Saturday, September 11, 2010

Lost in Clayton, Santa Fe and Taos














Ransom looking out at the Oklahoma panhandle

The theme of our adventure out west this year has turned out to be LOST. But that follows FUN.

We are in Taos. We arrived today after spending three nights in Santa Fe. To get to Santa Fe we had to cross the Oklahoma panhandle. To say that there is nothing out there is an understatement, but we've been across the Texas panhandle a number of times and in my estimation Texas wins the contest for nothingness. Oklahoma at least has a lot of farming and ranching going on. There is something almost appealing about the stark moonscape of Oklahoma's flat lands. As we were crossing John mentioned that I might want to check the bed for air pressure. I never would have guessed that we gained enough altitude to increase the pressure in the bed chambers, but they were both on 100 when I checked. I "dumped" them as was suggested and by the time we got to the tiny, arid town of Clayton, New Mexico for the evening, they had refilled themselves. We were going up, big time.

When we got to the Clayton KOA we discovered that we had a problem with Mary's left rear airbag. She rides on four airbags that keep her level when we are traveling (think back to our ride-height nightmares last year) and on a separate system, level her once we stop. It's a pretty cool system. We stop, John makes sure that she is aired up and then he pushes a button and you hear air whooshing while she increases or decreases the air in the bags to compensate for the grade that she is sitting on. The leveling system has always worked like a charm. There is a small auxiliary pump that kicks on every so often when we are parked, that provides air when the airbags need it, due to the inevitable settling and minor leaking of the bags. Once we were in Clayton the auxiliary pump seemed to be working overtime and when we took showers in the morning the water was puddling on the left side of shower floor. John mentioned that he thought she needed adjusting. We had a light dinner and went to bed early.













The only thing that captured my interest in Boise City

The next challenge was to get out of Clayton toward Santa Fe the next morning. We used Genius Garmin to get to the park, and it took us in a weird ass backward route, so when we got ready to leave we were having a problem figuring out which way to go. Genius took us to the main road through Clayton and wanted us to turn right. By now we are totally distrustful of Genius, and John was sure that it was because the software had not been updated. He's mentioned this fact 40 or 50 times from the first of the year until now. I was resistant to hooking the thing up to my computer, that's how distrustful I am of it. Plus I figured that the update process would be a pain in the butt. Anyway, we sat at the intersection and argued about which way to go. Genius said go right, John thought we should go left and I thought that Genius couldn't be that wrong so I reluctantly sided with it. That's rare. Not totally sold on Genius's advice, I whipped out that antiquated thing called a MAP, which agreed that we should turn right, and in a few blocks make a left on US 56. Looking at the map it seemed simple to me. Genius wanted us to turn right and then follow the signs to US 87. If we followed that advice we would head northwest and backtrack 30 miles. Keeping in mind that we get 7 miles to a gallon of diesel, that seemed like terrible advice.

Against his own sense of direction, John opted to listen to Genius and the map on the right turn, but then he turned right where we should have turned left, and headed back toward Boise City. We were treated to Boise City the day before. I was quickly and desperately pleading my case for taking US 56 WEST to Santa Fe, and for him to turn around before we ended up on the narrow road (with no place to turn around) and had to backtrack 50 miles. Navigating on the fly is becoming something of an art with me. I have to figure it out and convince John, all in the span of a minute or two, or we end up lost. Come to think of it, I'm not doing so well in that department because everywhere we've been so far we've gotten lost. Having to battle with the GPS is partly to blame.

So he took the desperation in my voice to heart, and he turned the bus around in a city block and we headed off toward Santa Fe. The rest of the morning was very pleasant. The closer we got, and the higher we went (Santa Fe is 7,000 feet), the prettier it got. We had a reservation at Santa Fe Skies RV Park. We had the address in Genius and it guided us off of exit 278 and headed us toward town. The minute we got off I knew we were going the wrong way. John realized it too. The problem then became, where the hell do we turn her around. We were headed straight for the Plaza in Santa Fe and the traffic was murder. It was 2:00 in the afternoon. We both had that awful feeling in the pit of our stomachs that we were in trouble. We crawled along Cerillos Road passing strip mall after strip mall. No churches (the best for turning around on any day but Sunday), and no industrial buildings, nowhere to turn Mary around. And we were getting closer to the Plaza. Of course, never having been there, we had no idea how close we actually were. Finally I spotted a mall on the right on Rodeo Road. "Can you turn her around in Dillard's parking lot?" I asked. He nodded and hit Mary's right turn signal. He never said much during this detour. Just sighed a lot. He's become a highly skilled motor coach driver in the last three years. Thank God.

He turned her around and we headed back. In the mean time I got on the website for the RV park (which if I had half a brain I would have done BEFORE we listened to Genius and got lost) and discovered that there is an exit, 276, right by the RV park. Visualize two grown adults shouting at a GPS unit. We did that for the next two and a half days.















Interesting yard art at the RV Park in Santa Fe

We set up in the RV Park, which was an okay place. I won't give it raves, but it was fine. The best part was that we had a 3/4 mile trail around the park where we could do our morning walks with the dogs. Power walks at 7,000 feet were challenging to we humans, to say the least. The dogs were fine with it.

The first thing I did once we parked and put the slides out was to take Breezy and Ransom for a walk. We headed down a gravel trail, past juniper bushes and a lot of yellow and purple sage. They did their thing and as we were heading back I spotted an ant hill that was teaming with big red ants. I guided them around it understanding that those were fire ants, mega nasty critters that sting and burn like hell if you get into them. We kept walking back toward the coach when a dog in the park started barking. Ransom stopped and moved off of the path toward the barking dog and when he did he stepped into another nest of fire ants. He jumped back on the path biting aggressively at his left front foot. I was trying to keep an eye on Breezy so she didn't get into them, while he was bounding around me biting at his foot. He tangled me up in his long red leash while I attempted to help him. Finally he pulled the ant from between his pads and shook it out of his mouth. Then he commenced tending to his wound, licking and licking. All I wanted to do was to get them back to the coach before they were attacked by any more ants. After I untangled myself from his leash he hopped along on three legs, trying to lick his swelling pad. The rest of the afternoon was spent tending his wound. By nightfall he was as good as new and from then on he was great at avoiding the ant hills. Breezy learns from observing. She cut a wide path around them too.

Now to the good stuff! We went into town that evening and had a fabulous dinner at the Santacafe on Washington Street. We have eaten in great restaurants all over the place and had some wonderful meals. This one rated right at the top. If you are ever in Santa Fe don't miss it. The next day we got up and did our 3 miles around the park under gorgeous sunny skies and then headed into town to do some gallery hopping. We got lost repeatedly amongst some ridiculous traffic before we found Canyon Road. We parked (that was a challenge!) and went door to door for a few hours. We saw some gorgeous art, a ton of beautiful sculpture, and some really unusual things.














John standing behind a giant sculpture

I posted a photo album on Facebook and will do a Picassa web album as well for those non-facebookers. It was a great day but we both kept commenting on the traffic and all of the people in town. It was wild! I needed to stop at Whole Foods for a few things so we pulled into the parking lot and finally found a place to park. John said, "I'll drive," meaning that he was going into the store with me and planned to push the cart.

We've been through this a number of times in five years. I'm a lone shopper. I hate grocery stores for the most part, but they are a necessary evil. I have my shopping schedule down to a science at home so that I'm never caught in a grocery store during peak hours. I am the world's fastest shopper. I get the cart and my list and if you see me coming you probably want to allow me a wide berth. The few times that John has gone with me to "drive", he ends up off somewhere where I'm not, and it takes me three times as long to shop.

So I glanced at the parking lot and looked back at him with raised eyebrows. He said, "I won't disappear, and I won't throw things in the cart. I promise." I said okay, and we headed off to the store. It was like the ant hill that Ransom got into. He pushed the cart into the store and we started in the produce section. While I was busy picking out avocados and tomatoes, he pushed the cart off somewhere. When I turned around he was nowhere to be found. Exasperated before I put anything in the cart, I set off looking for him. I found him on the other side of the large produce section shopping for bananas. "So much for not disappearing," I said. "But I found perfect bananas!" he said with a large grin. Okay. On to the rest of the list. It took about forty minutes to finish the short list, dodging shoppers from one end of the store to the other. John enlisted the help of a nice kid to pick out some cheese and he kindly escorted us to the tea section. Then he abandoned us. I had had enough of Whole Foods so we checked out. I looked at John and his expression said that he was far less enchanted with the idea of "driving" than he was when we walked in. Grocery shopping isn't for wimps. As if to punctuate the point, he pushed the cart with the bagged groceries out of the store, and was nearly run down by an old woman with freaked out white hair, who appeared to have styled it by sticking her finger in a wall socket. She was driving an OLD black Mercedes (built like a Sherman tank), looking under the steering wheel with a crazed look on her face. We laughed all the way out of the parking lot about the dangers involved in grocery shopping.

We had actually planned to go into town to The Shed for dinner that night but once we got back to the park one of our neighbors informed us that we had arrived during Fiesta. That explained the traffic congestion. We were advised to stay away from the Plaza at night. Good advice. So the next day we headed to the Plaza in the morning to beat the traffic. I had a request; I wanted to visit the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum before we left Santa Fe. So John agreed and we paid $18.00 to get into the museum. I have seen some of her work in prints before but never any originals. The museum was wall to wall people. We fell over people, bumped into people and half way though John looked at me and smiled. "I don't get it," he said. "Get what?" I asked. "This." He motioned to the artwork. The rest of our time in the museum (which wasn't long) he teased me about liking her art, which to him looked like nothing in particular. I love her use of color and she is probably the only artist who worked in abstract that I find fascinating. Everywhere we went for the rest of the day he teased me about liking her art. We laughed a lot. We always do!















Downtown on the Plaza


From there we wandered around the outside of the plaza area. It was 11:30 and after our early breakfast and 3 mile walk in the morning we were getting hungry. I got out my Droid phone and hit one of the apps that tells you what is nearby, no matter where you are. The Coyote Cafe was just up the street. The patio would open at 11:45 so we stepped into a Native American jewelry and gift shop to poke around and kill some time. John spotted a necklace in the back of the store and called me over to look at it. It was love at first sight. He said, "You have a birthday coming up," and grinned. The guy got it out of the case and I tried it on. I was a bit intimidated by the size of it but then I pictured it with the right outfit and I was sold. He matched some earrings and we happily headed off to the Coyote Cafe for lunch. That is another one to put on your list. We ordered the Navajo Taco, which is made on pan bread with chicken, pulled pork, and buffalo and all sorts of delicious other things. It was a great meal.













My birthday present!

From lunch we walked up to the St. Francis of Assisi Catholic church. By this time Fiesta is in full swing and we are again dodging people and traffic. It was worth it though. We stopped at some cool galleries and made our way over to the Loretto Chapel (which is now part of a hotel), with the mystery spiral staircase that was made without nails. Both churches were gorgeous and the staircase was fascinating.



















It now has a railing. This photo is from a postcard taken before the railing was constructed.

We managed to find the parking garage and find our way back to the RV park and the dogs. We realized that we had only seen a fraction of the places that people had so kindly suggested to us, which means only one thing ... we must go back and visit again! It is a lovely town.

The next morning we pulled out and headed up the Rio Grande Gorge highway to Taos. We had a nice stay there, two nights, one dinner in town and one afternoon wandering the shops of the old plaza. We drove up to the Ski Valley. It is a pretty area and my guess is that during the winter it is spectacular. The greatest surprise was the drive out of Taos, over the pass in the Kit Carson National Forest and on to Moab, UT (today is Monday and we are now settled in Moab). I'll update once we finish our time here. It is truly a spectacular area and I cannot believe that I lived in the West for 44 of my 54 years and never visited this area!

On the book front, the author's proof was supposed to meet me here in Moab at the RV park today when we arrived. It's not here. I'm going to hold a good thought that it will arrive tomorrow. Please beat the drums for that to happen! If I get it and it looks fine it will be available to buy this week.

The good news for today is that we got here without getting lost!

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