscape that is New Mexico. Today Vic and I got up and almost immediately departed for the Four Corners Monument. Some say that the site is under whelming, and I can see why some people would say that. But I liked it. It is plain and simple. It depicts where four states of the union connect to each other. No other place does that. The monument is administrated by the Navaho Nation, and they charge eight bock for each person to come in and stand on the marker – which as we have already established is not where the actual four corners site is. Technology today tells us that the states touch about 1000 feet to the west of the marker. Ah well.
The perimeter of the site is given over to smallish vending booths. What I suppose were Navaho Indians manned the booths selling everything from tee shirts to refrigerator magnets, to hand-made handcrafts. Sorry, that sounded redundant. We did not buy anything, but I marveled at some of the jewelry. I tried to keep Vicky away so she would not get any ideas.
I peed at Four Corners. I just had to go. The Navaho anticipated this and provided a port-a-potty. A clean one. We shot a bunch of pictures of each other, the “X-marks-the-spot” monument, some other people who wondered why I was shooting them, and then we left.
Then some more driving through the stark and unrelenting desert. The distances are so great out here that one just knows to get to the store for milk is going to take all morning. We picked up diesel on our way out, it is way expensive here in the Land of Enchantment. On our way back we stopped in the village of Shiprock (named for the unique and truly amazing rock outcropping jutting out of the earth about 12 miles out of town) at a McDonalds for lunch. It is comforting to know that where ever you go, a Big Mac tastes like a Big Mac in this country.
We jumped onto 491 and headed south out of Shiprock to get close to the Shiprock monument. It is a Navaho shrine and sacred site, so we honored their request not to drive up to it and observed it from afar. I must say that I was enchanted. It is one very impressive rock formation. I realized after taking some pictures, that getting close would not have improved the images. In fact, you can only frame the whole thing from several miles away. See Shiprock was well worth the journey.
I have to admit that I like the desert, but I like the desert around Phoenix Arizona better. Not just because of the cactus, but somehow it has more geological interest for me. I could live there – I’m not so sure I could live here.
Monday - October 10
Michael -
Traveling from Farmington in New Mexico to Durango, CO was easy peasy. We pulled out around 10:30 and took US 550 straight north, arriving just before noon. We had expected to stop for a hour in Aztec to visit the Aztec ruins there, but ended up in the wrong turn lane and so just continued to Durango. We will go back sometime this week to see the ruins.
The Westerly RV campground is just outside of Durango and is quite nice if a bit small. But there are trees, roving cats (which are of significant interest to our cats) and patches of grass. Each site has a rickety picnic table and full hookups. We are kind of close to our neighbors, but they all seem friendly. Vicky’s sister and her husband (Rhonda and Lynn) arrived about an hour after we did and so we had a nice reunion. Sat outside in the very brisk air drinking adult beverages and catching up. They have been traveling through Alaska, Canada and the upper United States for the past six months and have quite a few tales to tell.
While we were out sitting, we saw the Durango narrow gauge Railroad train pass by. This is something both Vicky and I want to do at some point this week. The have both open air and typical railroad cars. The temperature here is a coolish 70 degrees at its peak (its 41 as I write this Monday morning) so a closed car may be the way to go. We are looking into taking a one-way trip to Silverton and then Lynn and Rhonda will pick us up. On Friday there is a balloon festival here and all of us intend to check that out. More to come.
Our wireless connectivity is broken here. I suspect we are in a T-Mobile dead zone despite what their coverage map says. Our cell router is connecting to AT&T – which is very weird because we have a T-Mobile data plan and a T-Mobile SIM in the router – and the speed is atrocious. The campground WiFi is typical which is to say okay for normal usage but bad for streaming TV. We do have our backup AT&T hotspot to fall back on. Vicky will need that to perform the work she has committed to doing this week.
Last evening the four of us went out to dinner at James Ranch Grill. It is a working ranch which has a market and restaurant business. The beef and much of the other food is raised on the ranch. We had hamburgers and French fries. Very good stuff. I could not finish mine – not so unusual these days – but got through most of it.