Mammoth in Colorado Day 5

 Friday September 10

We took a trip to the round place on the hill. Very cool. 

Okay, technically it was called Chimney Rock National Monument, but I could never seem to remember the name. You start seeing it long before you get there....

The people managing it (forest service? WPA? archaeology teams?) have shored up and restored a lot of the walls, but there were no artifacts left. I asked one of the volunteer interpreters, and he said said that there were a few artifacts at "some site a little west of here with lots of similar structures" but most of them were at the Smithsonian.  So Ed and I were a little disappointed--like the archaeological site we went to in Arkansas a few months earlier, this was a case of "Washington slept here...when there used to be a house here but it burned down years ago."

We met this guy at the bottom

And a pit they left behind,

After the temperature being so cold in the morning that I had considered, and unfortunately discarded, the idea of sweatpants, it was surprisingly hot on the site. Only when we climbed near the top, 7620 feet (200 more than where we started), did a gentle breeze make us feel comfortable.  What a view up there!

 

The guide said they set signal fires that could be seen as far away as Mesa Verde. And Council Hill, is that the name?  Mesa Verde is an hour and a half away as the car drives, but as the smoke rises, I dunno. The ranger guy said there had been some Peregrine Falcons there a couple of times this spring but they hadn't stuck around. I don't know why--it seems an excellent place for them.

 

It was quite a little hike up those 200 feet to the top. There were all sorts of warnings about scary heights and no handrails, but I didn't find it all that bad. Not that I would have stood on the edge and looked down--I'm not that stupid.

It was almost two when we returned. I did a short dog walk, a quick lunch, and then attempted to jog. It was too hot for Molly and me--we jogged about ten minutes and then went on walking down the little trails along the lake. I wanted to climb down to the lake, and the distance looked quite do-able, but the idea of climbing back up just overwhelmed my imagination.

Mammoth to Colorado, Day 4

 Thursday 9 September 2021

Santa Fe, NM to Navajo State Park, CO
planned time: 4:14
Actual: 5:16
Stops: 12-minute refuel in Aztec

Here's what I wrote at the time:
Inexplicably bummed the last day. Partly because the restaurants were fails.
Very scared about no diesel gas available on route. Taking the 4:01 route instead of the 3:40 one because it looks flatter. Hope that's a correct decision.

Some pics of the Santa Fe Skies RV park:

 

 And off we go! Wrong way at first--

Now back on track:

The route was okay. Going southwest toward Albuquerque at first was a bummer--we were going almost in the opposite direction we needed to be going--but once we got going north it was fine.  There was elevation change, of course, but mostly gradual and bearable. The road was 4-lanes most of the way; at one point we got off on a 2-laned "county road" for a while--damn google maps!--and it was scary. But it joined back into a major road that was 4-lane with a median, and so went on until we had to get off to go down to the park. We got to see some mountains during the afternoon--the southern Rockies of the San Juan National Forest, around Silverton.

It was still a long, tiring drive. Ed ran with the generator on for the air conditioning, which kept us colder than I liked--I had to move the vent fan off me to survive and still be uncomfortable. It seems that I can never be at a right temperature this trip--when the air conditioners are on inside, it's freezing cold at about 76 degrees. In the daytime its' unbearably hot at 90 degrees, which is silly because it's been a lot hotter this summer back home. 90 degrees should be just find for me. When I went out to look at the stars at night, the outdoors was still pretty warm. But on Friday morning it was 50 degrees outside and a little windy.  I was freezing.

The campground is very nice, well maintained and fairly spacious.  It was only about half full on the weekday we arrived. The good spot between us and the lake was vacant--the campground has a road running alongside the lake with RV sites on either side, and we were on the site away from the lake. I know that when I made the reservations, all of the lakeside spots were taken. So I have to assume the empty spot will fill up on Friday. But I'm fine if it stays free, just a little annoyed that I couldn't get it.

On the southern end of the camping loop, there were about ten walk-in sites.  They were all empty, making a nice little place for Zack to have his exercise. It was very dry and dusty, with scattered vegetation and small, scrubby trees, but lots of flowers. The place has clearly seen a lot of tramping feet over the many years. A few lizards. A few birds but none I was able to get a good look at.

 

The lake was very low, greenish and murky from a very great distance. It's way, way down on a sleep slope from us. Kayakers down there looked like specks; I couldn't tell an eagle from a gull--and without the binoculars, couldn't see the eagle at all. I just happened to notice it when I was looking at some crows flying by. Some brown humps on the other side of the lake were revealed by the spotting scope as horses. 

I love the deceptive distance of the west. The air must be clear because it's drying, and far away things look close...until you catch the details.

And thus ends the seventh anniversary of the day when all that was best in my life was taken away from me.

Mammoth Goes to Colorado Day 3

 Wednesday September 8

The plan was to eat a lot of good Mexican food in Santa Fe, but I was having trouble finding it. Breakfast should have been easy--there were tons of highly-rated restaurants offering breakfast. I couldn't go wrong....

But I did. I chose The Pantry Dos, an offshoot from the original The Pantry, but conveniently located near to us in the southern suburbs. It was highly disappointing. They'd run out of cinnamon rolls with the next pan still rising, 25 minutes to go. Considering how little money in ingredients go into a pan of cinnamon rolls, there was no excuse for them to ever run out. Poor management.

The people were pleasant and did their job well, but there weren't all that many customers and we felt hovered over. My avocado toast, two eggs and fried potatoes were perfectly done, but somewhat carelessly assembled. If I were running the place, instead of the forlorn and droopy sprig of parsley I would have put a slice of orange and a strawberry on each plate.  The potatoes were supposed to be spicy, but they were bland and boring. Bah!

After that the plan was to go downtown and see some art. But on the spur of the moment I tried to take us to a little park on the Santa Fe river, up in the mountains, toward the lake they used for holding water for the city's supply. We missed the park, but instead arrived at a Nature Conservancy site which apparently had some very popular birding hikes. Trying to park, we found ourselves trapped in a teeny tiny parking lot so jammed with cars and people lined up to get in that it was doubtful we'd ever get our Jeep doors open. Needless to say, we turned around and squeezed the Jeep out. With great difficulty.

Then we took our dogs back to the RV, and headed out again to downtown. I wanted to go to the history museum and then walk along the historic district that a guidebook had suggested as a good way to see the city.  But for reasons unknown, after we paid $15 to park our Jeep for the day, we decided not to spring the additional bucks for the museum. Which was stupid of us. We simply took the walk and were underwhelmed with the results. It was hot, for one thing, and there just weren't all that many historic buildings, for another. Bad planning on my part.

Our big supper was a bust. The place that everyone raved about turned out to be a dump in a small strip shopping center with no mroe than one or two cars outside. A dump in a strip shopping center with lots of cars outside would have been okay; but only a couple? I don't think so.  It looked too unappetizing to even consider. Choice #2 was closed on Wednesdays, so we ended up at Posa's El Merendero Tamale Factory & Restaurant, which I liked a great deal but Ed was disappointed by. He refused to ask for butter, not noticing the "butter" patties right there on our table, so he didn't touch the tortillas he was given. I don't remember the reason he gave for not getting sopapaillas instead, but I think it was something about not noticing the bottle of honey on the table.

Next time I have to find a restaurant in a tourist trap location and have no good recommendations other than TripAdvisor and the various online sources, I think I'll go with more expensive rather than less. I suppose one can assume that if a $$ restaurant gets 4.5 stars then that means more than if a $ one does.

Mammoth Goes to Colorado Day 2

Tuesday 7 September 2021
Amarillo to Santa Fe Skies RV Park
planned time: 4:12
Actual: 4:11
Stops: 13-minute gas stop Tucumcari; another short stop in suburb near I-25

On to Santa Fe. This was a much shorter drive in miles, but it seemed very long. We were going uphill most of the way, and due to Mammoth's overheating problems, we were taking the long, slow slopes easy, not to burn our engine out by blasting up them at high speeds.

Scenes from Texas:

Finally out

Mountains appear (look close)

The Santa Fe Skies RV park was lovely. It sat just to the south of the city, up on a slope in some partially developed ranch land.  The park was large, clean and well laid out. Little patios for each campsite and a lot of greenery scattered here and there--it is in the middle of a desert, after all--make each site seem special. A 3/4 mile jogging and dog walking path all around it, and even two poop stations with baggies provided for the mini-trash cans. 

They decorated the jogging trail with artwork of dubious value and a bunch of rusty old farm and ranch equipment. They called that a "display of antique farm"equipment...hmm. I could spread out the old junk in my barn and have an antique display of my own, if I were willing to weed-eat around it every summer.

The place was pretty much full both nights we stayed, but very, very quiet.  Only a smattering of RVs bothered putting up their stupid outdoor lights, so it was fairly dark at night. I think a lot of people stayed only a single night.

Mammoth Goes to Colorado

 Monday, September 6

Home to Big Texas RV Ranch in Amarillo
Planned time 5:52  (356 miles)
Actual:  6:07
Stops: 15-minute gas stop in Memphis, TX

So this is the big one--so far.  All the way to Colorado. It was supposed to be the New Mexico Trip but I couldn't find suitably scenic campgrounds in New Mexico that had electricity and water. So I sprung for the hideously expensive campgrounds in Colorado. I hope that works.

First stop, Amarillo. The drive was long but not hard. We went out 380 to Denton, took the truck route loop around the city, and on to Decatur. Somewhere we hit US-287 to Wichita Falls and on to Amarillo. We hopped on I-40 and off again immediately, We were there!

Sadly, I had us get off the highway two exits too soon, and after going through an unnecessary traffic signal, we got back on again and were forced to bypass the road that went over to the park and circle back. But that wasn't too bad. The Big Texan RV Park, just a few minutes down the road from The Big Texan Restaurant, was very nice. The sites were clean and pretty large for a private RV park. Our site was pull-through so we didn't have to unhook the Jeep if we didn't want to.  There were three fenced dog runs, mostly empty most of the time. And nice neighbors.

The park

 

 

After a quick hookup and dog walk, I spent a little time on the phone and then it was time to go eat. Big mistake there. We chose not to do delivery or take the 6-minute limousine ride to the restaurant because we were too cheap to tip the deliveryman/driver, so we unhooked the Jeep and drove ourselves over. It was a 30-minute wait!  By the time we were seated, it was nearly six o'clock. If we'd gone earlier--after only the short dog run--we might have missed the crowd and ended up with a faster meal.  [thebear]   [bigtexan]

Of course, at a steak house restaurant there was nothing fit for me to eat. Ninety percent of the menu was CAFO (aka tortured) beef. I could have paid $21 for the fried fish, which probably would have been tilapia from China, but it just didn't seem worthwhile. So I ate the fried chicken with gravy and it wasn't very good. However, the salad was excellent. Just the usual steakhouse iceberg lettuce and carrots, but fresh.
[notsogoodfood]

No matter. We weren't eating there to please me. But in future at a steak house, I'll go back to my standard fare of side dishes or fried fish. If I'm going to eat meat from a CAFO, it needs to be good-tasting meat.

Review catch up

 This Adventure Ends


Puzzling YA novel about a girl who falls in with a group of friends who have been besties with each other for many years. The story tell how she finds her way into relationships with each of them--and at the same time, finds out how she herself has never had a real friendship with anyone.  Real, as in, the kind that hurts.

Not too realistic in its portrayals of people, but not that bad either. I found it a little too light and teenagery, so that means a teenager would likely love it.

 

Bury The Lead

I was starting to work my way through the world of Andy Carpenter but I've gotten on a detour into the maybe-less-exciting but ever-more-fascinating world of Maisie Dobbs. So this will be the last Andy Carpenter I read for a while. Sorry--they're good and never boring but for excitement I'm not sure thy can match with tge Chronicles of St. Mary's series and for depth of character no match at all with Maisie.

Anyway, I liked Bury The Lead just as much as the first two. It's kind of a "beach read" for me--light, quick and hard to put down.

Book of my year

 Sapiens

Best book I've listened to this year. If I had a print copy, I'd go back and read it over again. All I can say is,
  
Read It.
Everybody; everywhere. It's a history of humankind from then to now and a little past now, and his phenomenal research, assembly, and presentation of the subject matter just makes it awesome. Yes, that's a much overused phrase, and no, much of what is labeled as "awesome" is really just a chance event of something that appealed to a person at a particular point in time.

Not this. It's timeless and immortal. a book for the ages, And even if we find out some of his predictions are a little off sometimes, most likely that's due to the unpredictability of future events--the very act of predicting this is likely to change the future, in unpredictable ways.

Starting the series and happy for the future

 Maisie Dobbs

by Jacqueline Winspear

By reading the series out of order (#5 first) I already knew all the backstory that was going to be related in this, the first. Or maybe not quite all--there were a couple of conflicted relationships she refers to later on that have not been explained. I'll have to wait on those.

According to her afterword, written on the anniversary of the first publication of this book, she plotted the entire book in her head while stuck in traffic on the way to her day job, in California. I don't know what happened next, but she may as well have quit her day job right then and there. And write these books.

Hurray for series!

Research tool report

 Southwest USA's best trips

I found this really, really good, although I didn't actually take any of the trips and so I can't tell you if the descriptions are accurate or not. It's a bunch of short road trips with the route and the major things to explore noted.  Obviously it's a research tool, not a bit of light reading before bedtime.

Best novel of my year

 An Incomplete Revenge

by Jacqueline Winspear

Practically Perfect in Every Way.  No--remove the adjective--
Perfect in Every Way.

Maisie Dobbs is a detective, by trade, but she's also a bit of witch doctor a psychologist a counselor and just all-around nice person. I want her on my case when my body ends up dead in the library. But there's a funny thing about this book, the fifth in the series--there aren't any dead bodies. Or at least, none that need detecting--they died in a chance Zeppelin raid on the English countryside way back during the war.  (First world war, of course--the book is set in the 1930's.)

Instead Maisie undertakes to make sure an investor's planned purchase of a property in the hop-picking area of where-ever-it-is-in-England (sorry, not an Anglophile) will be able to go ahead without problems. There had been reports of some mysterious fires in the area and some incidents of criminal mischief, and she gets to job to poke around.

And she's soon in the thick of it.  It's superb writing, superb characterization, and just plain whole lot of fun.

If you're fortunate enough to get the audiobook, that's really good too. But not necessary. I ended up doing a half-and-half on it--half on paper and half audio. I loved them both but I have to admit, I liked the audio better because it forced me to slow down and not race through the story in one big gulp.

Very good but not magical. Except sometimes.

 Lassoing the Sun
A Year in America's National Parks
by Mark Woods

So many quotable passages I wish I'd written down!  Yet I felt a little let down by the narrative toward the end and don't understand why.

I shouldn't be comparing it to Leave Only Footprints, but that wonderful book is still in my mind and I just have to.  That book was really "into" the parks in a way that this one could not achieve, possibly because the author is too much buried in his own loss and grieving for his dying mother. And I was grieving right along with him--and at the same time celebrating her life. It's like a book-long memorial service, and it's beautiful.

But it's not "into" the parks. I didn't come away seeing and hearing and smelling the parks in a way I'd wanted to. Although his essay about one of the last ones he stayed at, the one in an urban area in the eastern U.S., came close.

Darker than I can stand

The Darkest Thread
by Jen Blood

Good title. She seeks out the darkest of the dark and adds little touches here and there to make it even darker. It's not enough for a dog to be "rescued" it has to be "rescued from the needle". It's not enough for girls to be murdered, they have to be drugged, raped, and tortured. And tied together in pairs. And what really got me down was her brief description of a particular rescue dog's backstory. I know horrible things happen, but seriously--the kind of people who are reading this book already know about them and don't need them shoved in their faces.

Don't read this before bedtime, and if you have an active imagination, you may not want to read it at all. I'm all for a good serial killer story, but in this case it just seems like the author is going to search out the evil threads of human behavior and load up the story with agony.

The ending was good and the mystery was thrilling, and the supernatural aspect very good. Once I got my protective shield in place, I enjoyed this very much. But I'm not sure I can handle another one.

Wild, wooly and even a little educational

 just One Damned Thing After Another
By Jodi Taylor


Wahoo! What a ride. She crammed more stuff into this one short adventure than a normal author crams into a trilogy.  In this, the first of a series, the historian takes a job at St. Mary's and discovers that time travel is not only possible but very very probable...and off she goes. One mission after another to verify missing facts in the historical record. The places and times seem to be cherry-picked to leave the best unanswered questions of history for future books in the series, but then you have to remember they're making a business of it. You go where you're paid to go--and if you happen to have time to do a little research while you're at it, all the better.

The action is fierce throughout and pretty much everyone seems to die at least once. Either that or I got confused. Several times she was killing off so many characters that I began to wonder who would be left to continue the series. But then a dinosaur jumped out, or a man with a laser gun, or something exploded, and one she goes!

If you're listening to an audiobook of this you might want to be careful about leaving the volume turned up in the car when you stop for gas. There are a couple of intense sex scenes. But short and not at all embarrassing unless you happen to have kids in the car.

Day 7 and 8, last day at the ocean and leaving

 Friday 8/20/2021

Loaded up and headed to Cedar Ridge, in order to take the kids out to dinner.  The drive was pretty miserable. We took the route that paralleled I-35 to the east, and once again, stupid Google maps routed me on an FM road without me realizing it. It tried to do that two other times and I redirected my route, but this one time it won. It wasn't so bad a road, but still.

It was supposed to be TX-359, then US-181, then TX-80 up to TX-130 the Pickle Parkway. But to get from US-181 to TX-80, then was a short jog on FM-792, i believe,  but didn't see on the map until
it was too late. TX-80 was pretty bumpy, and not all that bad although there were places with two-lane roads and no passing zones. But not too many of those.

We arrived at Cedar Ridge a little after three p.m. It was fairly empty but filled up with plenty of loud, obnoxious idiots after dark. We did dog walks and showers, then went to dinner with Edward and the family. Good to see them but we didn't get back to Mammoth until nearly nine-thirty. Very, very tired.

Saturday

Edward picked up doughnuts and brought them and the kids to see us before we left. It was a nice thing to do.

The drive up on 35-West stunk, mainly due to the heat, the traffic, and the 13-minute slowdown in Fort Worth. But we got home in the end, so that's something.

Day 6 at the Ocean

 Thursday 8/19/2021

Our friends headed home, so Ed and I went to get him a drive-through Covid test. (Several people in his church had come down with it) It took a short forever--which was probably only about 45 minutes. I walked across the parking lot to Walmart and got some sausage, chips and bananas, and then I walked the dogs in the grass around the shopping strip with the med-lab. It was hot and very painfully sunny, so after I stepped in fire ants unseen, I gave up and took them back in the car.

Then we took a long drive to the Padre Island National Seashore visitor center, which appeared to be closed although there were a number of cars in the parking lot. I went inside and shoved on the door to the park store and it didn't budge, but I didn't ask anyone if they knew. The park office was definitely closed.

Then we took a long, long drive down the beach.  "Little Shell Beach" was reported to be at the 12-mile point, and Big Shell Beach at the 24. But we didn't make it that far. At about 15 miles the sand started getting squishy and we weren't feeling comfortable about going farther.  We got out of the Jeep several times and looked for shells, but none were to be found. I found out later than (a) the Gulf Coast only has one low tide a lunar day, and (b) the tide was near high and had been going out all the time we were there.

All told we saw maybe 15 or 20 cars on the beach, total. Lovely, lovely deserted beach. I could live there if it weren't for all the sand.

On the way back I saw Long-Billed Curlew--three of them!  .

 Also least tern.  The unidentified bird hanging with the least tern was probably just a laughing gull, the most common gull there. We also saw thee Caracara.

In the evening I went for a walk, and just as it was getting two dark to see, Black Skimmer was hitting the shore, back and forth, skimming the surface of the water. You could barely see, but from the behavior and general size and shape it was a sure thing.
Sunset over sand dunes---