Category: Uncategorized

It’s time for another tag-team blog post. Amy’s green; I’m blue.

JON: So, before we left Winslow last week, we did the obligatory stop at “the corner.”
AMY: Yes, we needed to stop here since we had the Eagles stuck in our heads. The city did a nice job marketing this corner.
JON: The flatbed Ford was a nice touch. Other than this corner though, Winslow was a letdown.
AMY: I didn’t think it was a letdown. I guess I didn’t expect that much from Winslow.

JON: On Wednesday we stopped at the big meteor crater between Winslow and Flagstaff. I first saw this when I was in high school, and I remember thinking it was really cool (and it is), but it didn’t “wow” me like it did that first time.
AMY: Even with all of your hype, I was still impressed. The museum was also a nice overview of meteors and outer space.
JON: Here’s a 180-degree view. (Click the photo for a larger version.)

AMY: I was very excited to get to the Grand Canyon on Thursday.
JON: Me too. We got to the south rim just in time to see the sun set, which was cool, but I was disappointed by all of the people there. The whole place felt like an amusement park.
AMY: We knew it was going to be like that though.

AMY: The long paved trails were calling me to a sunrise morning run. There was a small crowd at the popular viewing point but the majority of the miles was just me and the canyon.
JON: Nice morning lighting!
AMY: This might be one of my favorite runs of this trip.

AMY: We were only able to get one night at the south rim campground, and I wanted to visit the geology museum before we moved on. Good exhibits, but more crowds.
JON: I was thrilled that the crowds thinned out as we got away from the visitor’s center. I was afraid that every single overlook was going to have tons of people and those dumb fences.

JON: Here’s a 180 degree view from the south rim. (Click the image for a larger version.)

AMY: One of the more interesting exhibits was an outdoor timeline with rock specimens from each of the layers of the canyon.
JON: I loved this. I still can’t wrap my head around the idea that the bottom layer of the canyon — which you can see and touch —  is 1.8 billion years old.

AMY: We stopped in a visitor’s center and recognized this ranger from Joshua Tree. We remembered his great stories about the wildlife there, and he had equally entertaining stories about some of the Grand Canyon wildlife.
JON: He clearly loves what he does. These park ranges are so happy.

AMY: One of the nice things about Grand Canyon was that we were able to walk for a long way without having to worry about walking back.
JON: I hadn’t thought about it like that, but you’re right, those shuttles were nice.

JON: The parking lots were so crowded that we had to improvise a parking spot, apparently provoking the ire of the park rangers. We found this “love note” upon returning to the RV.
AMY: I’d love to see them try to tow us!

AMY: We decided to head to the north rim, which gets only 10% of the Grand Canyon visitors.
JON: I think it’s crazy that it’s only 10 miles from the south rim to the north rim as the crow flies, but over 200 miles to drive!

JON: Carrie and I signed up for an afternoon of mule-riding in the canyon.

JON: Carrie started taking horse riding lessons when she was 5, so she was right at home.

JON: It was a great way to experience Grand Canyon (though it was harder on my butt than I anticipated.)
AMY: Em, Nat and I hiked the same trail, but due to the dust and mule manure it was not a very pleasant hike.

AMY: This mule ride was one of the few things Carrie has asked to do on this trip. I’m really glad she got to do it.
JON: Yeah it was fun to do something special like this with her.

JON: There wasn’t an ounce of B.S. in our guide, Kitty. We liked her!

JON: We even got cheesy diplomas certifying us as official “Grand Canyon Master Muleteers.”

AMY: After a full day of mule rides and hiking, we took a scenic drive to end the day. Here we are at Point Imperial, the highest point in the park at 8800 feet.

JON: It was quite a view. Click the image below for a larger 180-degree panorama:

AMY: This stop turned out to be a great place for a dinner picnic:

AMY: This is another stop on our scenic drive called Cliff Springs. This short hike turned out to be the “up close” hike into the canyon I had been hoping for all day.

JON: This was the last stop, Cape Royal, known to be a good sunset spot.
AMY: It also offered a 250-degree view of the canyon that I was eager to see.

JON: You shot this photo of Natalie; I love the lighting.
AMY: I have come to love our sunset-watching hikes. They are good times to sit and enjoy the girls.

JON: This was what I hoped the Grand Canyon would be: smaller crowds and amazing views. I’m glad we found these spots. Of course, we had to hop the fence to get to this point.

AMY: Happy Father’s Day! The girls and I enjoyed making you your favorite breakfast.
JON: It was great, eating a delicious breakfast with my family. I say this every year, but I swear I feel like every day is Father’s Day. 🙂 

JON: My Father’s Day presents were perfect: A box of Cap’n Crunch, a box of Little Debbie Nutty Bars, a pouch of Big League Chew, and a portion of Natalie’s half-eaten carrot cake that I had been teasing her about sharing with me. 🙂

AMY: We drove just 80 miles on Sunday to Mount Carmel Junction, Utah to be near Zion and Bryce Canyon National Parks.

JON: The internet has been a real challenge here, but it’s otherwise a quaint little corner of Utah. I love the neon signs across the street.

AMY: This week I’m looking forward to seeing Zion and Bryce, two more great National Parks to experience (I dream about being a park ranger!) I hope to see as many as we can before we start heading home. 
JON: “Home” is where we park it! It’s hard to believe we only have a few weeks left. I’m really looking forward to seeing the Bonneville Salt Flats at the end of the week…I think that’s the last “must see” place for me, at least for this trip.

This was sort of a climactic week for me, as I have been looking forward to Utah since the early days of planning this trip. Even with the bar set high, Utah did not disappoint and at times flat out assaulted me with its unbridled beauty.

Our campground was about 10 miles north of Moab, and offered a spectacular “Utah” view:

There was this cool old church building nearby:

…and a Western kitschiness that I found rather charming:

After dinner on Tuesday, we took a hike in Arches National Park to see the famous Delicate Arch.

This improbable geological wonder was magnificent. I loved being there and seeing something I had previously only seen on postcards. I also loved that this was simply something we did on a Tuesday after dinner.

There’s a lot to see in Arches National Park, so we went back on Wednesday to hike some different trails.

This is Landscape Arch, the longest natural arch in the world at 290 feet. It just doesn’t seem possible (and indeed, it’s only a matter of time before erosion and gravity prevail):

The Double O arch at the end of our Wednesday hike:

The sun was setting fast, and we still had a good 2 miles to go before we’d get back to the car:

Emily was not very happy to still be hiking at dark:

On Thursday we hiked around Island In The Sky, one of the areas of Canyonlands National Park:

These overlooks make one understand how Island In The Sky got its name. It’s like a view from an airplane:

Our dinner with a view:

More hiking and amazing overlooks:

This is me after taking a little 1.5 mile trail-running experiment. It about killed me. I blame the thin air and not the fact that I’ve not exercised for 3 months.

We ended the day with a stop at an overlook at Dead Horse State Park:

On Friday we hit The Needles area of Canyonlands, which is 65 miles south of Island in the Sky:

I didn’t think Friday’s hike was quite as spectacular as the previous nights’ hikes, but it was still a beautiful walk, lovely weather, an we practically had the whole place to ourselves.

That night we boondocked at a BLM campground called Windwhistle, just north of the The Needles where we hiked that day. There was no light pollution anywhere; the sky was filled with stars.

Click the image here for a larger 180-degree view of the sky that night (this was done using 30-second exposures):

On Saturday, we headed for Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park. Ever since playing Red Dead Redemption back when we were just planning this trip, I have dreamed of seeing this place. I was so excited to finally be there!

This is Felix, our awesome Navajo guide who took us on a 2.5 hour Jeep tour of the park and backcountry:

This girls were initially apprehensive about riding around with a stranger…

…but they warmed right up when they realized they could stick their heads out while we drove around:

I should have arranged my girls to mirror the respective heights of the 3 sisters rock formation off in the distance. Oh well.

Our guide Felix grew up on these lands; he took us to all of his favorite spots:

Felix showing us some ancient petroglyphs:

…and more caves and arches:

Here’s a 180-degree panorama from the end of our tour (click for a larger version). It was amazing.

Know what else is amazing? Jeeps. We want one now. (Seriously, the “roads” that Felix took us down would have been impassable in a regular car, but his Wrangler handled them with ease.)

After dinner that evening, we took a hike around one of the “mittens” (the one on the left):

Our hike took a little longer than expected; I had to hustle back in time to snap another panaroma before the sun got too low. Click the image for a larger view:

Amy and girls caught up with me a few minutes later and we watched the sun set on Monument Valley. For me this was a high point of the day and of this entire trip:

We boondocked last night in the Monument Valley parking lot:

It was chilly and windy this morning (note the dust blowing off in the distance), but Amy and I got up early to watch the sun rise:

During the day, this little hut is bustling with Navajo booking their horseback riding tours. I just liked how serene it looked in the morning light:

We left early this morning and headed a couple hours south to Canyon de Chelly, one of the longest continuously inhabited areas in this region. Currently, the Navajos live and farm on the canyon floor.

It was a beautiful place and a great hike, but it’s also the setting of a sad story of most of the Navajo being forcibly removed in the 1860’s.

This afternoon we arrived at Homolovi Ruins State Park, standing on the corner of Winslow Arizona (ohh I’ve just been dying to use that line!) Contrary to what I’ve been told my whole life, it’s not really such a fine sight to see. The town is small and forgettable, and this state park is smack dab in the middle of nothingness. I would do another panorama, but it’s literally this in all directions:

The sunset was nice though. We’ve not yet decided how long we’ll stay in Winslow, but we’re not leaving until we see that huge meteor crater.

This past week was pretty action-packed — our hikes totalled over 20 miles! — so I think everyone is ready for a little rest. It’ll be a temporary break though, as we’ll be hiking at the Grand Canyon by week’s end.

Monday morning was Memorial Day, and the running of the Bolder Boulder 10k for Amy, my Uncle Walter and about 50,000 other people. It was a beautiful day in Boulder, CO:

I waited at the finish line hoping to snap a photo of Amy dashing by, but never saw her. When I caught up with her in the stands shortly after she finished, it didn’t look like she had even broken a sweat:

Amy ran in honor of my dad and the others we know who have served in our military:

Amy and my Uncle Walter after the race:

A couple hours later, we went back to a full stadium to watch the elite runners finish (they started much later than the rest of the crowd) and a short Memorial Day ceremony. There was supposed to be sky divers from each branch of the military landing on the field, but they had to scrap that due to high winds. Bummer.

A picnic on the lawn outside my Uncle Walter and Aunt Sue’s hotel:

That evening we went to a place called Larkburger in Boulder, which had one of THE BEST burgers I’ve ever had:

Good shakes too:

Tuesday morning, my Mac went on the fritz again; this time it was the hard drive. I don’t know why I’ve had such a run of bad luck lately, but my GOOD luck is that I’ve been in places where a Mac repair person has been just down the road. Rick at Macintosh Computer Itech was able to salvage all of my precious data and get me back up and running by the end of the day. Thank you Rick!!!

That evening, we took a stroll with our campground neighbors Shawna and Matthew into downtown Golden. There was some crazy bicycle event going on:

Nice sunset over a nearby hill:

We ended our walk with some frozen yogurt:

As I mentioned last week, Shawna was one of my girls’ first (and favorite) babysitters from when they were little, so they really enjoyed spending time with her in her RV. Plus, she and Matthew have a cat:

…and a PlayStation 3:

More girl stuff at Shawna’s:

During a mid-week shopping trip, Carrie got her ears double-pierced. It looks great on her!

We intended to go on a hike with Matthew and Shawna on Thursday, but it got too late. Instead, we strolled around the fairgrounds and visited the horses:

Friday, however, we did do our hike up South Table Mountain, which is sort of the icon of Golden:

It was more of a walk than a hike, but it provided a spectacular view of Golden. We got there just in time to watch the sun set:

That’s the Coor’s plant down below. I wanted to take a tour (and try some free Coor’s) but we couldn’t fit it in to our plans for the week. *Sigh*…we can feel the time running out for this trip.

I found a nice and quite spot to work just down the road from our campground: Red Rocks Community College.

The peace and quiet was wonderful, but the stupid-fast internet was even better. To put this in perspective, I need about .5 Mbps to do my work. I’m really happy when I have 1 to 3 Mbps. It’s a luxury when I get 6 or 7 Mbps in a 4G area. This was almost 60 Mbps. I’ll still be talking about that place to my grandkids.

Saturday, we drove up to Rocky Mountains National Park. As expected, there were in fact many beautiful rocky mountains:

The weather was a little flakey though. It thundered and rained during lunch, so we had a picnic in the car. (Natalie doesn’t like thunder.)

The rain stopped after lunch and we did some climbing:

Future river rocks, just waiting for their year to tumble down into the water:

A park ranger had a monocular sighted on a big-horned sheep grazing on a nearby mountain side:

I loved this place, but it was crowded. We’re not really used to that, but we figure we should expect to encounter more crowds now that schools are letting out.

Amy wanted to see how it would be running at 12,000 feet. She seemed unaffected, at least with a short distance.

This was the highest point that the road would take us: 12,183 ft.

Click on the image for a larger 180-degree panorama:

Snow!…

Even with the ominous clouds, the Rocky Mountains were simply breathtaking:

Saw a marmot too:

Amy is making an effort to get me in more photos, so here you go:

We had passed several elk off in a field or up in the woods, but this guy was hanging out right on the side of the road:

Our final hike for the day got rained out. Only Amy and Em were brave enough to handle it; the rest of us stayed dry in the car.

This morning we hit the road but didn’t get very far before we had to cool our heels. Literally…the brakes were smelling bad after a long decent from the mountains.

It turns out that our supplemental brakes (the contraption that presses the brake pedal in the car when it feels the RV stopping) wasn’t working. Not good. Here I am trying to do some troubleshooting:

I got it working again, and after letting the RV brakes cool for about an hour, we hit the road. However, just a few miles down the road, the supplemental brakes were failing again. I was not about to tow a car down another mountain without the car being able to help us stop.

We pulled off, disconnected, and Amy and Em drove the Scion separately:

Good thing, because it was more of this for miles. It would have been smelly brakes all over again:

Emily took this photo from the Scion as they drove behind the RV. I like this because it shows a part of Colorado that I didn’t have an opportunity to photograph. It was a beautiful drive with the roads winding through the mountains, and even a quaint tunnel or two. I also like this photo because it’s the only one we have of the RV lumbering down the road:

We wanted to get to Moab, Utah, but we’re going to have to Walmart it tonight in Grand Junction, CO. We need to get our supplemental brake fixed before we do any more traveling, because driving separately is a real bummer.

It’s hot here. Hard to believe just yesterday we were playing in the snow.

[UPDATE 6/4/2012: Turns out the brake malfunction was simply due to the thin air of the Rocky Mountains. It’s working fine now. That’s great news that nothing is wrong with our unit. Or is that bad news that it doesn’t work where we needed it the most…in the Rocky Mountains?!?]

Early in the week, our friends Steve and Tawn and their kids Clay and Ruby joined us for dinner in the RV. They, too, are on a bit of adventure, having moved from Indy for a two year teaching stint at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. This is the family that kindly secured us a camping spot on the base.

Amy and the girls got to see more of the base than I did. One of their stops was at the Cadet Chapel, known for its really cool architecture:

Aware of Emily’s interest in airplanes and space, Steve was kind enough to give Amy and the girls a tour of the aeronautics and astronautics labs at the Air Force Academy.

On Tuesday night, Amy and I got a rare evening out: Steve and Tawn invited our girls over for a pizza dinner and game night while Amy and I did a dinner hike at Garden of the Gods near Colorado Springs.

I took Wednesday off, and we all gussied up as best we could for the U.S. Air Force Academy graduation ceremony. The girls were really excited about having a reason to dress up:

With the President in town for this event, security was tight:

Scanning the crowd for mischief-makers:

The Secret Service kept watchful eyes on the crowd as well:

The soon-to-be-graduated class of Air Force cadets:

After all of the cadets were seated and a few other dignitaries were introduced, the President made his grand entrance:

The Air Force Academy gets a presidential visit for a graduation once every 4 years, so it was fortuitous timing that this coincided with us being in Colorado to see it.

More Secret Service, and SUVs ready to whisk the president away should any trouble break out:

There were over 1,000 cadets graduating this day – it took a couple hours to get through the list of names. The President saluted and shook hands with every single one of them.

One of the USAFA graduation traditions is to let children onto the field to catch the cadets’ hats after they throw them in the air. There was supposed to be $20.12 secured inside each hat for the kids to keep (as well as the hat.)

After baking in the sun for a couple hours, some sweet, sweet cloud cover rolled in:

In a show of precise timing, right as the class of 2012 was officially dismissed, the Thunderbird F-16s roared over the stadium:

…and hat’s were thrown in the air:

…and there was much rejoicing:

With the ceremony over, the President began to work the crowd on the field:

…and after a while made his exit:

I’ve read that the President’s limo is so weighed down from bomb- and bullet-proof materials that it only gets about 8 miles-per-gallon. I know the feeling, Mr. President…I know the feeling.

Emily and Natalie with the hats they caught (and they each had $20!)

After the graduation ceremony, the Thunderbirds put on a pretty cool air show:

As if there hadn’t been enough excitement from watching an Air Force Academy graduation, seeing the President of the United States, and watching the Thunderbirds do aerial acrobatics in their fighter jets, Emily’s loose tooth fell out from eating popcorn:

At the end of the afternoon, we visited the Olympic training center, also in Colorado Springs:

We saw the facilities for gymnastics, volleyball, shooting, wrestling and swimming.

It was a quick but interesting view into the rigorous lifestyle of Olympic hopefuls, especially considering the summer Olympics start in a couple months.

We ended the day with a fantastic dinner and wonderful company at Steve and Tawn’s house. We are so appreciative of them for an exciting week and truly one of the highlights of this trip.

We left Colorado Springs on Thursday and headed toward Boulder for Amy’s “Bolder Boulder” 10k race on Monday.

Apparently, Boulder does not welcome us RV folk — there are no RV parks to be found in the entire city. (This is the first major city in America we’ve found that does not have RV parks.) The best we could do was a fairgrounds RV park in Golden, CO, about 45 minutes from Boulder. Oh well.

On Thursday night we drove to Boulder to meet my Uncle Walter and Aunt Sue, who flew in from Florida the night before. Like the half marathon in Santa Barbara, CA back in November, Walter will be running the race with Amy on Monday.

Staying at the fairgrounds here in Golden wasn’t completely random: it’s the current temporary home of our long-time friend and former babysitter Shawna and her husband Matthew. Shawna is a traveling nurse, so she and Matthew are living semi-nomadically in Colorado. It was pretty cool to meet up with them; their “house” is literally just a few spots away from ours right now. We had them over for dinner on Friday and we’ll be hanging out with them some more before we leave in a few days.

On Saturday, we drove back to Boulder to spend time with Walter and Sue. Amy was happy to troll through the Boulder Farmers’ market:

A particularly hard-working street musician:

Emily and Natalie were thrilled that Walter and Sue’s hotel had a nice pool:

We did a Sunday morning hike up some local hills that overlooked Denver:

My beautiful 12-year-old:

Walter and Sue joined us in the RV tonight for the traditional pre-race pasta dinner:

After dinner, Walter entertained us with stories about him and my dad growing up. Some of them I had heard, but many were new. It was good to hear stories and remember my dad.

Amy and Walter have an early morning tomorrow for their race, so she will be going back with Walter and Sue to stay the night at their hotel.

The girls and I will need to leave the RV around 6:30am to see Amy finish around 7:45. These races are always pretty crazy, and with over 50,000 runners (no, that’s not a typo), I expect nothing less from the Bolder Boulder. But it’s also pretty exciting, and Amy loves her races. So, go Amy go! 🙂

Our stay in Santa Fe was another great week in New Mexico (we really, really like New Mexico!) On Tuesday, we did a little bit of walking and sight-seeing around town:

We saw the Loretto Chapel and it’s “miraculous staircase” — a spiral staircase without any obvious support. I was expecting something a wee bit more miraculous, but ok, nice stairs:

Nearby was the oldest church in the U.S., built in 1610:

…and the oldest house, built in 1640:

We had heard a lot about the food here, so we did a rare dinner out to try some New Mexican cuisine. I’m a bit of a wuss when it comes to spicy food, but it was still quite delicious.

On Wednesday afternoon, a bunch of girls and their horses descended upon the quiet rodeo fairgrounds where we were camping. It was some sort of girls’ horse club, which understandably stirred up some horse-envy with Carrie.

Watching these girls practice their barrel racing turned out to be some nice family entertainment:

Amy took a cooking class on Thursday morning…I’ll let her tell you about that:

Amy: “I had seen an advertisement for this local cooking school in a tourist guide. I was immediately excited about the opportunity to attend a class that taught southwestern cooking.”

“I decided on a class called ‘Chile Amor!’ The New Mexican chile is the state vegetable and I had heard about the legendary Hatch (NM) Chiles, so I was intrigued. The rest of the family doesn’t like spicy food so I was hoping to learn to prepare this infamous vegetable in a way that my family would like. It was a fantastic class! I learned how to prepare three different chile sauces (all mild) and homemade corn tortillas. I spent the rest of the week finding the local ingredients and I am eager to prepare this for the family.”

As I mentioned last week, my laptop was on the fritz, but Fred here at Computer Medics in Santa Fe really helped me out. He rented me a loaner (and put my hard drive in it) so I had everything I needed to get in a good workweek. My laptop was shipped to Apple for repairs, and I got it back by the end of the week. All is right with the world again.

The design software that I use for my work recently had a major upgrade (Adobe CS6 Suite…yum), so I was really eager to download that. It was several gigs worth of data which would have put us way over our monthly limit, so we went to the library to use their internet. Connectivity issues aside, libraries offer a nice change of work environment and I always get a ton of stuff done there.

On Friday, we took a side trip to Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument for a picnic dinner:

Afterwards, we took a quick hike (more of a walk, really).

These rocks are made of layers of ash that came from surrounding volcanic eruptions several million years ago. They take on the cone- or tent-shape when the ash-rock erodes underneath a harder “cap” rock. It was cool, but I wish we could have stayed longer. They hustled us out at 6:30.

As I predicted, the girls spent a lot of time outside visiting the boarded animals at the rodeo fairgrounds where we were staying. They named this horse Kitty (his real name turned out to be Leroy):

This cow woke me up every morning with her incessant mooing, which wasn’t a bad thing I guess:

Part of Amy’s search for chile sauce ingredients took her to the Santa Fe Farmer’s Market on Saturday morning. She said it was an impressive spread of local vegetables, herbs, honey, flowers, baked goods and handmade items that is open year-round.

The girls and I stayed back, slept in and then played on the rodeo equipment:

We left Santa Fe late Saturday morning and headed back towards Taos. Along the way, we stopped at Georgia O’Keeffe’s Ghost Ranch near Abiquiu, NM. I was expecting a quaint, quiet museum, but it’s really a conference/retreat center which was sort of busy.

Just up the road, however, were some cool red rocks that we stopped at and climbed on a bit:

We met up with John and Sue — long-time friends of Amy’s parents — who live just outside of Taos. We camped in their driveway on Saturday night.

They live off of a dirt road in a pretty remote area, so their view is quite spectacular:

We had a great time eating dinner, learning more about their travels (they traveled full time for seven years), and learning more about beautiful New Mexico.

The girls enjoyed the hot tub outside:

I regret not having a picture to go with this, but I woke up about 3am and realized I had forgotten to turn off the supplemental breaks in the car. I didn’t want the car battery to drain, so I got up and went outside to shut it off.

Cloudless sky. Zero moonlight. No light pollution to speak of (there were just a few tiny lights way off in the distance.) Yet I could see my surroundings perfectly thanks to the collective light from a zillion stars.

I thought I had seen starry skies and the Milky Way on this trip already, but not like in middle-of-nowhere New Mexico. It was unforgettable.

The next morning we went to a nearby local favorite hiking spot in Carson National Forest:

It was a great climb and a great view. I particularly loved the constant smell of pinyon pine in the crisp air.

I stitched together a 360 degree panorama. Click the image for a bigger version:

We had such a great time with John and Sue, and we are grateful for their hospitality. This certainly won’t be our last trip to New Mexico, so we look forward to our next visit with them.

We spent most of the afternoon making our way back to Colorado.

We’re now staying at really nice campground on base at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs:

Some friends from Indianapolis moved out here last year to take a teaching position at the USAFA, and they kindly invited us to attend the Air Force graduation ceremony on Wednesday (and they got us this sweet camping spot too!) The President is going to be there, jets will fly over, etc…it’s sort of a big deal.

We’re all very excited to see the pomp and circumstance surrounding an Air Force graduation. Some pilots were doing some training exercises this morning; fighter jets were screaming over and around our campground. The ground was shaking. It was awesome!

I’m pretty late on getting this post out, but I had some technical difficulties: my Mac fried, and it took me a couple days to snag a loaner. More on that next week.

As for last week, we really enjoyed our stay at the National Forest campground in Colorado. We would visit this overlook many times during the week, as it was just a 2-minute walk from our camp spot:

On Monday, Amy and the girls took a field trip to the Anasazi Heritage Center, which is a museum that illustrates the native cultures of the Four Corners region. Amy said it was one of the best little museums she and the girls have been to, and it’s all stuff relevant to a book they are reading for school right now.

Midweek, we took a side trip to Lowry Pueblos near Cortez, Colorado. These were built around 1060 AD, so pretty old:

It was a typical school and work week otherwise:

Another trip to the overlook to watch the sun set (that’s Mesa Verde off in the distance):

Friday morning, Amy, Em, and Nat attended an event held by Cortez’s Annual Birding Festival. (Not interested in birds, Carrie stayed back at the RV to work on a separate school project.)

They of course did some bird watching:

…and then made bird feeders:

Saturday morning we broke camp and headed to Mesa Verde National Park:

Wild horses, just running across the road:

We had an excellent ranger-led tour of the ruins of Mesa Verde. Our guide was an exceptional storyteller who wove archeology and anthropology into our thought-provoking tour:

This site was called “Balcony House.” It was a smaller site, but also a smaller group which was nice:

These ruins date from about 700 years ago:

We saw the main site, “Cliff Palace,” from a distance during a short walk after our tour. Interesting side note: Mesa Verde is the only National Park that exists to preserve the works of humans.

There was a wild fire 10 years ago that took out a big chunk of the trees and vegetation. They say it will take a couple hundred years for everything to grow back.

It was pretty cloudy when we were there, but on a clear day you can see mountains 90 miles away. This point is above 8500 feet:

One of the more exotic sights of the Southwest: rain!

The Scion continues to be quite a trooper, despite the dented face full of mud and bugs:

On Mother’s Day, everyone got up early to make a killer breakfast while Amy was out running:

We had camped in the Rio Grande gorge the night before and got an interesting view after driving out of it. It looks like a big crack in the earth:

We stopped at the Taos Pueblo on Sunday afternoon:

This pueblo has been continuously inhabited by the native Red Willow people for over 1000 years.

We bought some bread from one of the local shops:

At another local shop with Esther, the owner. She, like most of the others here, has lived in this pueblo her entire life without any electricity or running water.

I was surprised to learn that the walls of these buildings are literally just mud and straw (I figured there was some sort of a curing process to make it weather resistant.) Esther explained that the reason these buildings are still standing is because they’ve been maintained by their inhabitants for 1000 years. Every September, they just pack on whatever mud the 50 days of rain per year have washed away. Amazing.

I was intrigued by their cemetery full of crosses. Esther explained that their beliefs are sort of a mash-up of their original native beliefs and the Catholicism that was “forced upon” them by the first Spanish explorers 500 years ago.

After leaving the pueblo, we stopped at Taos Cow for some all-natural ice cream:

This was just a cool overlook off of a bridge that crossed the Rio Grande. It’s a beautiful gorge and river, the only down side being you get that Duran Duran song stuck in your head.

And then we came to the Earthships of Taos, NM. This gets added to my list of favorite places.

These so-called earthships are homes made out of natural and recycled materials.

Solar and wind power, solar heating, and rain-water collection systems are just a few of the things that allow these homes to operate sustainably completely off-grid. It’s basically the RV lifestyle, but applied to a home. It was unanimous: we want one, and are going to explore this option for our next house.

Tires, cans and bottles are used as filler material when creating the cement walls:

Just think: turning this…

…into this:

This was just a cool old truck that was sitting on the premises:

We made our way to Santa Fe for the week. We intended to stay up in the mountains at a remote state park, but the internet was non-existant. So, we’re staying at a mostly vacant rodeo fairgrounds on the outskirts of town:

Not as scenic as the mountains, but I have GREAT internet. And with horses and cows right outside our RV, the girls are getting plenty of fresh air.

On Tuesday we left Alamogordo, NM and started our trek North. Along the way, we stopped at the Very Large Array about 50 miles west of Socorro (i.e. middle of nowhere, New Mexico.)

This array is a collection of 27 movable radio telescopes arranged in a “Y” pattern. By bunching up or fanning out the individual radio telescopes, scientists can get different resolution images from deep into space. This is the place used in the 1997 movie Contact (which we rented and watched later that evening.)

This was just a cool rock formation that we saw as we drove through El Malpais National Park and pulled off to take a closer look:

We reached Grants, NM by late afternoon on Tuesday, but the RV park we intended to stay at turned out to be rather scary. This was the only photo I was able to get as Amy sped away.

We found another place a few miles down the road that — believe it or not — was better than the previous RV park. Good enough for one night, anyway. (As an aside, I see this quite a bit in these podunk RV parks: RVs that don’t exactly look ready to hit the open road at a moment’s notice.)

The next day we drove a bit further and landed at Bluewater Lake State Park in Prewitt, NM. It was supposed to be really scenic, but it was merely ok (way better than the RV park, however.)

There was a nice lake where people would fish every evening:

There was also some reasonably good hiking not too far from our camp spot:

Our internet and phone service wasn’t very good, however. We drove back into Grants and crashed at the library on Thursday so both Amy and I could get some work done.

My girls are always glad to visit a new library.

On Saturday morning, we drove another 45 minutes northwest to Church Rock, NM. We parked the RV at a place called Red Rock Park and hopped in the car for a day of sightseeing.

The first stop was at the Zuni Pueblos, which is a community for the Zuni people. The brochure we read beforehand set an expectation of a vibrant community of Zuni artists. It was unfortunately not at all what we expected. In the few minutes we spent at this old mission, for example, we were approached twice by street vendors selling rather rudimentary handicrafts. As we drove around, we saw packs of dogs roaming the dirty, impoverished streets.

I felt like I was in another country, complete with the discomforts of being a foreigner on someone else’s land.

Unsure of what to do there, we didn’t stay long. We drove around in the “safety” of our car for a few minutes, and then left.

In hindsight, I’m a bit embarrassed by my reaction to being in Zuni-land. The people we encountered were quite kind, and both Amy and I feel our reaction to withdraw was a missed opportunity to engage with other human beings from a very different background.

But we did have other things that we wanted to see, namely El Morro National Monument:

One of the main attractions of El Morro are the centuries of carvings on the rock walls:

There are petroglyphs from Native Americans, and hundreds of inscriptions from travelers between 1605 and 1906.

It was also good hiking with some breathtaking views:

At the top of the mesa were some ruins dating back to 1275!

We made our way back to the RV just in time to catch the sun setting on Church Rock off in the distance. We vowed to do a hike the next morning.

As planned, we got up early (early for the girls and me — late for Amy) and made our way toward Church Rock.

We sort of made our own path, which meant scaling some pretty steep rock faces:

There were a few tense moments, but everyone made it up safely.

We didn’t make it all the way to the spires of Church Rock, but it was a good hike and climb nonetheless.

We see little lizards like this everywhere:

Evidence of how the desert is quite full of life:

I love the layers in these rocks and the patterns created by millennia of wind and water:

Off in the distance there is Shiprock, one of the landmarks of New Mexico. We wanted to see it up close, but we couldn’t find the road to get back there. Never saw any signs either. Bummer.

So, we went on to the Four Corners Monument where Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona meet:

Carrie and Em forcing me from Utah into Colorado (this was my first time in Utah). Natalie is behind Carrie doing a backbend and touching all four states:

According to Google Maps, the real “four corners” is here (about 20 feet away from the plaque):

There were several Navajo artist there selling jewelry, painting and other art (Natalie bought a bracelet):

We continued North into Colorado toward an RV park in the city of Cortez, CO (we needed to ensure good internet since I have a busy meeting schedule this week.) But on a whim, we drove on to a nearby National Forest campground to see what it was like. I’m so glad we did. Not only is the internet great here, we practically have the whole place to ourselves.

It’s hard to believe we went from mesas and desserts to mountains and pine trees in less than an hour today.

Amy spotted this little place up the hill across from our campground. In all of our travels so far, this is the closet thing we’ve seen to the type of house we’d like to call home. But we’ve still got time to figure that out.

Speaking of houses, our house in Indy is rented again! WOOHOO! We’re really excited about our new tenants. Unless they are just the nicest couple to ever run a meth lab, we are expecting another great house-rental experience.

I’ll end on a completely random note: this past week I shot my 10,000th photo of the trip.

After spending Monday in El Paso, TX helping our friends Jake and Melissa move, we moved on to a quiet little park in Alamogordo, NM. For the second week in a row, New Mexico has delivered the goods. It’s lovely here.

A beautiful sunset from atop the RV:

…and a beautiful sunrise from atop a nearby mountain the next morning. Before work and school started, Amy and I took a quick morning hike. Note how our campground below is in the shadow of the mountain even though it’s well after sunup.

That shadow creates a very unusual sunrise experience down at the campground. It seriously feels like the sun gets switched on like a light every morning. I timed it:

Fruit smoothies were a breakfast staple for us before this RV trip, but we unfortunately didn’t bring our blender with us. Melissa (the one we helped move) kindly donated her blender to us, so fruit smoothies are back!

There was some CRAZY wind midweek that stirred up the Tularosa Basin that our campground overlooks (White Sands, off in the distance, looked like a huge cloud rising up from the ground.) It made for an eerily beautiful sunset:

The next evening was much clearer, so we did a family hike up the same trail Amy and I took a few days earlier:

Towards the end of the week, the electrical box at our camping spot fizzled — not good on a 90-degree workday.

This worked out for our benefit, as we were able to upgrade to an unused “campground host” spot, which had one of the few sewer connections in the campground. (Our previous spot had no sewer connection, and that was causing some serious concern since the community dumping station was out of order. Our conservation abilities were being tested!)

I’m still not quite used to seeing cows grazing by the side of the road. It’s pretty common out here.

We’re close to White Sands Missile Range. We heard some explosions earlier in the week, and we’ve been told to expect some sonic booms starting tomorrow.

On Saturday we drove out to White Sands National Monument. We started with some sledding!

After we were done sledding, we put the sleds in the car and ventured deeper into the park.

Another fascinating example of critters adapting to their environment:

Taking a snack and water break under some scarce shade:

Sand angels!

These White Sands dunes are made of gypsum (the same stuff that’s in drywall), so when a plant’s roots secret moisture, it hardens the surrounding gypsum. Over time, the dune blows away, but the hardened foundation and the plant remain:

I absolutely loved this place. It’s 275 square miles of stark beauty. If it weren’t for Jake and Melissa needing help with their move, we would have missed this. This has been one of my favorite places, 2nd only to Death Valley.

After a late lunch, we drove up to the White Sands Missile Range visitors center. Of greatest interest to me were all of the artifacts related to the Manhattan Project and the detonation of the world’s first nuclear bomb at the Trinity Site in 1945.

Outside, it was a sobering display of mankind’s inclination to destroy itself. There is something mesmerizing about these doomsday devices set against a serene backdrop of natural beauty.

We’ve been repeatedly warned about rattlesnakes since we got to New Mexico, but this little guy is the only snake we’ve encountered so far. (However, we did see a good size snake on the road yesterday that had just gotten run over by a car…I don’t know if it was a rattler, but it was big.)

The hummingbird moths are fun to watch.

I’m not really into flowers, but these are everywhere out here and I think they are incredibly cool: a fiery clump of red pedals held up high by a stalk that looks like a medieval weapon. The other day, I saw a bumble bee impaled on one of those vicious thorns. How cool is that?!?

The moon is out at night now and casting shadows.

I have to use a long exposure to get my camera to record what my eyes naturally see. It really is this beautiful out here at night. Maybe there is something to that “Land of Enchantment” thing.

We made it back to New Mexico last week. I’ll stop short of calling it “enchanted” as this sign says, but Amy and I sure were glad to be there (Northern Texas was humid, and with the right cloud cover it felt way too similar to Indiana.)

Our spot for the week was at Brantley Lake State Park, a rather remote little place with nice, dry air and wide-open spaces. This is the sort of thing we like. We thought we were only going to have electric for the week (which means would have had to be ultra conservative with our water usage) but we got one of the few full hookup sites. (Whew!)

Every morning on top of a nearby tree, this bird would sing his little heart out. He sounds a little like R2-D2…take a listen.

There were some other cool birds too:

And lizards:

And jackrabbits the size of cats:

Being amongst nature has its down side, however. After sundown, the bugs come out, like those tiny Canadian soldiers (those things that look like mosquitos but don’t bite). We had to bust out the vacuum cleaner one night and literally vacuum the ceiling:

But nothing has been as maddening as these moths. I’m pretty sure they are hiding in various nooks and crannies in the RV because they appear out of nowhere every evening.

At first, we’d gently capture and lovingly release them, but after the first night it devolved into remorseless squishings. I wonder when we’ll have our first night of NOT seeing one (or twelve) of these things!

The pleasant weather combined with clear skies made for some wonderful stargazing. On three separate nights, we all climbed up on the roof of the RV to enjoy the view.

It was amazing (and the girls thought it was pretty cool being on the roof.)

Here are the girls helping make dinner – homemade noodles!

We ate outside a lot this week…our version of “eating out.” 🙂

I tried hard to sell our bikes over the last couple of months, but now Carrie and Emily are starting to enjoy them again. So, perhaps we’ll hang on to them. Here’s Carrie and me on a late afternoon bike ride, a little too much off the beaten path:

Saturday morning we hit the road and landed in the Guadalupe Mountains National Park, which put us back in Texas for the weekend.

It felt good to do some hiking again.

This whole area was underwater millions of years ago, so there are sea life fossils everywhere. Pretty weird considering it’s now a desert.

Our campsite was really just a parking lot, but it was way better than Walmart.

Here we are from this morning, all geared up for our hike in Slaughter Canyon, one of the many caves of Carlsbad National Park.

After a brief orientation, we met at the trailhead for a short half-mile hike to the cave entrance.

The rangers took it at a very slow pace (which actually made it seem way longer), but it did allow plenty of time to soak it all in.

More desert fossils of prehistoric sea life:

Finally at the cave entrance:

It was nice and cool inside.

It was nearly impossible to get any good photos since the hardhat LEDs were the only source of light.

Emily “on rope” scaling a slippery section:

At the farthest part of our cave hike (we hiked about a mile total inside the cave), the rangers had us turn off all lights and devices and experience a complete absence of light. It was cool.

Back in the 1950’s, Slaughter Canyon was mined for guano – something I had never heard of before today. It’s basically bat poop, and it makes good fertilizer. When you look at this stuff closely, you see what looks like little twigs mixed in. These “twigs” are actually skeletons of a long-extinct species of bat.

Our hike was a good 5 hours long, and after the trek back to the car we were all pretty hot (it was an almost-90 degree day). So we hung out at the air-conditioned Carlsbad Cavern National Park visitor center for a bit.

The girls and I were hiked out (Amy was fine) but it was easy enough to take an elevator down 750 feet for a leisurely stroll through Carlsbad Cavern.

This was a much different cave experience than Slaughter Canyon. This one had paved paths, handrails and museum-quality lighting.

We’re boondocking one last night here in the Guadalupe Mountains. Tomorrow morning we’re getting up bright and early and heading to El Paso, TX to help our friends Jake and Melissa move. Then it’s on to Alamogordo, NM for the week to see White Sands National Park.

Our last campground was right on the Texas/Oklahoma border, so Amy and the girls took a field trip into Oklahoma to see a local pioneer museum. I didn’t go (I needed to work) but it sounds like what this museum lacked in outdoor sign creativity they made up for inside with meaningful exhibits about pioneer life. (I’m just realizing that my family has been to a state that I have not been to yet!)

We broke camp mid last week and headed west to Bridgeport TX, which is about 50 miles northwest of Fort Worth. Along the way, Amy and I split up — I continued to the next campsite in the RV with Carrie and Natalie while Amy and Emily took a side trip to Love Field at Dallas-Fort Worth airport to do some plane-spotting:

These are just a few of the many photos of planes Emily took and identified: (Clockwise, starting from the top left) An AirBus A340, a Boeing 737, an AirBus A319, a Boeing 747 (aka “the whale”), an Embraer ERJ 145, and another Boeing 757. Emily is just a little fascinated with planes.

On Saturday we drove into Fort Worth to visit the Cowgirl Museum, which Natalie was pretty excited about. We didn’t know quite what to expect, but it was a pretty inspiring history of women in western entertainment, sports, art, and agriculture.

Natalie sitting on a saddle seat watching one of the museum movies about women in western films. (Yes, I believe that’s a woman gunslinger popping a cap in some poor dude. Go girl!)

After the Cowgirl Museum, we drove over to the Fort Worth Stockyard. These stockyards opened in the 1890s and became a hugely popular marketplace for Texas ranchers to sell their cattle for the next 90 years.

We stopped at M.L. Leddy’s handmade boot store. Amy picked up and looked at one pair of boots and I thought she told me they were $285, which sounded rather expensive to me. I just found out I misheard her: they were $1,285!

The boots, the hats…it all just struck me how “Texas” Texas really is:

For $5, you could sit on this longhorn to get your photo taken. That sounded like a pretty good deal at first, but it turns out they want you to pay them the $5.

One of the old buildings where cattle deals went down. In its heyday, about a million cattle per year would change hands here.

In the afternoons, they trot a herd of longhorns down the road. It’s just for show now, but this is how they used to bring in all the cattle to be bought and sold. Those horns sure make an impressive animal.

The girls trying some local $3 cupcakes:

Though today is Sunday, it was a school and work day (we’re traveling tomorrow so that will be the rest of our “weekend”). It was a rather overcast day and even rained hard last night, but the clouds completely disappeared by the end of the afternoon. Perfect weather for baseballs and mits.

We’re breaking camp early tomorrow and will drive for about 8 hours until we get to New Mexico. All I know about our next campground is that it’s electric-only (no water, no sewer), so that means we’ll be in water-conservation mode for the next several days.

It’s been a while since we’ve NOT had full hookups (we’ve gotten spoiled), so it will be interesting to see how we do. We’ll have to make sure everyone gets showers before we pull out of here.