Living Our Dream

Dallas to Albuquerque

One of the interesting things about staying at Hickory Creek Campground on Lewisville Lake in the Dallas area was the large number of wading birds that visited the lake. There would usually be at least a few birds around almost all the time during the day; but just about every morning for a short time just about the time the sun came up, there would be 20 or 30 great egrets and a few blue herons at the little inlet near where our site was. On the morning we left, Paul finally managed to catch a photo of a large group of the birds.



We finished packing, and took off for our next overnight stop at Copper Breaks State Park. Located about 12 miles south of the small town of Quanah, TX, Copper Breaks is an out-of-the-way state park that might be one of Texas' best kept secrets. We were there in the middle of the week, and the camping areas were empty except for us and the campground host. The photo below shows our site at Copper Breaks State Park.

 

Copper Breaks has paved roads, gravel pads, water and 50/30 amp electric hookups, tepee-like lean-to shelters, and widely spaced sites. There are hiking trails, an equestrian trail, and mountain bike trails. The campground is in the middle of nowhere (that's Zeller-speak for there isn't a Walmart nearby), and it was very quiet. Unfortunately, it was 90 degrees and we had to run the air so we couldn't enjoy the quiet.

About dusk, it had finally cooled off enough for us to go for a short walk. We were just in time to catch the sun dip below the junipers.

The park takes its name from the gray-green streaks of copper ore that run through the red rocks. Even in the waning light, the colors were very striking.

 

The next morning, we were on our way again for another one-night stop in Amarillo, TX, where we stayed at Oasis RV Resort. Oasis RV is a relatively new campground, and it is very well designed. The sites are fairly widely spaced and are completely paved with gravel between. Oasis is a member of Passport America, but the 50% discounts are temporarily suspended because they are offering a special $20 a night rate (their regular price is about $33 - the going rate for the area) to everyone to try to keep the campground as filled as they can after the high fuel prices last year and the poor economy this year. There are a lot of empty sites around us in the photo below because quite a few people had already left that morning.

 

From Amarillo, we drove about 5 hours to Albuquerque, NM. We will be spending a week at American RV Park. American RV has mostly pull-throughs with back-ins around the perimeter. Some of the pads are paved and some, like ours, are gravel and sand. The sites are a little close, but not too bad. American has full hookups including cable, and they have Wi-fi. Like most of the campgrounds in Albuquerque, American RV is located right along I-40, and there is some traffic noise. The photo below shows our site at American RV.

 

This is our first visit to Albuquerque, and there are a lot on our "want to see" list. We'll be sure to share what we find.

Taos Part I: Taos Pueblo

It was a little over a four hour drive from Durango to Taos. The drive took us over the San Juan Mountains at altitudes up to about 10,000 feet. The grades were long, but fairly gradual. We had to go slow on a couple of the climbs, but the motor home made it without too much strain.

We pulled into Monte Bello Rv Park by early afternoon and quickly got set up. The roads and sites are gravel, there are full hookups with 50 amp electric, and free Wi-Fi. There were no trees to interfere with our satellite dish.

There appeared to be three or four long-term residents in the campground. All but one of them, even the one with the older travel trailer painted lime green and turquoise, kept their sites pretty neat. Unfortunately, we were next to the one whose site was VERY cluttered. We just kept the shades drawn on that side of the motor home - that side got the hot, afternoon sun anyway. The distant views of the mountains across the sagebrush-covered desert, however, were gorgeous. Almost every evening, we were treated to a beautiful sunset.

The area around Taos is high desert and is located on the Taos Plateau at an altitude of around 7,000 feet. The La Sal Mountains to the northwest extract what little moisture is in the clouds before it gets to Taos. The altitude is similar to Yellowstone, but Taos is much farther south. With the temperatures in the 80s during the day and the sun beating down on the motor home, we had to run the air; but it cooled off to the 50s at night making for good sleeping.

About 10 miles northwest of Taos on our way in, we crossed the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge. The Rio Grande has its headwaters to the north in Colorado, then flows across the middle of New Mexico and on to Texas where it forms the border between Texas and Mexico.

The gorge, which runs through a good bit of northern New Mexico, is a rift valley formed by the movement of plates in the earth's crust. The river didn't form the valley, but the river followed the rift. The morning after we arrived in Taos, we drove about 5 miles from the campground back to the gorge to have a look. The bridge, which is shown in the photo below, was dedicated in 1965 and is 650 feet above the river. It is the third highest bridge in the U. S. behind the Royal Gorge Bridge (1,053 feet) over the Arkansas River in Colorado and the New River Bridge (876 feet) over the New River in West Virginia.

The view in the photo below is looking upstream toward Colorado. The Rio Grande Gorge is a recreational area known for hiking, climbing, and white water rafting.

While Paul was walking around looking for a good angle from which to photograph the bridge, he came across this collared lizard.

There is something we learned about Taos early on that anyone planning to visit needs to be aware of. Downtown Taos has a traffic problem on weekends, at least they did when we were there in the summer. Monday through Thursday, it was not bad; but the delays at traffic lights Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were looooong. Not only that, with an influx of tourists on the weekend, everyone seemed to drive very slowly trying to figure out where they wanted to go.

We have found guided tours to be very beneficial when visiting a new area that has a history as rich as Taos. We took guided tours aboard a van or trolley (which is really a small bus designed to look like an old-fashioned trolley) in Charleston, Savannah, and Saint Augustine and haven't been disappointed with any of them. We found the tours to be very informative with a good historical background of the area and a good overview of where things are located in the city. So we signed up for the morning tour with Historic Taos Trolley Tours.

The first thing we learned on the tour was about the mix of cultures in Taos - Pueblo Indian, Spanish, and northern Europeans (or Anglos as they are sometimes called), and a little about the history of how that mix came about.

The Native Americans were obviously there first having lived in the area for thousands of years. The Pueblo Indians share some of the same distant ancestry and cultural development as the Cliff Dwellers in Mesa Verde. The Pueblo Indians in Taos were likely aware of the Cliff Dwellers in Mesa Verde and possibly even carried on trade with them.

Spain sent explorers out of New Spain (Mexico) in 1540 to explore some of the vast territories they claimed in North America. The explorers followed the Rio Grande north and found a string of 19 pueblos along the river. They arrived at the northernmost pueblo in the Taos area in 1541. Pueblo is the Spanish word for village. Today, however, we tend to use the word interchangeably to mean both the village and the structure where the Puebloans live.

In the late 1500s and early 1600s, Spain established its rule in the New Mexico area. In 1680, however, the Pueblo Indians revolted against the Spaniards and drove them out. The Spanish returned in the early 1700s with more of an effort toward settlement than of acquisition and exploitation. When the Spanish converted the Indians to Catholicism, they didn't force the Indians to completely abandon their religious traditions. This resulted in greater acceptance of Catholic beliefs by the Indians and in the unique practices of Catholicism that exists in the area today.

Anglos began coming to the southwest in the early 1800s. The Sante Fe Trail was opened in the 1820s and was a trade route between Missouri and Santa Fe, which was part of Mexico at the time.

In 1846, the U. S. Army of the West used the Santa Fe Trail to enter New Mexico during the Mexican-American War. At the end of the war, Mexico ceded most of its territories in the southwest to the United States.

The trolley tour took us to Taos Pueblo, which is the oldest, continuously inhabited community in the U. S. Pueblo Indians have lived in this pueblo for at least the last 600, and possibly up to the last 1,000 years. We're not sure, because like the Cliff Dwellers at Mesa Verde, the Puebloans even today have no written language and no written history. The north and south pueblo, which are four and five-story, apartment-like structures, look much the same as they did when the Spanish first arrived in 1541. Only doors have been added. Entry originally would have been by means of ladders through holes in the roofs.

Although tradition does not permit electricity or running water at the pueblo, there are several families that live in the pueblo year round. However, most live in conventional houses on the reservation outside the pueblo walls and only occupy their pueblo houses during ceremonies. Many of the ground-floor rooms facing the front have been converted to shops where the Indians sell beautiful art, jewelry, crafts, etc.

The photo below shows the south pueblo...

...and here is closer view of the south pueblo from the right side.

The north pueblo is shown in the photo below.

The north pueblo was very photogenic with the sun on its face and Taos Mountain in the background.

 The pueblos are constructed of adobe, which is made up of clay, sand, straw, and water. Traditional adobe is mixed by bare feet. The core structure is made from adobe bricks, which are molded either by hand or in wooden molds, and then dried in the sun. The bricks are cemented together with adobe, then covered with a smooth coat of more adobe. Earlier Native American structures were probably made of handfuls or basketfuls of adobe instead of bricks with a smooth, outer coating of adobe. The outer coating must be renewed periodically. Walls are often several feet thick at the bottom in order to support the weight of the structure above. Roofs are supported by large timbers hauled down from the mountains.

Also in the village are the ruins of San Geronimo (Saint Jerome) Church. The church is surrounded by a cemetery. San Geronimo is the patron saint of the Pueblo.

The original church, which was built around 1619 by Spanish priests using Indian labor, was destroyed in the 1680 revolt. The second church, which was rebuilt on the same site and whose ruins we see today, was destroyed by the American Army in 1847 during the Spanish-American War.

The third San Geronimo Church is one of the newest buildings in the village having been constructed in 1850. About 90% of the Pueblo Indians are Catholic and the church is still in use today. However, Native American religious traditions are also an important part of Pueblo life and are integrated into their practice of Catholicism.

Interesting photos ops are everywhere at Taos Pueblo. Margery noticed the appealing angles, colors, and doorways and suggested Paul take the photo below.

 

The next photo is interesting with the cool, dappled shade.

We enjoyed our time at the Pueblo learning about the people who originally built it and who live in it today. In our next post, we will pass on some of what we learned about the Spanish and Anglo influences in Taos and take a look at its more recent history.

We try to travel on Mondays or Thursdays. We LOVE to sit around on Sundays, watching the NASCAR race and saying goodbye to the weekend warriors as they pull out. It wasn't that long ago when WE were weekend warriors and would say to each other, "If we didn't have to go home, where would you go from here?" Arriving on Thursdays gives us more of a choice of campsites before the campground begins to fill up on Friday. We pulled into Rose Valley RV Ranch in Silver City, NM (elevation 6,000 ft.) on Thursday. As the name suggests, Rose Valley RV Ranch has a western theme. The office and shower buildings are designed to look somewhat like storefronts from the Old West. There is a wooden water tower and old pieces of farm and ranch equipment sitting in some of the open spaces between sites. Although Rose Valley has some of the widest campsites we've seen at a private campground (most sites were at least 50' wide), there were also strategically-placed fences made from old barn wood and corrugated metal between sites. In addition to adding to the privacy, the fences also added to the rustic atmosphere. The campground is pretty quiet, although there was some minor traffic noise from US 180 (the main route into town) and from weed-whackers from the neighboring cemetery.

When we arrived in Silver City we were faced with hydraulic jack failure for a third time. This time the problem was the same as the first - one jack would not go down. From troubleshooting the previous failures, Paul could tell it was another burned out solenoid, the same as the cause of the first problem and a relatively complicated fix. A call to the manufacturer (HWH. Corp.) resulted in a very quick callback from someone who obviously had more authority than the usual tech reps that had assisted with the problems before. The person who called back was very upset that this was the third problem with their system and proposed replacement of all 4 solenoids as well as both rear jacks (all still under warranty). He went so far as to call ahead to our next stop and help schedule an appointment with a mobile repair service that would come to us. He would also air ship the parts. Although we were disappointed with a third jack failure, HWH really stepped up to the plate to try to remedy the situation once and for all. We were looking forward to what was, hopefully, going to be the final fix.

Silver City, bordering on the Continental Divide, was founded as a silver mining town. A tent city sprang up in 1870 with the discovery of silver nearby. Within a year, over 80 buildings had been constructed. Butch Cassidy and his gang spent time in Silver City and worked at a nearby ranch between robberies. Billy the Kid spent his early years in Silver City. We have found small, local museums to be very interesting, well-done, and worth the time. Silver City's museum, shown below, was no different.

We had read about the 55-foot-deep canyon that runs right through town. Between 1895 and 1906, floods gutted Main Street creating what is call the "Big Ditch." Margery was looking forward to seeing the effect this had on the town, turning some of the downtown buildings bass-ackwards: the storefronts--once facing Main Street--now face the ditch with access from the backside. However, as often occurs, things rarely look like what we imagine from a written description. Although it is now one of the strangest municipal parks ever created with picnic tables, walkways, and bridges in this deep arroyo, the "Big Ditch" was a disappointment...not at all what Margery had imagined. In fact, there are so many trees, it is hard to see the ditch at all. The main street of the downtown area has now moved one street to the west and the buildings have been either rebuilt or totally remodeled. The main street looks much like any Victorian/Southwest town of old. The "Big Ditch" is immediately behind the buildings to the right in the photo below.

On our way in to Silver City we passed an open-pit copper mine. This area is in the heart of the Central Mining District of New Mexico. There are several open-pit mines in the area, but the nearby Santa Rita Mine is one of the largest in the world. The Santa Rita Mine is owned by Phelps-Dodge and the pit is almost 1,500 feet deep and over a mile across. The photo below is from an observation point overlooking the pit.

From the earliest times the area attracted Native Americans who used naturally-occurring copper for ornaments, tools, and weapons. In the early 1800's the Spanish mined copper in this area and in 1853 ownership passed from Mexico to the United States as part of the Gadsden Purchase. The early copper and silver mines were underground mines, but open-pit copper mining began in the early 1900's.

Higher-grade copper ore is treated in a concentrator. The rock is crushed and processed from the naturally-occurring 0.6% copper to 25%. The concentrate is shipped by rail to a smelter in Arizona. Low-grade ore is treated by a solution-extraction-electroplating process. A weak acid solution is dripped through the ore and dissolves the copper. An electric current is then passed through the solution and the copper is electro-plated onto plates called cathodes.

One of the major problems with open-pit mining is all the over-burden that must be removed to get at the ore. Since 1910, more than 2 billion tons of material have been moved. The over-burden is stockpiled along with tailings (what remains after the ore is processed to remove copper). Phelps-Dodge has begun aggressive reclamation work at the nearby Tyrone mine.

They are redistributing stockpiles, constructing water-control channels, capping the area with soil, and mulching and seeding. They plan to move the reclamation project to the Santa Rita Mine in 2008.

About 40 miles north of Silver City is Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument. The Gila Cliff Dwellings are surrounded by the Gila National Forest and are on the edge of the Gila Wilderness. The Gila Wilderness is the nation's first wilderness area. The wilderness designation means the area will not be altered by the intrusion of roads or other evidence of human presence.

The Gila Cliff Dwellings are said to have been the home of a band of 40 to 60 Mogollon (pronounced muggy-own or moe-go-yone), an agricultural and deeply religious people from about 1280 to the early 1300's. There are 7 caves in the face of the cliff, but only 6 have evidence of human activity. The 7th is small and fairly inaccessible. In the caves are one and two-story stone structures.

It was a one-mile round trip up the path to the dwellings. Once again Margery was a trooper and made the hike up and back using the trekking poles.

And here we both are resting during the climb.

There's so much that we're not able to see because of the hike required to reach those off-the-beaten-path locales. However, it seems a mile is doable and maybe even farther if the trip is more level.

The volunteer interpreter at the entrance to the dwellings was interesting. After over 5 years of research and interpretation, he advanced the theory that these and other so-called cliff dwellings were not really dwellings at all, but were actually purely ceremonial sites. The Mogollon were agricultural and usually lived near riverbanks. Although the cliff would have provided good protection, the riverbank would have been a more logical choice for daily living and there is evidence of habitation from this time period along the nearby Gila River. Whether the Mogollon actually lived in the cliffs or on the banks of the river, they were attracted to this area by the reliable water supply of the Gila River. No one knows why they left. See Photo Album 018: New Mexico II for more pictures of the Gila Cliff dwellings and the Gila National Forest.

After a week in Silver City we moved on to Elephant Butte State Park at Elephant Butte Lake near Truth or Consequences, NM. Elephant Butte Lake is named for a butte that is said to look like an elephant. The butte is now in the middle of the lake which was created by a dam constructed across the Rio Grande River in 1916. The lake is about 40 miles long and has over 200 miles of shoreline. It is the largest lake in New Mexico.

The campsites are spacious and most have at least a partial view of the lake, although the lake is quite far from most of the developed RV sites.

Elephant Butte State Park is a very popular park, as we found out since we were there over Memorial Day weekend. The park was fairly quiet when we arrived on Thursday and again on Tuesday after the holiday, but it was a zoo over the weekend. Being the largest lake in New Mexico and being relatively close to Las Cruces, NM, Albuquerque, NM, and even El Paso, TX, it attracts large crowds. In addition to the developed campsites, dry camping is permitted on the beach. RVs were lined up end-to-end along the beach and tents were crammed in wherever they would fit. Even in the designated RV sites there were multiple families sharing sites. The 2 sites in front of us had 2 RVs (one on each site), 5 tents, at least 5 or 6 vehicles (it was hard to tell because they kept coming and going), at least 15 people (they kept coming and going, too), at least one motorboat, and one large pontoon boat. They left the pontoon boat in the water most of the weekend. That way they could use the trailer as a drying rack for all their towels and wet bathing suits. We were glad to see the holiday end.

The town of Truth or Consequences, NM (T or C for short) was named for the radio (and later TV) game show of the same name. In 1950 on the 10th anniversary of the Truth or Consequences radio program, radio and TV producer Ralph Edwards (1913-2005) said he wished some town liked the game show enough to change its name to Truth or Consequences. Hot Springs, NM (as it was known then) heard Ralph's proposal and decided in a special election (1,294 for, 295 against) to change its name to try to take advantage of the publicity to increase its tourist activity. For many years, Ralph Edwards and his Hollywood friends came back to T or C to celebrate the anniversary of the name change.

The mobile RV repair service showed up bright and early the morning after we arrived and completed the repairs to our jacks in a little over 2 hours. The jacks now work better than when they were new, so we hope this is the end of the story on the jacks.

We spent our time at Elephant Butte working on some projects around the motor home and relaxing. Paul built a small bookshelf to take advantage of some unused space between two cabinets in the motor home.

He also climbed up on the roof and cleaned the outside of the vent covers. The other thing we did was to work on our itinerary for the summer. Margery plotted a number of possible travel routes, calculated travel times, and researched possible campgrounds. For the near term, we will be heading for the Grand Canyon and will then tour southern Utah and Colorado.

Our next stop was Bluewater Lake State Park located about halfway between Grants, NM and Gallup, NM. The campground is fairly remote with 30 amp electricity on only 14 out of 149 campsites. Bluewater Lake is a relatively small lake, although they say you can water ski. The campground filled up on the weekend, but we didn't see many with boats. All in all, it's relatively quiet and not a bad spot for a stopover.

Some of the sites could use a little fresh gravel and fewer weeds. Most of the sites and the interior roads are lined with large rocks so you need to be careful backing and maneuvering some of the tighter turns. There are several Native American sites and pueblo ruins in the area, but they are a fair drive from Bluewater Lake so we decided to just spend our time relaxing and enjoying the clear New Mexico skies.

Our next stop will be Flagstaff, AZ. We're meeting family to explore the Grand Canyon and Sedona area together.