Southwestern New Mexico…

Southwestern New Mexico…

We left Gallup and crossed into Arizona, then back into New Mexico as we drove south through the

desert and then the Mogollon Mountains.  We passed through Silver City and found a place to stay in Deming, New Mexico.  There are a lot of interesting places to see in this area…White Sands State Park, Palomas Mexico, Pinos Altos (where Billy the Kid was born), Rockhound Park, the Gila Cliff Dwellings and City of Rocks to mention a few.  We’ve been in this area before and have seen many of these places but some are definitely worth a second look.



The City of Rocks is fairly close to Deming so we packed a picnic lunch and off we went.  Yes…there were rocks…huge rocks cropping up suddenly in the middle of the desert.  The rocks are formed by volcanic activity millions of years ago and then over time erosion creates the structures we see today.  Quite interesting and fun to climb around in.  The campground there is right in the middle of the rocks so some of the sites are quite private and would be fun to camp in.

 

 

 

There are lot of birds and of course I love to see the cactus and took plenty of pictures.  We hiked around the rock structures, had our picnic and headed home.

On the way, though, we saw a herd of antelope in the field by the road.  There must have been fifteen or more of them…so nice to know there is abundant wildlife in the area.


We drove down to Mexico and on the way saw one of the blimps they use for to watch the desert in hopes of catching illegal immigrants trying to cross the border.  When I was trying to immigrate I thought that going to Mexico and trying to sneak across the border to live in the US might have been easier but guess not ...I would have gotten caught by the blimp for sure!

Mexico was fun to visit.  It is only about half an hour from Deming and is surprisingly easy to get into…you simply walk across the border!  You don’t show a passport or talk to a border guard or anything…just walk across.  We wandered the town of Palomas for a while and visited The Pink Store.  We both enjoyed shopping in the store though we didn’t buy anything…I sure was tempted to get this chicken-birdhouse!

Lunch was really good…burritos, chimichangas, quesadias, rice and beans…mmmmm…and when is the last time you were served a Coca Cola Light in a glass bottle…a while back I bet.  Notice the mariachi band over Tom’s shoulder…they wandered the restaurant playing and singing.  Too bad there wasn’t a beach close by…It would have felt like the Mexico we are used to going to.  Definitely no beach in Palomas though…nothing but desert for miles and miles.

The drive home brought us past cotton fields and pepper farms…very interesting.  Notice the huge bales of cotton on the side of the field.

 

The Gila Cliff Dwellings are amazing!  So incredibly interesting.  The Gila National Moument is about 550 acres and contains the ruins of cliff dwellings built by the Mogllon people between 1275 and 1300 AD.  It is a fair climb up to the dwellings but well worth it. 

The dwellings are built right into the cave-like openings in the mountains.  I think there are five levels of dwellings but only one was open to us to explore.

The  first time we tried to see the cliff dwellings was about 15 years ago but we couldn’t actually make it there because the roads were flooded…it was pretty disappointing but seeing them this time made up for it. 

It is the US Thanksgiving tomorrow (Thursday) so I’m wishing all our American friends and relatives a very happy holiday!  You won’t find Tom or I in any black Thursday/Friday line-ups however…we have everything we need right here in our home on wheels. 

The memories we’re creating are what we are especially thankful for these days and we are happy we can share them with you!

 (this posting was really difficult to do because the internet at the RV park kept going off and on...sorry if it is a bit disorganized...hope you enjoy it!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Monument Valley, Gallup, and Chaco Canyon…

Monument Valley, Gallup, and Chaco Canyon…

We’ve done and seen so much this past week that I don’t know where to start…I guess the beginning would be a good place! 

 
 We left Moab just before the snow hit there so were lucky to dodge that little bit of winter.  Heading south into Monument Valley was really an interesting drive.  The road was quite a bumpy roller coaster.  I was surprised it was not kept up better but it might have something to do with the fact that it is all on the Navajo reservation.  We stopped at a roadside to take pictures and of course there were some vendors there selling jewelry.  I talked with one fellow and he said they don’t like to be called Navajo but rather “Dinѐ” which means “The People”.  They now mark their pottery and other artwork that way as well.  It’s so interesting to learn about their culture and history…we’ve learned a lot since we’ve been here.  The scenery was absolutely breathtaking.  My pictures really don’t do it justice however.  I’m sure you’ve seen some of these pictures either in western movies or in advertisements for the southwest.  Pretty amazing to see them in person.

Our weather has been cool and a bit cloudy.  We arrived in Gallup and had a skiff of snow that night.  Everyone was excited about it as it’s not very often they do get snow.  One lady said they haven’t had snow in three years.

Gallup is an interesting town.  It’s not as big as I thought it might be but is rich in native culture.  There are a number of murals throughout the town and it is fun to wander through and see them all. There are trading posts all over the place selling Native arts and crafts.  I’ve learned to recognize Navajo pottery and blankets and know the difference between them and the Zuni or Hopi arts.  Navajo potters cut designs into their pots with each row of designs meaning something special.  The blankets are beautiful but way out of my price range.  A 45”x60” blanket would run a couple thousand dollars in one of the trading posts.  I hope the woman who made it earned at least half of that but I’m suspicious she may not have.  I picked up one that turned out to be from the 1950’s…the price tag said $38,000!  The blankets are getting more and more expensive because fewer and fewer of the young people are interested in making them.  It could take six months to make one blanket and I guess they are not that patient.

Our RV park is right on Route 66 and is quite a nice place.  There are metal sculptures at the entrance (picture on previous page), about 100 sites and a nice little dog park.  Oso managed to pose for me in front of the dog park!

 

We drove out to Zuni Pueblo and spent the day there wandering through the trading posts and taking pictures.  We had to buy a pass to take pictures…$10 but it was worth it.  Zuni’s make beautiful inlaid jewelry and bright, colourful Katchinas (wood carvings of warriors or medicine men, etc.)  The Hopi Katchinas are the most highly prized as every bit of them is intricately carved and painted beautifully.  Anyway, back to Zuni…the ovens that the people make their pottery in and cook their food in are pretty amazing.  There may be a row of four or five of them in someone’s back yard.  We talked with one fellow in a shop who said that his family cooked ribs very slowly in the clay oven that past weekend and they were fall-off-the-bone delicious.  There are many street vendors in the Pueblo as well as Trading Posts where people can look at the goods for sale.  The Trading Posts really mark the prices up for the tourists.  I paid $15 for an opal inlaid ring from a vendor and saw exact same ring in a trading post for $110.

After we left Zuni we went south toward El Morro historic site.  For hundreds of years, people traveling through the desert stopped here because of a small lake that traps run-off from rainstorms.  Some of these travellers have carved their names into the rock cliffs and so the site is called Inscription Rock.  The inscriptions are mostly from Spanish soldiers or travellers in the 1700’s and 1800’s.  There are also petroglyphs here and a Zuni ruin.  The Zuni’s at that time must have been tiny people because the houses are small and the doorways only about two feet tall.  The ruin is on the very top of the site…about 500 feet above the desert floor.  There were over 150 stairs carved into the mountainside and much of the pathway was steep rock face.  We managed, with a bit of huffing and puffing, to make it to the top.  It was well worth it!   It was a lot of hiking and sore feet that night, but pretty amazing to see.

The next day we drove out to Chaco Canyon.  It is about an hour and a half from Gallup, across the Continental Divide.  (You might remember me telling you about the people riding their bikes from Banff to Mexico…they would have come through this area on their trip south).  It is about 6500 in elevation here.

Chaco Canyon was amazing.  The road off the highway was 30 miles of dirt with a dozen or more cattle crossings so going was slow but well worth it.  Chaco Canyon was inhabited between 1000 AD and 1300 AD.  During that time the people built some amazing structures.  The walls on these buildings are sometimes two feet thick and all made of stacked rock.  Some of the structures are three and four stories tall and held 80 or 90 different rooms.  Big round gathering rooms called Kivas are where the people

went for ceremonies, and did their cooking, etc.  Large open areas called Plazas were simply

places for people to meet and do their daily chores.  The rooms they lived in were tiny and you may have needed to crawl through several houses to get to yours if it happened to be at the back of the village.

The trail guide shows roughly how the “villages” were structured.  This one was one of the smaller ones with roughly 70 rooms that each housed a family.  Some of the bigger structures held several hundred rooms/families  Chaco Canyon was also a trading area.  Native people came from all corners of New Mexico and Arizona to trade here.  A very, very

interesting spot

We found some pot shards along the trail…my Archaeologist daughter would be disgusted with me if I kept them so I left them on the rock for others to admire. 

This blog has turned out to be quite long, but there was so much to tell and show you.  Thanks for hanging in there with me.  We’re heading further south toward Tucson now and will probably settle there till the new year.  Will definitely keep you posted!

On the Road Again...

On the Road Again….

 

 

After a nice long visit in Abbotsford with friends and family, (here’s a picture of Mom and Wilma on the Green Machine out at the farm…fun!) we drove further south to Coolee City to see Tom’s brother, Stan, then to see kids in Spokane and Boise.  It was so much fun to see our Grandkids and spend a bit of time with them.  Oso had his knee surgery in Boise and seems to be doing well…he really likes his new home in the fifth wheel, and especially loves laying in front of the fireplace on the rug Tom made.

The weather was turning cold quickly though and we decided to head south as soon as we could.  We drove from Boise to Ely, Nevada.  We settled into an RV park that night and the next day went to Garnet Hill...(thinking of you, Aunt Garnie!)…it’s an awesome place just outside of Ely where you can wander through the hills digging for garnets.  They seem to be everywhere.    Tom chipped away at some of the big rocks and we managed to collect a few lovely samples.  The garnets are not “jewelry grade” but are simply big red crystals.  They were made over hundreds, maybe thousands of years after volcanic lava slowly cooled.  The bubbles trapped in the lava are where the garnets were eventually formed.  Such an interesting process.  The garnets are dark red and very pretty. 

We spent another night in Ely and then drove south east along Highway 50...there is a saying that Highway 50 is the most lonely highway in the world…I believe it!  There is a whole lot of nothing out there!  I did notice though, that there were many, many small cone shaped “hills” out in the desert…we stopped at one point and I went to look at one of them and found they were ant hills…my gosh there must be a lot of ants in this area because there are hundreds of ant hills.  Other than that there was sage brush, a few corners in the road, a few hills and not much else…eventually we arrived in Moab, Utah and found a nice RV park and settled in.  It is surprisingly cold and windy here…freezing at night…better get going south pretty soon. 

Today we went to see Arches National Park.  It was…I don’t even have words for it…amazing, incredible, awesome…yes, all that and more.  The landscape is so different than what we are used to in the Northwest.  Red Rocks and stone pillars everywhere you look.  We stopped at the visitor’s center and bought a few post cards then headed out into the park.  The first place we stopped at had a sign that talked about how the rocks were formed…there seems to be three layers formed over millions of years.  The first layer looks like huge bricks at the bottom of the rock structure…the second layer is hard slick rock…the third is a gravelly top layer.  These layers are hundreds of feet thick, but show quite readily in the rock structures.  Maybe you can see them easier in the pictures than I can describe them.

We hiked out to several of the actual arches…the first were awesome enough, but the mile and a half hike up to the “Delicate Arch” was the most awesome.  It was a steep enough hike that I thought twice about whether I could do it but then decided that we’d come this far to  see it and what a shame it would be to miss it.  That and the older man walking with a cane in front of us persuaded me that I could definitely make the hike.  Anyway, it was awesome…since there are few trees around, the path is marked with cairns…these are just piles of rocks that mark the way.  The scenery is so spectacular…so different than what we are used to.  I can’t say enough about it….maybe the pictures will say the words that I can’t find.

The weather, as mentioned before is cold…freezing tonight and snow forecast in the next couple of days so it’s time to head south.  We were going to try to head east toward Florida, but Tom’s feet are so cold that he wants to get somewhere warm and stay there.  I think we’ll head down along the Arizona/New Mexico border and see where we end up.  There’s plenty to see down around the Silver City area of New Mexico (cliff dwellings, pueblos, petroglyphs, etc.) and along the way we’ll go through interesting spots like Zuni, where the native pottery is amazing.  In many of the pull-offs along the highway the Indian people have set up places to sell jewelry and pottery…some really nice stuff, though you need to be picky if you want something unique.  Once we’ve seen what we want to in New Mexico we’ll likely head down to Tucson and spend a month or so in a place we’ve stayed before just south of there.  It will be nice to settle for a while and  maybe get some painting done.   I’ll keep you posted as often as possible.