Santa Fe and Taos

Caution - heavy weaving content ahead.

I chose this RV Park due to its proximity to the heart of Santa Fe. Its an older park set behind adobe walls with plenty of trees but most of the sites are close together (ours is a little better than most but we pay for that with the noise of being close to the front entrance on a very busy road - think Kingsway or King George Blvd). The utilities are OK, except the bandwith of the wifi leaves a little to be desired, and the laundry/restroom building is older and small. It does have the unique feature of a solar drying area - two long clothes lines complete with close pegs set behind the laundry room. But on Thursday morning we took advantage of its greatest asset, a bus stop on a direct route to downtown right out the entrance. The $1.00 day pass took us into the heart of old Santa Fe in about 20 minutes and we spent the next five or so hours on foot exploring the historic centre of town,

touring the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, and poking in and out of some of the hundreds of galleries in the downtown and along Canyon Rd.

There were way too many to explore so we just went in to those that seemed to interest us (or had a welcoming dog at the entrance). Found one currently featuring the work of three weavers, one showing transparencies, one primarily rugs (beautifully ikat dyed) and one tapestries. There were a lot of galleries and shops featuring American Indian Art, both local and further afield, contemporary and historical pieces. Prices were astronomical.
We also stopped by the State Capitol building

and then made our way over to the Railyard district for a late lunch/early supper at a Mexican restaurant (it seemed the most appropriate choice) and then caught the bus back to Trailer Ranch about 5pm. The day was sunny with some high clouds, temperatures in the mid to high 60's but there was a chilly wind at times but that probably worked to our advantage for a day spent on foot in an urban environment.

Friday we awoke to clouds and showers. We packed away the damp picnic shelter and took off for the High Road to Taos. Our first stop was in Espanola at the Espanola Valley Fiber Arts Center.

In a somewhat down at the mouth setting this storefront hosts a retail outlet for supplies and consignments for the over 200 members (both local and some out of state we were told) to sell their works and both new and donated yarns and fiber. It also has two large rooms full of looms and associated equipment for members to use and to host workshops. It was quiet when we visited and cold, but at least the rain had stopped. I picked up a skein of local 2 ply tapestry yarn nature dyed in cochineal and a locally made small tapestry beater.

By now the showers had given way to broken clouds and we continued up the road in increasing elevation to the town of Taos, a very crunchy granola feel here and the home of Kit Carson. A smaller version of Santa Fe with many galleries and a good yarn shop. Part way up the road to the Taos ski village we came to the bend in the road know as Arroyo Secco. Here I wanted to visit Weaving Southwest.

This is both a studio and a retail space for yarn and a few other supplies and a gallery and retail store for some gorgeous rugs by local weavers. We were given good information about the weavers and found some rugs by one of the weavers who had been featured in the show in the Marigold Gallery we visited yesterday in Santa Fe. We were in the sun here, but it was cool with a cold wind and the owner had the wood stove burning to chase away the chill.

Back to Taos and them up and down the back side of the scenic byway High Road to Taos with many lovely glimpses of the snow covered ski runs on the surrounding mountains to the town of Chimayo which has a number of fibre related stops but as the day was getting long I only made Pete stop at one, Ortega's Weaving Studio.

This establishment has been in business for 8 generations and has both a studio with a number of looms (primarily 2 harness counterbalance) and a large retail shop with a huge number of their weaving products as well as some jewellery and pottery. Next door they have a galleria with more touristy offerings that seemed to have a greater interest for a group of Japanese visitors.

From Chimayo we headed back to Santa Fe past at least four huge casinos (all native run one assumes)  and did our grocery shopping before returning home to the Trailer Ranch at about 6:00pm.

After we leave here I had originally planned to head to Northwestern NM and then up into Colorado to a Passport America park in Ute, near Durango but the weather forecast with a possibility of 6 inches of snow in the San Juan Mts in Colorado has suggested a different option so from here we will head back to Arizona to the Navajo country along Hwy 191 to a campground near the Canyon de Chelly National Park and then head north into Utah from there (hopefully with a side trip to the Four Corners Monument). Once in Utah we will start our visits to the National Parks: Arches, Bryce Canyon, Zion, the Grand Canyon and any others that get in our way. We are expecting to have little or no cellular service for most of the next ten days so wish us well with the weather and see you on the other side.

New Mexico

Our travel day was long and took us from the high country around Flagstaff through the dusty towns of Winslow (complete with the lyrics from the Eagles song “Standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona, such a fine sight to see” running through my head), and Holbrook (where we were unable to find a postcard of the town to send to the young Holbrooks back home), into the “mountain” community of Alpine, AZ before passing over into the state of New Mexico. We then began a long slow descent back to the desert landscape and finally arrived at our campsite at City of Rocks State Park about 6:00pm (well actually 7:00pm because it turns out New Mexico does have daylight savings time. I had booked an electric campsite when we did not know what our situation was with the propane which meant we ended up in a very ordinary pull-through site (albeit very well landscaped and with a very nice ramada over the picnic table)

rather than one of the very private, unique dry sites set amongst the Stonehenge like rock formations.

We took a long walk around the park in the morning and stopped into the well appointed Visitors’ Centre. Our first impression of New Mexico State Parks was very favourable and the fact that the price for a site with water and electric was $14 made it all the better.

We hit the road again on a rather boring route that took us though Las Cruces but our main stop for the day was reached at about 1:00pm at the White Sands National Monument. This is truly a remarkable and awesome sight.

On the 16 mile loop drive there is a nature boardwalk that allows you to marvel at the plants that survive and thrive in this brutal environment

 and then ample parking and picnic spots with shaded tables to protect you from wind and sun that allow you to get out and walk (or for the younger, more hardy types slide down the dunes on plastic saucers or sleds).

We walked to the top of a dune, but, no, we did not slide down.

From there it was a short drive to Oliver Lee State Park where we had our choice of a number of well spaced campsites and chose a dry site ($10.00) and enjoyed a warm evening campfire and a spectacular sunset. Again a very favourable impression of NM State Parks.

 

On Wednesday morning we drove north and were surprised to find vineyards and Pistachio tree orchards. We reached our destination of Santa Fe in the early afternoon, settled into our site at Trailer Ranch RV Park and attended to housekeeping and minor trailer repairs while trying to get the flakey RV Park wifi to function well enough to blog and download ebooks.

Arizona continued

After leaving our new friends at Queen Valley,

we restocked for gas and groceries and made our way around Phoenix and up the I-17 heading to Sedona. It was Saturday morning and it seemed like everyone in Phoenix was going our way for the weekend. Even before we came to the Village of Oak Creek traffic ground to a crawl but at least we had the beautiful view of the red rocks to entertain us as we moved slowly from one round about to another.
At least the slow travel speeds made it easy to get our first glimpses and orientation to Sedona as we passed through. We eventually made our way up the very scenic and twisty Hwy 89 through the Oak Creek canyon to our campsite for the next two nights at the National Forest Cave Springs campsite. The full sign was out so it was a good thing we had reservations (only a few sites are reservable). On the Saturday the campground was teeming with families, mostly tenting, on a weekend getaway from Phoenix. This campground had a more familiar feel, lots of trees around the sites and lots of kids running around, if felt like a BC Parks in July. We even had our first campfire of the trip; a very small bundle of firewood for $7.00 not Blanket Creek standards by any means.
After a leisurely Sunday morning start we headed off in the van down 89 towards Sedona. Our first stop was at Slide Rock State Park. The highlight here is watching the young, hardy souls leaping into the still frigid pools of the Oak Creek amidst the setting of the surrounding red rocks.

We continued along into the heart of touristy Sedona, the place was still jammed with weekenders, and picked up a map of the main viewpoints from the visitors' centre. Some of the best views were from up on the Airport Rd.

 

We made a stop at the Chapel of the Holy Cross (after a bit of a wait for parking). Again more gorgeous views and when I popped into the church I found a couple of  large tapestries hanging on the wall.

We drove back into town and stopped at Tlaquepaque Plaza, a collection of galleries, shops and restaurants on a Mexican village theme, built around four courtyards with fountains and sculpture installations. A charming cooler stop especially as the crowds were starting to thin out.

We returned to our campsite about 4:30pm and were immediately visited by the camp host as we were unloading.  Turns out while we were out enjoying our day they were dealing with a propane gas leak from our trailer which he deemed to be so severe he called in the Fire Marshall. They turned off our tanks, which turned off our stove, fridge, and hot water. We were able to run the generator for about 5 hrs to keep the fridge cold, cooked dinner on the BBQ, and diagnosed that the problem was a faulty regulator on the propane tanks. So after a chilly start to a Monday morning, a cold breakfast and NO COFFEE we had an early start North to Flagstaff where we we fortunate to find an RV service/parts place that had just opened at 8:00am, confirmed our suspicions about the regulator, had the part and could get the work done right away so we were back on the road for our longest driving day of the trip by 9:30am.

Arizona

After leaving Red Rock Canyon on a hot windy, Sunday morning we had a long drive through the moonscape of the high country desert past the Mojave National Preserve, the temperatures rising as we went further east. Early afternoon we crossed the Colorado River and passed into Arizona where the highway speeds increased and the gas prices took a sharp drop. We arrived at our reserved site at Lake Havasu State Park at about 3:30 and were surprised to find there was no time change as Arizona does not recognized daylight saving time. We settled into our lakefront site, had a quick walk around and I had a quick swim (the temperatures here were in the high 80's to low 90's and we decided to extend our stay here from 2 - 4 days as our site was open for reservations for the extra days. After 5 days on the road it was time for a break from setting up and taking down camp. However, that evening after a lovely sunset we were invaded by hundreds of little midge like bugs that made sitting out impossible and they were even able to make it through the holes in the window screening and covered the lights and ceiling in the trailer. Oh well, just like one year at Maui.

Our days at Lake Havasu were a combination of putsing around and a day of driving down into the desert around Quartzsite and the Kofa Wildlife Refuge. We stopped in at the Long term visitor area at La Posa to see what boonddocking would have been like if we had chosen to do that instead of staying at LH.

 Our last two days at the Lake were in the middle of "a wind event". It started Tuesday night with very strong gusts rocking the trailer and although it died down Wednesday night, it started up again as we were breaking camp Thursday morning.

Our drive east towards the Phoenix area was a bit bumpy but nothing serious and we arrived at our next destination, Queen Valley RV Resort around 1:30. This was our first experience of an RV "resort" and I have to say it was a good one. Most of the sites (about 90%) are filled with Park Model trailer homes for snowbirds (only 12 or so of the 196 sites stay year round we were told), but everyone we met was extremely friendly and welcoming and the facility was exceptionally clean and well equipped from the pool area, craft rooms, library/computer room, activity hall, billiards and card room. Most of the snowbirds have returned home so not much going on so it was a very quiet atmosphere to enjoy for a couple of days.

We did take a walk out into the Arizona trust lands to get up close and personal with a few cacti but no rattlers. Just lovely views of the surrounding Superstition Mountains and the clear blue sky.

First Leg

Well, dear readers, it has been awhile, and as you can see by the changed title we are making this trip to the US Southwest as a duo, no longer a trio. It seemed strange pulling out from home and seeing two bikes instead of the third seat where Mazy used to travel in the van but given her age it is probably a blessing that she is not having to endure the marked changed in temperatures that this trip will entail.
It was a cool but bright morning when we left New Westminster but we encountered some showers as we made our way to our first stop south of Portland at an Oregon's Champoeg State Park. This is a pleasant serviced park in the rolling countryside surrounded by farms, included ones advertising alpaca fleece.

The second day found us motoring further along I-5 to Grant's Pass where we headed off to Hwy 199, the Redwood Highway. It seemed natural to make our stop that night at Redwoods Jedidiah Smith California State Park. While the scenery was beautiful, the state of the park left much to be desired. Obviously California Parks are suffering from budget issues. The park was definitely overpriced for the services provided (none - we never saw an employee or host the whole time we were there).

After a chilly night we left in the sunshine and drove down the northern California coast on Hwy 101 through very pretty scenery of coastal towns and views, Redwood forests and then the winding country roads of the Mendocino Valley to a funky RV park just south of Willits, CA. It's claim to fame is that the ranch that surrounds it was the home of Seabiscuit. Didn't see any horses just wild turkeys roaming the campground.
Our fourth day was a long day of driving through northern CA past the pretty Mendocino lakes and then into the highways of the central valley past groves and groves of orange trees and grape vines. We finally left Hwy 99 at Selma, no, not that one, this one is the Raisin Capital of the World and onto a saner Hwy 43 to our campsite at Colonel Allensworth State Park. Again a California State Park that had seen better days but we did meet the ranger and the washrooms and showers were clean and open. We thought we were going to have the campground (15 sites) to ourselves but after dinner another couple arrived and set up their tent.

 This park is actually very interesting being the first town settled by blacks in California. We were able to tour the remaining building from the outside as we arrived after closing at 4pm.
In the morning it was a much shorter day to Red Rock Canyon State Park just north of Mojave, CA. Here we had lots of campsites to choose from even though the website warned us otherwise (we were arriving on a Saturday). Again few facilities at this park but the Visitor Centre was open and the views spectacular. It was hot and sunny during the day but the wind picked up at night.