#12 Coveys Great Adventure – Vermillion Cliffs, Flagstaff, El Morro, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Taos, Amarillo

#12 Coveys Great Adventure – Vermillion Cliffs, Flagstaff, El Morro, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Taos, Amarillo

We have really been on the move lately. Before we left Jacob Lake, we took a day trip to Page AZ, via the Vermillion Cliffs National Monument. The drive down (literally) US 89 starts in pine forests and rapidly transitions to stark desert as the elevation descends over 4,000’ to Page. Page is pretty forgettable, but there are some interesting parts. RD’s Drive-In serves really good burgers and fries, and the BBQ place next door sure smelled good and was very popular. We’ll check it if we return to Page.

The Vermillion Cliffs lived up to their billing, with brilliant colors and one huge rock formation after another unfolding for miles along the highway. Our pictures can’t do it justice, and we didn’t see the best of them, located down 20 miles of dirt roads that we passed up this time.

Pinegrove campground

From Jacob Lake we headed to Pinegrove NFS (National Forest Service) Campground in the Coconino National Forest, which turned out to be one of our favorite places to date. Located 15 miles east of Flagstaff, Pinegrove Campground has huge, level sites, many of which back up to thousands of acres of ….well, pine groves. We spent hours hiking around the lands surrounding the campground. The dogs were very happy to sniff the  trees, grass, deer and rabbits.

We spent just three nights there, but we ended up spending more time in Flagstaff itself  than we planned. Schroeder picked up a very common parasitic infection in his gut that required an unscheduled trip to the vet for an exam and antibiotics. He’s fine, the pills knocked it right out, but the budget took a hit.

Flagstaff is one of those places that we didn’t expect much of, but turned out to be a real

pleasant surprise. It is big enough to have all the services (except Trader Joe’s and Total Wine – see below) yet small enough to be very accessible. We enjoyed walking around “old town Flagstaff”. Being a college town (Northern Arizona University) lends a really nice vibe to the place. We look forward to going back.

Oh, yes, a plug: We had the buffet lunch at Cuisine of India, next door to Walmart. It was maybe the best Indian meal we have ever had. If you go to Flagstaff, don’t miss it. I’d go back to Flagstaff just to eat there again.

About half way down

It’s over 400 miles from Flagstaff to Santa Fe, so we decided to break the trip at Milan, NM. Milan had nothing to recommend it except its location, about 2/3^rd of the way to Santa Fe, and an inexpensive RV park with cable TV hookup. We hadn’t seen TV since Hurricane and needed a fix. We decided to stay an extra night, giving us a full day to look around. As you may have noticed, we like getting in the car and exploring the places we stay in, so we looked at the map and spotted El Malpais National Monument, about 30 miles south of town. El Malpais comprises unique rock formations that neither of us found very interesting, but on the spur of the moment we decided to check out El Morro National Monument, about 20 miles further down the road.

El Morro turned out to be really interesting. It has the only reliable, year ‘round water for many miles. Consequently, people have been coming to El Morro for thousands of years. As you can see in the photos, El Morro is a huge sandstone monolith rising high above the surrounding countryside. Sandstone is soft and easily carved, so visitors have left their marks (aka graffiti) all over the site. Indian hieroglyphics, 16^th century Spanish explorers, American settlers and US Army troops fighting the Indian wars all carved their messages into the sandstone cliffs.

The site was also inhabited for generations by several different tribes of Indians. There are a number of elaborate stone buildings that archaeologists continue to explore and conserve. El Morro’s unique structure also makes it home to a number of birds and animals that are not found in the surrounding lands. The National Park Service has a very interesting facility at the site staffed by knowledgeable and enthusiastic rangers and volunteers.  It takes roughly two hours to hike the whole site and is well worth the effort. We didn’t expect much when we decided to go and it turned into a very memorable day.

Albuquerque itself didn’t hold much interest for us, but we could not pass through on the way to Santa Fe  without calling Larry Girardi and Peggy Fiorini. Unfortunately, he was out of town but Peggy met us for lunch and we had a great time. Peggy and Larry split time between Albuquerque and Poulsbo, WA, so we hope to see them there in September if our current plans work out.

We also took the opportunity to restock the wine cellar at Total Wine because we discovered that good wine at fair prices is harder to find than we realized. I hope we have enough to see us to Denver, the next probable resupply point, at the end of June.

Way off the grid in Black Canyon

Black Canyon NFS Campground in Santa Fe is another gem. Maybe not quite as nice as Pinegrove, but close. Getting our coach into the site we had reserved did prove to be a challenge, though. The camp host said that we were the largest coach he had seen in the three years that he had been there. The government reservation website doesn’t take into account things like turning radius when they declare a site to be suitable for a certain size rig. It was very tight, but once we got in we really enjoyed it.

Tourist are everywhere in Santa Fe

Santa Fe is about the same size as Flagstaff, but much more touristy. Tourism is important to Flagstaff, but it doesn’t dominate the economy like it does in Santa Fe. We spent a morning at the Georgia O’Keefe Museum which has so much material that it changes the theme of the exhibit three times a year. Unfortunately, neither of us were particularly interested in this exhibit that focused on her earliest work. None of her New York cityscapes or Ghost Ranch landscapes were on display, but luckily a number of Alfred Stiglitz’s photos of her covering the 1920’s-1940’s were being shown. I was really disappointed not seeing the landscapes, though.

That afternoon we visited the Museum of International Folk Art and were absolutely enthralled. Alexander and Susan Girard spent a lifetime collecting folk art figures, toys and textiles from around the world, ending up with over 100,000 items that they eventually donated to the museum. 10% of the collection is on permanent display in an

extensive series of dioramas designed personally by Alexander Girard specifically for these items before his death in 1993. If you visit Santa Fe, the Girard Collection has to be on your “don’t miss” list. 

 

After several of two or three night stays in a row, it was time to settle in one place for a week to catch up on maintenance, laundry, mail and Amazon deliveries. We wanted to see Taos, and the Taos Valley RV Park proved to be the right place: good wifi, a laundry, cable tv hookup and and interesting area, all at a reasonable price.

Taos is a pretty small town that hasn’t recovered from the last recession. When I visited Taos on my motorcycle in 2006, it was crowded with BMWs, Mercedes and Range Rovers. All the restaurants were filled with well to do yuppies wrapped in Oakley shades. Construction was going on everywhere as old houses were renovated and expanded, and new ones were sprouting up out of town. This trip I didn’t see a single new house being built and several shops in the downtown area were vacant.

Every Thursday night during the summer, Taos has a free concert in the town plaza. That night, two local country bands preformed to an enthusiastic crowd of residents and visitors of all ages. People bring chairs or toss blankets on the grass and many, like us, brought their favorite adult beverages to enhance the music. Folks danced and mingled, a few low-riders (like East LA, but the guys smiled) slowly circled the plaza and the food cart vendors did well. We had a really great time.

One evening we met Laurie and L.E. Bender for a nice dinner and good conversation at the Taos Inn, the oldest hotel and restaurant in town. They had moved to Taos from Nehalem, OR about nine years ago to escape the winter weather on the Oregon coast. They reinforced my view that Taos had seen many negative changes since its heydays, noting that over half of the art galleries had closed since 2008.

Vietnam Veterans Memorial

One day we decided to follow the Enchanted Circle route from Taos that passes through Angel Fire, Eagle Nest, Red River and Questa, and returns to Taos with a short detour to see the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge. Motorcyclists note: this is a very good ride. Mountains, rivers, high alpine meadows and interesting towns made it a memorable day. We also visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, a truly moving experience for everyone of our generation.

As much as we enjoyed Taos, I had an appointment in Amarillo, Texas, for the road test to complete my Class B license, which Texas requires to legally drive RV’s over 26,000 pounds. Amarillo was the closest test site I could find to Taos, about 285 miles each way.

West Texas in general and Amarillo in particular were pleasant surprises. I expected desolate sage brush and cactus, and a few skinny cattle trying to scratch a hard existence form the harsh countryside. Instead, we saw verdant fields of hay as far as the eye could see, with thousands of cattle grazing knee-deep in lush grass.  We haven’t been paying much attention to the news for a few months and missed the bulletins about West Texas, New Mexico and several parts of Colorado achieving the wettest May on record. That certainly accounted for the lush greenery and fat, contented cows that we saw everywhere we looked.

Based on my experience in El Paso, I was prepared to be under whelmed with Amarillo. That also turned out just the reverse: Amarillo is a nice town, and it seems to be quite prosperous.

The Texas Department of Public Safety (sic) license examiner duly passed your humble scribe, who now holds a Class B license to drive RVs with air brakes that exceed 26,000 pounds. That done, we turned right around and headed to Colorado. We plan to cross Texas next winter on the way to the east coast, but we’ve seen all we want to of it now.

More soon.