Casita Rojita

  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...

  This past week has been something this fellow is reflecting.  We have been putting off corresponding as we all were on pins and needles.  We spent this pre-election week with Pan’s brother in San Antonio.  We stayed through Election Day leaving the next day to head back up to Route 66 in the Texas panhandle.  This fellow is just one of the many bails of hay decorated for Halloween.   We continued to find many of the highlights on 66 closed. We worked hard to find the old Route under the ravages of Interstate 40. We spend a lot of time on the access roads for the Interstate. This Museum which was just about the only feature in this town was closed but those balls looking like trees are really barbed wire. We ran into areas that had been devastated by the same ice storm that we had experienced in Oklahoma City. This armadillo moved out of a campsite for us. It was an area were grasslands were being restored. This campground  had broken trees and no ser...

A carving from the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa. We left Oklahoma City behind on Wednesday with the sad sight of many broken trees and power lines coated with ice.  Somewhere about an hour and a half south the temperature made it above 32.  We drove through and past many a ranch town as we headed to Dallas and a visit with some Peace Corp friends of Pan’s in Bolivia.  We spent two days in Dallas catching up with Bill and M’Lou as they tried to live their new 19 life. Since the cold on the westward bound Route 66 was still snow and ice we opted to continue south to San Antonio where Pan’s brother lives.  We both have several Peace Corp friends in San Antonio and thought it would be a good place to wait out the storm.   As we traveled across the hill country of Texas on our way to San Antonio the sun was out and the old solar panels were just churning out the electricity. We made the decision early on the we would not travel on interstates and have been able to stick...