The 2006 Travels of Richard n Shirley

The day trip Friday yielded some very good scenery of the mountianous terran and desert. We are at 6463 feet elevation and this is truly the high desert. Where there is water, there is trees. Where there was water, there is erosion and lots of beauty. The pic below is of the Echo Ampitheatre. This is a good example erosion and the right soils. We have our Golden Age card and got in free, saved $2.00. There is a restroom there and a 1/4 mile hike. Once at the amphitheatre there are lots of stairs to go up for a better view. I did it so its not to bad, only stopped twice on the stairs and twice on the hike. There is a rest area with a sign explaining the soils and their ages and how this probably was formed.


Here is some of the soil mix. The very top looks like lava but its not. There are various layers of sediment noted by the different colors. Notice the half round "drill hole". This is not a man made effect. We found erosion in the vertical plane and we found not more than 100 ft away erosion in the horizontal plane. Its all in how the soil and water eroded.


Here is a fellow left high and dry. The soil all around him has eroded and left him by hisself. This is the Todilto formation. This was once under a shallow sea.


Here is the view of the ampitheater floor. Not what you would expect. Not a single place for the American Indians to rest, live or cook.




More of the standing rock formations. This is what we saw along the highway. And the pic below is of another formation.


And another formation. There were several along the way like these. If we ever get to Aztec, NM, there are arches for us to see.


We still have several day trips to do here at Abiquiu Lake. We will stay at the house over the weekend and let the tourists visit the area. Come the work week, we will plan another adventure down the road and see what there is for us to find. This is just a small sample of our pics. There will be more later.

We have traveled to these states so far in 2005 and added NM in 2006. We did not see much of TN and MN. We will spend lots of time in NM and then decide where to go next. Since we have to be in Fort Worth in Oct, we have lots of time to travel. We will make another day trip and see what else is here. We may go north toward the mountains and get some better photos of the colors that I'm unable to photograph from our space.

I took this photo late yesterday. The clouds formed and we BBQ while they started coming our way. By 6 pm the rain started and we had steak, Baked potato and salad and watched the rain. And it rained and rained and rained till early this friday morning. This and other panarama photos are in our picture link.

And this is where we are. It always helps to show a photo of the location for the reader.
This is the river down stream from the dam. We will make a trip to the dam and see if we can get photos. In this pic the river is flowing to you. In the next pic, which was taken by turning to the left, is the same river with the islands in the middle. There is lots of irregation along the river.

This is a closeup of the ridge in the distance. The colors did not show like they really are.
Another closeup pic of the ridges in the distance. We will have to see what the buildings are in this pic. Another daytrip. We are about 40 miles to Toas and plan on going there next week. We do not like to visit tourist areas on the weekend.
We got the BBQ out, the mat we got in IL last year and set it up. This is the first time the mat has been out since last year at Benbrook Lake in Texas. DW has wiped off the BBQ and got the table cloth on the table and declared that we can BBQ.
Here is the completed picnic area ready for use. And then the winds came. We have noon to late day thunder heads and they bring winds but so far only a few drops. Its very dry here. There is lots of rain in the air but it evaporates befor it hits the ground. We have that now and did so thru the night. But all we are getting is drops.
Now I can get our chairs off the ladder and set them up and its "home" again. Since we take our house with us, its always home when and wherever we stop. We now call this home. We will be home here for 14 days or till 6/20 at 2:00 pm. Where we are going has yet to be finalized, we got to look at the camping first.

We have lots of birds. DW bought a bird feeder for some of the more "agile" birds. This guy came back time after time for more. We must have 30 pics of him. I split the photo storage on webshots. The June blogg entries and on have a different address in our links. I put the hummingbirds in their own folder since there will be lots of pics. DW is in her candy store.

This is a front view of our space. We have a covered patio this time with a large BBQ and a place for our mat. I will put out the mat today and have something besides rock to walk on. Might even go barefooted. The car is still chugging along. Its coming up 151,000 miles. Got the oil changed 2500 miles ago and we have not added any yet on this change. Its got a few dings in front but otherwise it still looks good, interior is good and is trouble free. We use the dolly inlieu of a $2000.00 tranny pump for a car worth $800.00. When the car quits, we will buy a new one to tow with the tow bar we have.
This is a small rabbit, larger than a baby but small. It just set there as we walked by and took the pic. There are lots of rabbits here for our cat to watch during the night. He is so skitish that he will very seldom sit at the door or window and look out.
The best thing we did a year ago was buy this satellite dish. We are sitting here with no Cingular cell service and no tv. Our contact to the outside world is this satellite dish and the internet it provides us. When we got all setup, I went to pay for our stay and told the camp host we came with wifi. They have a land line furnished by the COE, satellite tv but no internet or cell service either. To get our wifi, you need a wireless capable computer. A thank you would be nice too. it takes about 30 minutes to setup and get a signal. Once we are online, the dish will sit there without have to be adjusted. We have had the wind move it enough to require an adjustment. Being where we are, we feel it is secure and we will be going on day trips. Beside, there is more to making it work than what you see.

We will be making a trip to Walmart in Espanola, NM for a resupply and several day trips. We will be getting water as we have had questionable water for drinking. Its a cool 67 at 8:15 am and its time for breakfast and shorts. We still have our jammies on you poor working souls.

My neice in Dallas sent me an email as to how much she hates me since she has to get up and work and I dont. Her day will come and hopefully she will be able to retire and enjoy life before life passes here by. So to all your poor hard working souls out there, keep up the good job your doing so we retired ones can enjoy all the fruits of your hard labour. Pay your taxes, as we dont have to anymore, and continue to provide our monthly SSI check. Remember, without you, I would be working too. Thank you Kathy and Juan and Angela and Cary and Keith and Jenny and..........

Here is our new space. This is a very pretty COE park. The colors of the hills in the background are like the Painted Desert in AZ. Since we have learned to get panarama photos, we will make one for you. This is specticular views. And you'll just love the camp hosts. We are here for 14 days.

EDIT:

The panarama photos are in the link "after June,06".

After paying for our space, I found out we have no cell phone service. We use Cingular and and we have no air television either. For our families, send us email AND call and leave a voice message. For tv, we have a King Dome but we have not gotten service. We are not big on tv watching. Maybe its time to re-think the monthly bill for this. We have been without both in the past. I am very glad that we agreed to go with the satellite internet last year. Since we travel the back roads and stay off the beaten path (ie, free if possible), we have this to contend with. The best part is our neighbor is 50 to 100 ft away vs paying for the rv getto. We are at a COE with water and elec. We will go six days and then empty the tanks. We provide "WIFI" where ever we are. Our camp hosts and the park will have internet and email for the next 14 days.
Life is good if not great! And DW is taking photos of the hummingbirds.

I have added tonight a link to our "test movie" location.

Mileage: 92
Temp: 88
Altitude: 6463 ft
GPS: N36 deg 14.724', W106 deg 25.815'

We had a very calm weekend. Someone pulled out Friday or Saturday and forget to unhook their water hose. We had a big leak for a bit. The COE brought in a guy with front end loader/back hoe to repair. It was overtime on the weekend. We also have an electrical problem here. Our space and three others are tied to a single breaker. At first it was a 70 amp but later on it became apparant via a visual inspection, its only a 30 amp. Yep, 4 post with 30 amp and 20 amp power serviced by a single 30 amp breaker at the switch box. Since this blogg is read by many, hope the right superviser.....

We lost power three times Saturday and three times Sunday. We were here sweating it out. Our cat got hot too but suffered thru it just like us. We are not sure as to the quality of water we have. Hope or dual filter system does the job.

We are moving tomorrow am to the Abuiquiu COE north of here. We will stop at the superstore on the way and stock up on supplies and get 2 cases of water in case. Once we get there I will post the milage from here. The rv has 17 miles from the turnoff at I25 and NM22 at the gas station to here. We have made two dump trips which probably added less than a mile. I will start the trip odemeter and see how far it is. DW washed clothes today, car is full of gas and we are ready to go.

No pictures as its all posted here or on the webshots link. Once we get to our new stop, we will make more daytrips and get more pics. We will be near Red River, Toas, Angle Fire, etc. Lots to see and hopefully do. Then its on to Aztec, NM, maybe.

I have worked out the movie posting for here, but! Since there are some with dialup service, we will not post any movies of our day trips. If and when this changes, movies will be posted. I wish to give the two at Odyssey the credit for laying the ground work for posting movies.

Thats about all. We will be watching tv some tonight. DW likes Donald and I like Deal or NO Deal so thats our choices. In the time I wish to use, I am still going thru the nearly 2000 pics from the family albums. I am putting text to the scanned pics for future generations to have once the actual photos are gone. I have to see if I can find some of my relatives and get them these pics for their family. I still got over 200 pics to go and sometimes its a slow process.