Paddling Patagonia Lake

Our campsite was in sight of the lake but about twenty steep feet above it. We managed to get our kayaks down to the lake without falling and met Kathy and Mary Lou at their campsite. It was a beautiful day as we leisurely explored the lake. They had paddled here often and knew what birds frequented the lake and where to look for them. There were several species of herons and we managed to see some night herons sitting in the tall trees on the far side of the lake. The great blue herons were standing in the shallow water and there were plenty of cormorants as well as kingfishers. A pair of red-tailed haws were circling overhead. We explored all the nooks and crannies of the lake while continuing to catch up on our lives.

We stayed out on the lake until late afternoon before coming in and cleaning up. Kathy drove us to a little restaurant in Rio Rico where we had Italian food instead of Mexican for a change. They also wanted to show us a shortcut to their house so we wouldn't have to drive all the way into Nogales but as we were coming back I noticed that the one-way bridge had a weight limit of ten tons so we won't be able to go that way anyway. It was another fun day with friends. The more we travel, the more important our friends in different places become to us. It is always great to reconnect with them if only online but more special to see them in person.

Little Vineyard RV Park and On to Arizona

October 16 - October 20, 2014

With the car sitting at the Ford Dealership in Demming, New Mexico, we paid a weekly rate to stay at Little Vineyard RV Park. Unfortunately, there was no vineyard around. Most of the Snowbirds haven't arrived yet so we had the place practically to ourselves. We spent the time catching up on paperwork, finishing craft projects, watching TV, swimming in the pool, sitting in the cool shade of the motorhome to read and just relaxing. Ted rode his bicycle to the Ford place and to Walmart which is just beyond a couple of times. The new transmission is on its way and the service manager is checking on a pump and cooler for the transmission that will hopefully eliminate the overheating problem. The park has a Thursday night ice cream social and a Sunday night hamburg and hotdog meal at the clubhouse at really low prices so we took advantage of them both. Last night at the dinner we chatted with a couple from Alaska who have done a loop from Phoenix to Alaska, across Canada to Newfoundland, down the east coast to Florida and back to Phoenix all in one year. They are way more adventuresome than we are. They told us of a great campground near San Diego in the town of Santee which is part of the water district. Hopefully we can go there in the spring as we love that part of the country.

Trial Loading

Strapped Together and Towels to Protect the Woodwork

We had done a trial run the other day and found we could get the kayaks into the motorhome and still close it up for traveling so we loaded them in this morning and struck off for Arizona, leaving the car behind. The only downside to having the kayaks in the motorhome is we don't have access to the bathroom or refrigerator. I guess we have to do what most people do when they travel, stop at rest areas. Poor us!! We stopped at the Ford garage to get our kayak gear from the Escape and went to Walmart for a few groceries before hitting the road. I-10 runs through Demming so in no time we were on the flat, straight road heading west. What amazes me is how flat it is and all of a sudden there is a mountain sticking up out of the plains. You can see for miles and off in the distance we could see a big rain shower. We went through a very short period of rain but up ahead we could see blue sky. When we crossed the Continental Divide at an elevation of 4,585 feet we never would have realized it as the land was just as flat as could be. It was some different than crossing the divide up in the Rockies earlier this summer.

Deming, NM to AZ

Rest Stop into AZ

As we approached Patagonia Lake, the hills became covered with ocotillo with mesquite and various cacti mixed in. As with most lakes in the west, Patagonia Lake is man made. We entered the campground and past the Casita of Kathy and Mary Lou on our way to our campsite. They were only a few sites from us and came over while we tried to level the motorhome and get set up. They also helped get the kayaks out for us so we could find the bed and get at the back end of the coach. We visited for awhile at our campsite over beers before moving to their site where they prepared a great dinner for us. We saw them two years ago when we were out west but it still takes a lot of wine to catch up on whats what in each other's lives. We stumbled home in the dark after a great evening under the milky way with great friends. 

Ocotillo

Car Trouble

October 13, 2014

We left Cochiti this morning and drove south to Albuquerque where we stopped at Rich Ford to have the oil and air filter changed. Almost exactly two years ago, we had our other motorhome worked on here a couple of times. The service area is huge and they wash the floor after every car goes through. They also have a great Mustang Restaurant between the sales and service areas that we had eaten in before. It was a little early for lunch but we decided we might as well eat before we hit the road again so went in. The menu is mostly Mexican and is some of the best food we have eaten. After we waited in the waiting room for them to finish before heading south to Elephant Butte.

We were within thirty miles of our destination when we pulled into a rest area. When we got out to stretch our legs, we noticed that the car was smoking. Ted had just had the transmission fluid changed a couple of days before but we knew it was definitely a problem with the transmission. It was only a few minutes before five so the service department at Rich Ford was already closed. Ted called roadside service who dispatched a tow truck and then called a Ford dealer in Arizona (a different time zone) to get advice on whether we could still tow it. They said it couldn't make it any worse so we cancelled the tow and after waiting for the car to cool down went to the nearest campground which was way off the road, down steep, narrow, winding road and across a wide valley on a dirt road. We were able to get a pull through site so we wouldn't have to unhook as we weren't sure we could drive the car and it was dark out by then. Thankfully I had just made a big spaghetti sauce so we just had to heat up dinner and made an early night of it.

Never a Good Sign

October 14, 2014

Ted checked the transmission fluid level this morning and it was very low so we stopped at the nearest town of Williamsburg for motorhome gas and to find the fluid. It takes a very specific type of transmission fluid so we had to drive a few miles to the town of Truth or Consequences to find an Autozone. We put in almost two quarts and drove on. We pulled off in the town of Hatch where there were all kinds of shops with wreaths and hangings of chiles. One had a whole roof of chiles drying in the sun. The Ford dealer in Las Cruces couldn't look at the car for a couple of days so we drove to Demming where the guy said almost immediately that he thought we would need a new transmission. He needs to talk to Ford and do some more tests and will let us know tomorrow. In the meantime, he said it was all right to drive the car to a campground so we could take off the kayaks that would be in his way when fixing the car. We did that, paid for a week and went back to get the motorhome. So here we are, no car and nothing to do but catch up on our blog, watch a little TV and wait for news of what we will do next. The great thing is, we still have our own bed to crawl into every night.

Chiles Drying on the Roof

Chiles Everywhere

Bandelier National Monument

Our journey today took us to Bandelier National Monument. On our way we stopped in Santa Fe to drop off Ted's new computer. He had bought a computer that someone had returned that they assured him had been put back to factory settings. The other person's sign on was still there and everything was in Spanish. 

When we got to White Rock, the signs said that we had to take a shuttle to the national monument. We parked at the White Rock Visitors Center and went in to get information and to find out when the shuttles ran. The visitors center had interesting wind driven sculptures in front. The trip to the monument took about twenty-five minutes and the driver gave us information on the area. The mountains we could see out the side of the bus were the edge of a super volcano, one of only a few in the world, and much like the one in Yellowstone only smaller. All the ground for miles and miles is layers of volcanic ash in various colored layers and up to a thousand feet deep.

Visitor Center With Wind Sculptures

Erosion has cut valleys and ravines in the deep layers of ash rock so the road into the monument wound up and down and around the tops of mesas. A few bridges would have made it shorter but would have ruined the landscape so, oh well, sit back and enjoy. As we got nearer, many of the cliffs were really porous, some with big holes that people had actually lived in. When we got to the monument, a ranger met us to explain that the reason we had to take a shuttle was that they have had a series of serious flash floods in the past year and this affected the parking lots. As we wandered around the grounds, we could see the devastation in the path of what today was just a trickle of water in a little stream.

Layers of Volcanic Ash

We watched the film and then went out to take the mile long walk to see the remains of the Ancestral Pueblos and cliff dwellings. There was a mild, misty rain falling when we got outside so we put on windbreakers and started out first passing a large kiva and then the remains of a large pueblo which was probably two stories high and had over four hundred rooms. We have seen many pueblos in the past month or so but what was interesting about Bandelier is the many caves that were made in the side of the cliffs that look like Swiss cheese. There were ladders leading up to some of the openings and we were allowed to climb and enter them. In one, a fairly large kiva had been carved into the rock and we could easily stand in it.

Big Kiva

Large Community

Holy Place

Cliff Dweller

There were many steps up and down to reach the sites along the cliffs. When we got to the end of the cliff dwellings, we crossed the newly made plank bridge that took us to the other side of the once narrow stream, now a wide cut in the valley. By then it was really raining so we decided not to go to Alcove House which was a half mile further on and up a hundred forty feet on ladders. The walk back to the visitors center followed a pretty trail through the woods with yellow leaves and some kind of long needle pine spills falling on us as the wind and rain increased. 

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Was Ted Awake?

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Holes for Multi Story Support

Recently Bloomed

Debris from Flooding

We intended to go through the museum when we got back to the visitors center but there was a shuttle coming and we were wet so we hopped the shuttle back to White Rock. White Rock is next to Los Alamos, New Mexico where the Manhattan Project creating the atomic bomb took place during World War II. The more we travel the more things we find to see. We will definitely have to make another pass through this section of the county. A quick stop in Santa Fe to pick up Ted's computer and we were back at the campground with the sun shining.

Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument

October 10, 2014

It was another rainy, cold day so we mostly stayed in. The one excitement of the day was when Ted went out to barbecue at dinner time. On the railroad tie near the front passenger tire of the motorhome was a tarantula. I leaned out the side window in the rain and got a picture of it. Evidently, if you are from this area it is no big deal to see these huge spiders but seeing one in person in the wild for the first time was something else. Ted decided he would take the long route around the motorhome to get to the grill on the other side.

Furry Critter

October 11, 2014

Ted got me out of bed early this morning to see the mass of hot air balloons on the horizon. This is the last weekend of the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta that we went to two years ago. We are about forty miles from Albuquerque and the balloons were coming toward us. We needed binoculars to barely make out the shapes and colors of the balloons but early on I counted about seventy-five and we estimated twice that many before it was done. We talked to a couple later in the day that said five hundred fifty balloons went up from the fiesta grounds. It was fun to watch from a distance and we didn't have to fight the traffic either.

Balloons on the Horizon

We left mid morning to go to Bandelier National Monument. The not very good map that we have of New Mexico showed a road on the other side of the lake that would take us there on a much shorter road than the eighty miles to go back through Santa Fe. Once past the town of Cochiti Lake, we drove a few miles and the road was blocked and closed by the Cochiti Indian Reservation with signs saying anyone proceeding would go to jail. A little further back there was a seventeen mile narrow, dirt road that would take us toward the national monument but we opted out of that.

We had passed a turn to Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument so we decided to go there instead. This national monument, one of the newest in the BLM system, was established in 2001 by President Bill Clinton and you have to cross the Cochiti Indian Reservation to get to the parking lot and trailheads. After going through the entrance gate, the eight mile road has many "dips" in it that allow rain runoff to go across the road without washing it out and without the need of expensive culverts and bridges that are only needed a couple of times a year. We found a parking spot and started out on the mile and a half long trail that goes through a narrow slot canyon around a large hill and then up along switchbacks leading to the top of the mesa. In the mile and a half, the trail rises six hundred forty feet.

Entrance Gate

Starting Up

Kasha Katuwe Means White Cliffs

The slot canyon was really neat with colored layers of volcanic rock and ash. The ground was mostly soft sand with some narrow passages through the rock that were only a foot's width wide at the bottom but wider as the rocks went up so there was not concern of getting stuck. There was some climbing of rocks within the canyon but the real climb didn't begin until we were around the hill and through the canyon. There were many "tents" which are cones of soft pumice and tuff created by volcanic action beneath harder cap rocks. Erosion had shaped the canyon into beautiful and interesting shapes.

Quite the Root System on this Ponderosa Pine

Into the Slot Canyon

Some Places It Was Too Narrow to Use Poles

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Wavy Layers

Steadying

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The climb to the top had only one place that was quite difficult and also quite scary. The spectacular scenery helped allay my fear of heights. We stopped at one point to take pictures where an artist was sketching the striated cliff rocks and the tents that were now below us. On the way back, he was filling in the colors and had made quite a lot of progress in the less than an hour we had been gone. When we got to the top, we had a three hundred sixty degree view of the mountains and hills around us. We could see Cochiti Lake and think we saw where the motorhome was sitting on the other side of the lake. We sat on the ground at the end of the path with drop offs to the valley below all around us and ate a snack. 

Sketching Big Crayons

We Took Many Photos of this View

Getting Close to the Top

Highest Point of the Trail

Down to the Overlook

Looking Into the Side We Did Not Hike

Because the trail was narrow, we often stopped to let people through or they would stop to let us pass. Once back in the canyon, we were waiting for people when I saw a woman admiring a shrub beside the trail. I asked if she knew what it was and she said she didn't. I remembered I had a pamphlet on plants in my backpack and we decided it was a Manzanita. Her husband said that means something or other and I said "I don't know, we are from Maine and we learn French there". They said they were from Maine as well. Another small world situation. We walked the rest of the way back to the parking lot with them chatting about Maine and other National Parks we have visited.

Progress on Our Way Down

Different Perspective Heading Down

Heading Back Into the Slot Canyon

Afternoon Light on the Layers

Quite the Hike

Meandering

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The Overlook In the Center

It was a wonderful three mile hike and I am so glad we got to hike there. The cold temperatures of the morning gave way to just cool enough weather to hike in. The sun was mostly out and it was just a beautiful day.  To top it all off, we enjoyed a beautiful sunset.