7-30-2018 Bloomfield, NM

Often, we choose to travel the small back roads rather than the freeways and in this case, leaving Santa Fe, we wound up in Bloomfield in the NW corner of New Mexico.  It is always a more scenic drive and the mountains and red rock formations make New Mexico a beautiful state.  Steep and dippy, Bee struggled, but beautiful.

There have been human inhabitants here for thousands of years.  The tribes were farmers, hunters and gatherers living near the San Juan River for survival.  Relics of their existence have been found, spear tips, pottery and the like.  The area was abandoned mysteriously and it is supposed that drought was the reason.  In the 1700s and 1800s, Indian Tribes, the Spanish and Mexicans occupied the area and expeditions passed through trying to find routes to California.  In 1956, a project was initiated to dam the San Juan River.  Over 6 years, an earthen dam was constructed more than 400 feet tall and ¾ mile long.  The reservoir behind the Navajo Dam began to fill and again, two small towns were obliterated, Rosa and Los Arboles.  But the reservoir was a blessing.  At last, controlled irrigation and thriving agriculture became possible and electricity from hydroelectric power became available far and wide.  The reservoir, with a surface area of more than 15,000 acres, is now a recreational area for humans as well as a winter habitat for such species as bald eagles.

Earthen Navajo Dam

Navajo Lake

You can drive on dam.  This is the view
of the San Juan River on the downside.

As I said, agriculture was a big benefactor of the dam and the grapevines are doing very well at the Wines of the San Juan Winery.  After touring the dam, a stop at their tasting room was obvious.  It has a pretty seating area on an outdoor patio paved with flagstone, with tables, big stuffed chairs and a gazebo.  Marcia, who poured the sips of wine, hails from Colby, WI and her son-in law is from Wausau.  We narrowed our selection down and came away with a few very nice bottles of wine.  What a treat!

Lindy, Marcia and Roberto

Gazebo at Wines of the San Juan Winery

There are a number of ruins in this area that date back several thousand years.  Some have been excavated to a degree and what are known as pot hunters (collectors of valuable relics aka looters) have defaced and damaged the ancient architects’ and artisans’ work.  In the mid-1800s, George Salmon (The “L” is pronounced.) moved to this area from Indiana.  He homesteaded the land adjacent to the ruins of the pueblo constructed by the Chaco (aka Anasazi) tribe and later occupied by the Mesa Verde tribe.  George and his son, Peter, protected the ruins from the ravages of the looters so that today, we can tour the Salmon Ruins.

George Salmon's homestead from
the mid-1800s

Rob at the Salmon Ruins

Ladel found at the Aztec Ruins

We were curious about the Aztec Ruins, thinking (wrongly) that the Aztecs of Mexico had migrated up this far.  We learned that the humans were not Aztecs, they were ancestral Pueblo people.  It is called Aztec Ruins because the town nearby is Aztec, NM.  It took the tribe 30 years to build this expansive pueblo.  They hauled rocks from 3 miles away and monstrous ponderosa logs for the roof beams from 50 miles away, one at a time.  The area of the village is more than 300 acres and much of it has not been excavated.  The feds took over this land and it is now a National Monument and their reasoning is twofold.  First, the walls of the structures begin to tumble once the support of the earth that covers them has been removed.  But more importantly, there are many graves beneath and disturbing or excavating them seems a violation of the final spiritual resting place of the tribesmen.  Today’s Pueblo people consider any further excavation to be a sacrilege.  And so we explored what we could.  In the large house there are more than 500 rooms that are 3 stories tall.  Roof beams and the cross-members are still intact, made of timbers that are centuries old.  This main building was not occupied, it is thought.  It was used for storage and burials.  There are as many as 10 kivas, what I would call chapels, circular structures where political and religious ceremonies were held.  The Pueblo people occupied the village for about 200 years and then mysteriously vanished leaving the village completely intact.  The Pueblos of today think that the people moved on because it was their spiritual destiny:  “To leave a footprint.”  My theory:  They said, “It’s hotter than Hell, here.  This sucks.  Let’s go find a Hyatt with a pool.”

Lots of kivas

Lindy standing before  kiva.  Behind
me are 3-story walls.

7-26-2018 Santa Fe, NM

View out the cockpit window of Bee

Looking down the street
at the hail storm

It was a comfortable short drive from Taos to Santa Fe, a town that we really kinda like.  We arrived at the RV park just in time for the afternoon squall and it was a storm on roller skates.  High winds, thunder, lightning, rain and hail in buckets hammering on our roof and making confetti out of the bathroom skylight.  The rest of the night, it rained and hailed IN the bathroom, which was strewn with beach towels, the only real option at that point.  So OK, God had set the agenda for the following day, preferably in the morning before the daily afternoon squall.  As luck would have it, the RV parts store carries the exact skylight we needed and by 10:30 AM, it was in place and all is well.

The casualty:  the bathroom skylight

By the way, after we left Fountain, CO it was hit by a near gale.  The mud slides took out the road that we drove into the mountains to visit Vicki and Bob.  Vicki sent us a picture of people shoveling 6 inches of hail off of the sidewalks.  The good karma gods were watching out for us because we escaped just in time.  The locals were not so fortunate.  What a mess!  Time to gear up to evacuate “Monsoon Alley,” the sooner the better!

Administrative duties were on the schedule for some of the time in Santa Fe but there is always time to explore a little.  I could not learn much about Camel Rock except that it looks a lot like a camel.  In 2017, his nose broke off but he still looks a lot like a camel.  He sits on the Tesuque Pueblo land and it may be that he had some spiritual significance but I could not learn much about it.

Picture of Camel Rock taken before 2017
plagiarized from the web.  He has his nose.

My picture.  Camel Rock with a nosectomy

On to what I consider the highlight of the day:  The Bandelier National Monument.  It is named for Adolph Bandelier, a research anthropologist who tramped all over the west studying the culture of native western people.  He was guided by the Cochiti tribesmen to their ancestral homes in Frijoles Canyon.  They lived, 11,000 years ago, in caves on the sheer cliffs, caves that were carved out of the soft volcanic rock by the wind and the rain.  (The volcanos, two of them that occurred a few million years ago, were 600 times the intensity of Mr. St. Helens and left behind soft volcanic rock 1,000 ft. deep, called “tuff.”  The tuff from these volcanos has been found as far away from this location as Nebraska, Iowa and Texas.)  The village itself in the canyon was a circular affair with many rooms and a courtyard and three kivas, circular rock-lined pits in the ground where political and religious ceremonies were held.  Many of the citizens lived in the caves up in the cliffs where it was cooler, though, accessible by paths and ladders.  They were hunters and gatherers, living from the generosity of the land.  It was a 2 mile path for us and we did it, including the ladders into the caves.  Some were actually suites where a person can stand up, walk into adjacent rooms and look out through naturally-formed windows.  The ceilings are charred black.  We learned that they did this on purpose.  It baked the dusty silicon sand into a hard layer that protected the cave from being filled with an incessant sand dune.  An enterprising bunch, these Indians of 11,000 years ago.

Porous "tuff" cliffs.  The Indians lived
in the holes (which are actually caves)
11,000 years ago.

Caves with ladder (ladder is not original equipment)

Remnants of the village

Scientists' rendering of what the village
may have looked like when
it was occupied

Rob and Lindy in the cave

Lindy looking out the bedroom window

The Bradbury Museum is in the heart of Los Alamos.  I thought Los Alamos would be some kind of museum of bunkers, you know, “This is where Oppenheimer slept,” kind of thing.  But it was nothing like that.  There is a visitor center and a kind of museum and science center where kids can push buttons to challenge various experiments.  Not exactly what we were expecting and pretty chaotic in its presentation.  We learned a lot from reading the endless plaques, miles of them, but after a while we were burned out.  However, there's this:  Los Alamos has a population of 18,000, 10,000 of whom work at the Los Alamos National Laboratory which has one of the highest concentrations of PhDs in the world.  So if you are interested in living in a geeky town full of Sheldon Coopers, this is the place for you!

We thought we’d have the pleasure of experiencing the Spanish and Mexican cuisine of Santa Fe but, alas, the vicious squalls kept us in lock-up in Bee.  Time to get out of here.

7-23-2018 Taos, New Mexico Part II

A bit about adobe:  It is made from clay-like dirt, straw and water.  Once the mud is the right consistency, it is poured into square wooden forms and left to bake in the sun to make bricks.  The bricks are laid with mortar between them made from the same mixture.  After the adobe walls are completely dried, a kind of paste is smeared over them that looks a lot like stucco and is tan or reddish in color.  It dries, cracks and flakes off and has to be redone about once a year.

Exposed adobe bricks of old
San Geronimo Church bell tower

Interesting that, as I have learned some facts over the years of travel, on this trip I have made a few mental connections.  On one of our trips we toured the boneyard at Davis-Monthan AFB where thousands of aircraft are parked and left to die.  The guide explained that Tuscon was chosen because the ground is hard, like rock, and they don’t have to pave parking spots with concrete.  The hard material is called “caliche.”  He told us that if you want to plant flowers in Tuscon, you have to dig the hole with a stick of dynamite.  Well, I remembered that word “caliche,” and it was used again at The Taos Pueblo.  The material that is smeared on some of the walls that looks like white stucco is a mix of caliche and water.  They use this material when they want to brighten the walls and perhaps bring more light into the rooms in the pueblo.  The new San Geronimo Church has a white arch of this material.

On another trip years back, we went to visit Bent’s Old Fort near La Junta, CO.  That fort (a replica) was built in 1833 by William and Charles Bent and it was a major stopover point for rest and replenishment of supplies by travelers on the trails as well as a major trading arena.  We had learned that Charles Bent had been appointed governor of the New Mexico territory and that he had been murdered.  At The Taos Pueblo, the territorial governor was unpopular among the Pueblo Indians because he was trying to impose American standards on them and they didn’t like it.  They naturally preferred their own customs and mores.  There was a revolt and during that attack, the governor (Charles Bent) was murdered, scalped alive.  (I kept thinking, “Charles Bent, I’ve heard that name before.”  Ah!  The connection:  Bent’s Old Fort!)  As a result of Bent’s murder, the US Army geared up and attacked the Pueblos and destroyed the old San Geronimo Church on the pueblo with cannon fire.  Hundreds of women and children who were huddled inside were massacred.  End of revolt, start of peaceful negotiations.

The city of Taos is encircled by a highway and the 87 mile drive is named the “Enchanted Circle.”  It takes quite a while to complete this drive because there are so many places to stop and look. 

 Lt.Victor David Westphall III
fallen May 22, 1968 in Viet Nam

The first stop, The Viet Nam Veterans Memorial, took more than an hour.  The memorial was built by Dr. Victor and Jeanne Westphall.  They had purchased 84 acres of land near Angel Fire ski area and had intended to build a resort.  But when their son, David, a Marine lieutenant, was suddenly killed in action in Viet Nam in 1968, their plans changed.  They began the construction of the first memorial for Viet Nam vets in honor of their fallen son and the 15 Marines who died with him in an ambush at Con Thein.  It was not popular to build a Viet Nam memorial back in those days as the war grew increasingly unpopular but the Westphalls persevered and now, the chapel has grown into a visitor center, museum and soon, a military cemetery.  High up on a breezy hill, the memorial is quiet, thoughtful and sad.  It gave us pause to whisper a small prayer of thanks to honor our own friends and family who struggled in the jungles of Viet Nam, some who died shortly after their return from cancer due to agent orange, some who did not return at all and others who returned with permanent emotional and physical scars.

Huey Viking Surprise on the memorial grounds

Sculpture to honor Viet Nam POWs

Westphall Viet Nam Memorial Chapel

Eagle Nest Lake on the
"Enchanted Circle"

White stork at Eagle Nest Lake

We stopped next at Eagle Nest Lake, a small alpine lake where many come to fish including some big white storks.  Then, we grabbed an early dinner at the Red River Brewing Co in Red River, NM, elevation 9,000 ft.  The “Enchanted Circle” is majestic, the scenery breathtaking and a must if visiting Taos.

7-22-2018 Taos, New Mexico Part I

Little Bee on the steep roads to Taos

Pretty view on the road to Taos

You’ve probably wondered about the origin of the word, “Taos.”  Me, too.  Adjacent to the city of Taos lay the sovereign nation of the Pueblo tribe who live and thrive on more than 100,000 acres of land.  The tribe called themselves The Tao people.  “Tao” is their word for “red willow,” a plant that grows abundantly on the land and which plays a major part in the lives of the Indians from weaving to medicinal purposes.  So they referred to themselves as “The People of the Red Willow,” or “Tao.”  When the Spanish came along, they put an “s” on the word to make it plural:  “The Taos live over there.”  The word stuck for the town but the tribe became known as the Pueblo tribe.  “Pueblo” also has several applications.  The Pueblo Indians live in pueblos (homes) in their pueblo (village) on their land, The Pueblo National Forest.  The culture and some of the structures are more than 1,000 years old and are inhabited to this day by descendants of the original natives.

North pueblo (village)

Notably, they had no doors or windows on the ground floor of the pueblos and entered the residence by means of ladders for the sake of security.  There is no electricity nor running water.  Water is carried from the Red Willow Creek which is supplied by the sacred Blue Lake.  There are ovens scattered throughout the pueblo, some shared and some attached to individual dwellings.  The oven, “horno,” is made of adobe and each morning, the women start a wood fire in it and continue to stoke it until the desired temperature is reached.  Then the wood and ash are cleared out of the oven and it is ready for baking.  Sometimes, the horno is used to smoke or dry meats and vegetables but it is mostly used for breads such as blue corn flatbread which we purchased at the tiny bakery.

Our guide, Diana, explains the use of the "horno" next to her.
(The "h" is silent)

Teddy Roosevelt confiscated the land of the Pueblos in 1909 and declared the area a national preserve.  In 1970, Richard Nixon returned the land to the Indians and it is now their private reserve with their own customs and rule of law.  One of their rules involves their language, Tiwa.  It is not written, one cannot study the spelling or the grammar.  Tiwa is only learned by speaking and hearing it which means that you must live in the pueblo which you cannot do unless you are authentically Pueblo, 50% or more by blood.  (The Cherokee do not abide the 50% rule anymore.  If you have one molecule of Cherokee in your body, you are Cherokee.  Which explains why Elizabeth “Tonto” Warren chose to declare herself Cherokee.  Nothing to prove.  Hard to find that one molecule.)

The remains of old San Geronimo Church on the pueblo,
destroyed by theUS Army after the murder
of the NM Territorial governor

New San Geronimo Church built on the pueblo

Front of La Hacienda de los Martinez

Severino Martinez was an enterprising and ambitious fellow.  He was born in the mid-1700s in Mexico and married Maria in 1787.  He moved his wife and six children to Taos and was a successful merchant, trader and rancher on five acres of land he had purchased.  The original building was small but as he became more and more successful, especially in the textile trade, the homestead grew.  He employed Navajo and Ute workers to help with goats, sheep, burros and horses and raised many vegetables.  Maria managed 30 servants who helped run the place and also made fine woven and knitted goods from wool and leather.  The Hacienda de los Martinez, luxurious living quarters for its time, grew to 21 rooms built around 2 interior courtyards.  Valuable livestock could be herded through the large gates into the interior courtyards for security during Indian raids.  I love the great big kitchen (cocina).  The fireplace in the corner produced hot coals which were shoveled out onto the shelf where pots were placed upon them.  Smoke was drawn out through the flue above the fireplace.  Above the pots, a deck strewn with blankets and hides became quite warm from the heat radiating upward and these were the youngsters’ bunk beds.  The thick adobe walls kept the hacienda cool in the heat of summer and warm in the winter.  Señor Martinez left the hacienda, intact, to his six children and it stayed in the family for a while but then was sold.  It fell into disrepair but was salvaged and restored by 1980.  It is now an open-air museum where one can step in and out of every room to get a real feel for what life was like on the hacienda in the 1800s.

Front courtyard of the hacienda with well

Rob in the trading and bartering room

Cool kitchen!  The kids slept on the bunk behind my
head.  The baby slept in the suspended cradle.

Back in town, there is a fiesta happening on the plaza.  We visited the craft booths and then found a place on an upper deck to have a margarita, listen to the music and watch the dancers.  The end of a nice day in Taos.

At the fiesta - the little girl in red is 3 years old

7-18-2018 Colorado Springs, CO

Leaving Wyoming behind, next on the agenda was visiting Colorado Springs.  Friends we met on the pickleball court, Vicki and Bob, live in Florissant, about 50 miles distant and it was necessary to party with them for an overnight.  There wasn’t a remote possibility that Bee would make it up the grades and over the divide to their home so we camped in Colorado Springs, threw together an overnight bag and launched mostly upward in the Jeepster.  Our friends have a beautiful home where we sat on the deck that overlooks the valley and the mountain peaks on the horizon. 

View from Vicki and Bob's deck

It is quite remote and most of their company is furry:  deer, coyotes, bears and the occasional skunk.  We learned that one never leaves fresh-baked blueberry muffins to cool on the kitchen counter.  The neighbor recounts that a bear broke the screens and windows, entered the kitchen, devoured the muffins and then, apparently quite satisfied, left.  Vicki and Bob like to keep hummingbird feeders on their deck.  However, at times, the bears like to drink that refreshing sugar water.  Fortunately, these are black bears, they don’t eat humans that much.

No. 3 engine of the CCVNGRR

Abandoned dried up mine

In the morning, Vicki and Bob took us to the interesting historic gold mining town of Cripple Creek which was established in the late 1800s.  In 1890, Robert Womack discovered an enormous gold vein on his claim.  He was so happy that he went on a 3-day bender and sold his property for $500 and a couple cases of whiskey and didn’t remember diddly.  The lucky purchasers subsequently pulled multi-millions of dollars’ worth of gold from his mine and Dumbshit Robert himself died penniless.

Vicki, Bob, Rob and Lindy

Naturally, Cripple Creek was completely destroyed by fire at the turn of the century.  The town was rebuilt of brick by 1924 and the miners continued to pull gold from the mines as the population of Cripple Creek exploded to 50,000 people.  The Cripple Creek & Victor Narrow Gauge Railroad played an important part in the mining operations and it still runs on a short 4-mile tour so we jumped on.  It took us past many prospector holes and mines along the way, some still active and others dried up and abandoned.  The entire town is on the historic landmark registry and the beautiful old buildings are now casinos, saloons, cafes, boutiques and antique shops except for the town’s requisite whorehouse, er, “parlour house,” which is still standing and restored.

The "Parlour House" in Cripple Creek

After a fun 24-hour visit, we bid farewell to our friends and made our way back down to the flatlands to dine at Edelweiss, a wonderful authentic German restaurant where the wienerschnitzel and sauerbraten are fresh and hot and the German beers and wines are cold. 

The next day, the goal was to pay a visit to the Air Force Academy.  There was not much to see, here, understandably, as the academy was established in 1954 running about 150 years behind West Point.  The Barry Goldwater Visitor Center offers information on how the Cadets are trained and disciplined.  At a viewpoint, we could see the beautiful chapel and the Falcons football stadium (where my nephew Mike played for 4 years, yay!).  The Air Force is pretty secretive and the Cadet areas and campus are off limits, which is fine.  If it’s supposed to be classified then I don’t want to know.  After we left, we found a lookout along the freeway that parallels the aircraft runways.  Usually, there are gliders being pulled up and the Air Force sky divers’ drop zone is nearby but because it is mid-Summer, there wasn’t much activity here either.

B 52D on display at the AF Academy

Nose art and bomb count
This plane has shot down two MIGs

Cadet Uniforms

Falcons Stadium

Yay, go Falcons!

The day ended with a lazy cocktail hour followed by a bbq’d rib eye steak from the Butcher Block in Laramie that was so tender it could be cut with the side of the fork.  Life is good.  Tomorrow, on to 4 nights in Taos, NM, a place neither of us have seen yet, so bring it!

7-14-2018 Laramie, WY Part III

Jacques La Ramee was a fur trapper, trader, mountain man and explorer.  He was born in Quebec in 1784 and wound up in the mountainous west of the USA.  His skills as a fur trader and trapper were widely known and in demand, apparently, because he was employed by John Jacob Astor’s fur trading company among others.  He was very good at negotiations and befriended many Indian tribes and became the spokesman for the free trappers.  On one fur trapping expedition in 1821, he disappeared and was never seen alive again.  His last name has been spelled many different ways:  La Rami, La Ramie and Laramie.  After this famed mountain man are named the city of Laramie, Laramie River, Laramie Mountain, Laramie County and Fort Laramie.

St. Matthews Episcopal Cathedral

In 1868, Edward Ivinson decided to take one of the few passenger trains there were at the time to California.  En route, the train paused in Cheyenne.  For some reason, he thought the town of Laramie, nearby, had huge potential.  He was joined in Laramie by his wife and they set out to develop the town.  He was a business man and soon became a successful banker and later the mayor.  Jane was a teacher and her classroom was the back of their dry goods store.  The Ivinsons’ zealous work is responsible for the building of St. Matthew’s Cathedral, the hospital and a home for elderly women in Laramie.  In 1882, they built their own private mansion which Edward donated to the church upon his death in 1928.  It fell into disrepair and was rescued from demolition in 1972.  After it was restored, it became the Laramie Plains Museum.  It is a stately monument and home of valuable beautiful artifacts from that era.

Ivinson Mansion, now the Laramie Plains Museum

1929 Caterpillar tractor drives in the parade

Today is parade day.  We had a breakfast burrito, green chili and a bloody mary at the Elks Lodge and then found a front row seat in the shade on the parade route.  As usual, the townsfolk came out with their bragging rights in full array:  bands, floats, hay wagons pulled by old tractors and dozens of horses.  It was quite a gala event and it seems to me that every person in Wyoming was present.

Tiny miniature ponies.  Aren't they cute?

Typical horse a buggy float in the parade

The chili cook off was next.  Up and down the street we went from one pot to the next, testing each and every one and cleansing our palate with beer.  The warm Summer brings everyone out of their long underwear and the crowd was in full party mode.  We did finally narrow our favorite chilis down to two and it ended up in a tie.  Voting takes place by dropping dollar bills in the competitors’ jars and Rob dropped his final vote in one jar and I dropped mine in another.  Of course, we dropped lots of additional dollars along the way, all in the spirit of fun.  The bands played, the artists displayed their crafts and brother and sister John and Jessie pulled us around in a buggy.

 

The chili chefs-these chefs added HOT chiles!

John, Lindy and Jessie

Chili judges

Rob on chili cook-off row

Finally, at 7PM, it was rodeo time.  (We were going to go last night but instead we were held captive in Bee by lightning, thunder, wind, rain and hail.)  I’ll say we stood out a bit in our shorts and sandals from the grass roots locals who were all in jeans, boots and cowboy hats.  The words to a full-throated salute to Old Glory was sung even by tiny children and warmed me to the core.  The competition was, to my untrained eye, sophisticated and brutal.  I don’t know how the scoring can be so finely evaluated except by years of training and experience.  The horsemen and horsewomen range from children to retired school teachers, some of the talented having earned, in total, more than $1M in competitions.  The body blows they endure from calves, broncos and bulls are breathtaking.  Six year old boys and girls compete in mutton busting.  The child sits on a sheep to see how long he can hang on.  There are no couch potatoes on display at the rodeo.

On the right, the little guy salutes the flag

Old Glory-beautiful!

Bareback

Steer wrestling - this fellow is a retired teacher

Saddle bronc riding

Team roping

It was a long day for us old timers.  We collapsed in bed late.  Today, we are busy packing up.  Jubilee Days are over for us.  It is time to wave good-bye to Laramie and stormy, windy Wyoming.