Casita Rojita

  Monday we arrived at Big Bend National Park after a catch up visit in Marfa, Texas. In Marfa we also visited a restored frontier Army Fort where Buffalo Soldiers (with white officers) were stationed to police the frontier mostly against the Indians. Neither of us has visited Big Bend NP previously and quickly discovered it was well worth coming this far south. This big chunk of mountain stood over our campground in Big Bend. We watched the sun go down on it and we waited for the sun to come up over it.  In order to spend two nights in Big Ben NP we had to make two different reservations for two different camp sites.  To stay in NP during the pandemic only reservations are accepted.  Reservations for parks like Big Bend are made months ahead.  Traveling on a loose itinerary as we are has a tendency to exclude us from this process.  But once again local knowledge came through and we made two different reservations for single nights.   So after we moved...

  We left Phoenix last Sunday headed for the New Mexico border.  Since New Mexico had again been shut down due to 19 we had planned to get close to the Arizona/New Mexico border so we could start off Monday with a dash across the closed down state. The setting above was our last night in Arizona. Yes, those are purple prickly pears.  They are native to this part of the U.S. southwest and northern Mexico.  These were taken as we left Arizona but they have them here in Marfa, Texas.  Staying off the Interstates has been a real opportunity to find places that otherwise we would have flown right by and our first day in New Mexico was a case in point. We spent almost the entire first day of driving in New Mexico crossing the mountains getting us back to the Rio Grande valley.  Not many pictures, as no camera can capture what the eye can see.  We drove through the switch backs with sheer drops across the road from rock cliffs.  These dramatic scenes can...

  Tuesday this week we said good bye to Route 66.  It has been almost two months of scouring maps and our collection of books and apps as we worked to drive every bit of 66 that had not been obliterated by Interstate.  We decided not to follow 66 into California but rather visit some friends in Earp, California.  We crossed the Colorado river after following down it through Lake Havasu, didn’t stop to see a London Bridge to Earp, where Wyatt Earp did some mining and we had some friends.  This picture is of the many ducks that are either passing through or spending the winter on the Colorado River. From Earp, we headed to Joshua Tree National Park.  This is one of the newer National Parks and one that  neither of us had visited in our many years of National Parks visiting as kids ourselves and with our own children. We have not gotten reserving campsites down to a science even with all the apps that are supposed to make this a snap but we have gotten mo...

  We crossed the Continental Divide a couple of days ago. It is hard to believe that we could go this far west, we are in New Mexico but almost in Arizona before the water travels west to the Pacific rather then east to the Mississippi and the Atlantic.  This raven greeted us in the Painted Desert, our next stop on our westward journey. We headed into the Petrified Forest National Park. The northern part of this park is the Painted Desert.  This was our RV bench view as we ate lunch looking out on the Painted Desert.  As before, much of Route 66 is buried under Interstate 40.  There are few access roads and at least three times we started down an access road running next to the Interstate and had to return to the interstate entrance because the road had been blocked with a great pile of rocks to prevent outsiders from entering Indian lands. We did find this old Studebaker halfway through the park marking the old Route 66.  It may look rusty but it looks lik...

One of the disappointments of this wandering, especially here in the Southwest,  is the fact that all the Indian Pueblos and or towns are closed to non-residents(us).  These are the wonderful painted poles just one block off the main square in Santa Fe.  Much is not open and few folks are out.  Nothing that has any association with the state of New Mexico, by executive order of the Governor is open.  But it also means roads that otherwise would have gone across Indian territory are also closed.  This means we are spending lots of time on interstates. On our way from closed down Santa Fe to Taos we visited a little church in Chimayo.  Pilgrims from all over come here to be cured.  The dirt on the floor of an anteroom in this church is believed to cure all sorts of ills.  The room with a hole in the floor had all manor of crutches and canes hanging on the walls. It had a small village around that was closed but the chapel was open and quite pre...

  We have spent the past couple of days with a Peace Corp friend of Susie’s here in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  She lives near a large open space that follows the Rio Grand and is known for the wild animals that live there. But first to the presidential election.  Where were you when you heard that Joe Biden was to be our next president? This is where we were.  It is a five mile stretch of Route 66 that runs through the desert in eastern New Mexico.  This is reported to be the kind of terrain typical 66 travelers experienced in the 1930’s and 40’s.  We were motoring along at about 25 miles per hour when a news flash from the NYT came on Pan’s phone that Pennsylvania was in the Biden column.  Other then we had several more miles on this lovely road we both gave a big sigh of relief. Sunday we explored old town Albuquerque with Susie’s PC friend.  This is a part of a collection of statues depicting the Spanish settlement of Albuquerque.  During t...