The past ten days have been both exciting and hectic: Exciting in that we are exploring a completely new part of the country: Hectic because a couple things have quit working.
First the exciting part: We have been exploring the high country in north eastern Arizona, the corner of Utah and the south of Colorado. Now we are headed down into northern New Mexico to Santa Fe. We spent a whole day exploring Red Rock State Park near Sedona, AZ. We took the Naturalist lead hike to see Jack and Helen’s little cabin on the hill. It is called Apache Fires. Jack Frye was the TWA magnate. He ran around with the likes of the Rothchilds and Howard Hughes. Their little cabin on the hill was over 4,000 sq ft.
From there we went on a search for ancient cultures. First stop was Homolovi State Park near Winslow, AZ. These people dug their homes into the ground and farmed the shores of the Little Colorado River. After two days of wind and dust we migrated northward to Canyon de Chelly National Monument, (pronounced de shay.) They have a nice free campground where we dropped our shop trailer and took Arcturus on a tour of both rims of the canyon. This canyon has incredible sheer cliff walls some 600 to 700 feet high and a flat bottom that the modern Navajo farm. The ancient Pueblo culture lived in cliff dwellings and we got some good views of them from the overlooks.
Next we routed ourselves through the “Four Corners” and into Cortez, CO. This was the scene of our hectic time. The kitchen sink dropped away from the counter top and we had to get glue to stick it back together. Also the water pump is failing and it took a lot of creative thinking to get it to prime again. We ordered a new pump and will pick it up General Delivery on Friday in Espanola, NM.
Because of length restrictions we couldn’t tour Mesa Verde National Park with Arcturus. Instead we did a weekend rental at Enterprise and toured the park in a Nissan Sentra. There are an incredible 4000 or so ancient villages in Mesa Verde. Some 600 of them are cliff dwellings. We signed on for a ranger lead tour of Cliff Palace and climbed into the ruin and were allowed to peek inside the buildings. We hiked to a variety of mesa top pueblos and toured many more cliff dwellings with the binoculars. Our highest hike was to the Park Point Overlook at 8,072 feet. We discovered that there is not much oxygen in the air at that elevation.
Recently we have changed our ancient cultures interests for historic railroads. We toured the museum in Durango CO. The three Durango and Silverton steamers had already left by the time we arrived but we did get to see a couple roundhouse queens. Next day we stopped in Chama, NM to visit the Cumbres & Toltec Narrow Gauge Railroad. The rolling stock is marked Denver and Rio Grande and the rails are part of the original D&RG. The museum was open but the trains are not scheduled to start until Memorial weekend. They are rushing to replace two burned out trestles, and they have yet to get into the pass and clear out four feet of snow. It could be an exciting week for them.
We are holed up at the Corps of Engineers Park at Abiquiu Lake outside of Espanola, NM. It is a nice park with electricity and water and all. One defect, however, no cell service and no internet. We hike up the hill about a quarter of a mile and can get phone service, but I never did get the internet to work. I will ship this blog off when we get back to civilization. Big holiday weekends are always a problem for us full-timers. The campsites reserve full months in advance. We will probably hang out on the back parking lot at one of the tribal casinos around Espanola until Tuesday.
We are now in Espanola as planned. The new pump was waiting at the Post Office and I am planning the installation for the next time the tank is mostly empty. We are camped at the Ohkay Casino and Resort. All dry camping but it is better, (quieter,) than WalMart.

Below are some photos of our travels, click on the photos to see larger versions.
Love to all from New Mexico, Gary and Judy