Along the way we passed through "the original Las Vegas" - a town in New Mexico that was established in 1835 after a group of citizens received a land grant from the Mexican government. It soon prospered as a stop on the Santa Fe Trail and a few years later after the railroad arrived. We arrived in Santa Fe at 3:30 so had a little time to drive around. We saw on the map that there was an old section of town with very old Santa Fe pueblo style homes. We found the neighborhood with its very narrow streets. Many lilac bushes and one huge snowball bush were in bloom. We stopped at a big shop called a flea market. I'm attaching some pictures of the artwork that was for sale and that we have seen often already. I understand a lot of it is made in Mexico.
snakes or centipedes from rocks and wire
The next morning we continued on to Cascade, CO., which is outside Colorado Springs. We stayed that afternoon and overnight at Tom's cousin, Bill, and his wife, Linnea's beautiful new home up a canyon. It is a large Santa Fe style home built on a mountainside and overlooks a canyon over to the next mountainside. His other cousin Mary, her husband, Ron and their daughter, Amy, came for the evening. Tom sang for them and a neighbor couple.
Sunday morning we drove the 1-1/2 hours from Bill's to Ev's sister's home in Westminster, CO., a suburb of Denver. We changed clothes and went to pick Ev's mom up to go to our brother-in-law's brother's home for Mother's Day. It was in the low 80's so we sat outside all afternoon.
Ev's mom, Bess, our oldest son, Brett and his girlfriend, Angie, and her son, Aaron. We spent the week at Ev's sister's, Brenda's home. We helped her pick out and plant flowers, new patio chairs etc. Enjoyed playing cards with she and Bryan 3 evenings, went to dinner with them and Brett and Angie one night. I went to see mom at her assisted living center every day. Brett spent part of an afternoon with us and took us to a huge antique store he likes. The second weekend Tom had a table at a big gunshow. Friends from Spokane and Missoula were there, but he had a late registration and was in a different room. On Saturday 2 of the wives met Brenda and I for lunch and then we took them to Brenda's to see her beautiful quilting projects and Bryan demonstrated how he quilts the top, batting and bottom in a big longarm quilting machine. They would have loved to have spent a lot more time picking her brain about how to do things. Then we met 2 other wives and went to a neat boutique store with 20 vendors in an old house.
That day was Tom's birthday so Sunday we had dinner for he and our great niece. I had a surprise planned for him that had to be cancelled on 3 days because of low clouds: he and I were going to take a helicopter ride over the foothills! I've never been in a helicopter and the last time he was in one he was shooting out of it in Vietnam. We even tried to go the morning we were leaving town, but couldn't.
We left at 6:30 Monday morning. Within a couple of hours of being in New Mexico we had seen at least 50 antelope. This was so strange since we hadn't seen any traveling through there the week before and have never seen any in any states but Wyoming and South Dakota. We always thought that was strange - why they don't cross over into Montana, for instance. We had hoped to take the tram up the mountain at Albuquerque, but read that it doesn't open until Memorial Day weekend. We will definitely do that on another trip.
Once we were through Alb., we took a different route than last week. We passed the Route 66 casino. And the landscape was much more like I envisioned N.M. - huge sand dunes and red rock formations! The Dancing Eagle casino offers $10 free gas to out of state guests. Gas is very high all over the country for a couple of months - it is supposed to go down 50 cents per gallon next month. We saw a Union Pacific engine pulling 2 Rio Grande route passenger cars. Next we drove under a roadway above the highway that was called the Khe Sanh Bridge - hmm. That is a town in Vietnam.
Next we drove by huge lava mounds on both sides of the highway. Near Grants an ice cave is advertised, as is an underground mining museum, and 2 RV parks have signs saying their nightly rate is only $17. We saw miles of red rock hills while driving through the area around Grants and Gallup. The rock looks like sandstone - smooth after eons of being beaten by wind and some rain. Of course there may have been a lot more rain in centuries passed. Many of them had gigantic indentations that look like caves from afar.
As we re-entered Arizona I was reminded of how much of the state we have seen that is desert with small cacti of various kinds. The Saguaro only grows in certain areas of the state and that is probably a misconception - that they grow everywhere.
We planned to stay overnight in Holbrook. When we were nearby we saw a sign for the Petrified National Forest and Painted Desert. It was almost 5:30, but we pulled onto the road and read that they are open 7-7. We went to the visitor's center and were told we would have time to drive through, making a few stops, but wouldn't be able to hike at each stop. It worked out well, though we'll go back another time to do more hiking. Another place where we paid no admission fee since we have the lifetime Senior Pass to enter all Federal parks and monuments - costs $10!
Before getting back in the car we went into the restrooms. Each had 5 stalls and a sign on the door saying where the next restrooms are - 2 miles, then 3 more or whatever. There are probably huge lines during tourist season. There is a Fred Harvey curio shop and fountain at the visitor's center entrance. He owned restaurants all along train routes and the waittresses were called Harvey Girls. Before he opened them, passengers were subjected to exhorbitant prices at stations because there was no food service on the trains. He advertised for waittresses and hired them on 6 month contracts. They had to have good moral standards and agree not to marry during their contract. He offered good food at reasonable prices in clean environments. The ladies wore long dresses and long, white aprons.
This is a historic inn in the park in the Santa Fe construction style, which served as a respite area for people traveling Route 66
good picture showing the layers formed through the eons of time Not much further down the road we saw this:
Some hills along the road were comprised of dirt and mud that have created a surface that reminded us of an elephant's hide.
This hill reminded us of a castle on a rock. Someplace else on this trip there was a mountain called Castle Rock
in the visitor's center
petrified logsAfter we left the park we saw tourist places where small and large pieces of logs were for sale. Of course it is a Federal crime to take them from the designated monument area.
I asked Tom to take this view of this log. He made a screensaver of it and it is so pretty. He is going to teach a digital photography class at our new subdivision in June. The park brochure said there are hundreds of species of animals, birds and insects but that almost all are nocturnal except ravens.
It was a 14 hour day that went by pretty quickly since we were exploring territory new to us. By the time we reached Holbrook there was a beautiful full moon. Supposedly dinosaurs roamed this area so there are statues of them all around Holbrook.
Tuesday:
We drove into northern Arizona, through towns called Snowflake and Taylor. It was only 54 degrees, but has been exceptionally cool all over the Southwest these last 10 days. We passed old pioneer stone homes that dated to the 1800's. Arizona is a young state, celebrating its 100th birthday this year. Show Low is at 6331 elevation and the pine trees surrounding it reminded us of driving through Oregon and Washington. It snows here in the winter and in the summer southern AZ. residents love to visit here for cooler temps. Next we traveled through many miles of what we think are juniper trees - a relative of the pine. Soon we entered the White Mountain Apache Reservation - basically just scenery. An old trading post had long been closed. I had said I wanted to stop to browse if we saw a shop like that, but there weren't any more. At the end of the reservation was a deserted gas station with prices: Unl: $1.39 and diesel: $2.11. That had been closed a long time!
A sign said the next 15 miles was elk country. We saw several of those areas, but no elk. Then started the area with pretty canyons along the road and high, red clay hills on the side. It seemed odd to see one or two cactus growing alongside the road when everything else was green shrubs and trees. Some seeds probably blew in.
Then the trees changed again - juniper, mesquite and other leafy types. There wasn't any red clay for a few miles and then it appeared again.
This is another "castle rock". I always think I wouldn't want to go in any of those large holes - who knows what might be living in them.
Soon we were driving through the Tonto National Forest and we turned corners and saw beautiful mountains in the distance. The town of Globe has a drive-in theater and a mine of some type. At this point we were 100 miles from Tucson and were going up in elevation gradually - now 4400'. Then down the mountainside 7 miles and into large areas of saguaro cactus again. Winkelman's elevation is 2013 and it has a mine.
I've never seen so many traffic fatality memorial signs on a highway. Mammoth was next with elevatrion of 2346 and established in 1876. An old gas station bears a sign "God's filling station church".
We were home early afternoon so drove to Vail to unload stuff we had bought in Denver and the gun stuff. The house had been sheetrocked while we were gone and the next day they had the outside stuccoed.
Another great trip!
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