Longmont, CO; May 28, 2010

We left Camp Verde, AZ on Monday and started working our way toward Boulder, CO to attend the Bolder Boulder Memorial Day Celebration.

We stopped at Grants, NM for a day of sight-seeing. We drove south to El Moro National Monument.
El Moro is a tall sandstone cuesta, a long rock formation - with an uphill slope, ending in a sharp drop-off at one end of cliffs that are perhaps 150-200 feet high. At the base of El Moro there's a nice pool of water, about100 feet in diameter, that never dries up. For this reason travelers, over the years have stopped here to get watter, and rest. this is really an oasis in very dry high desert.

At the top of El Moro are ruins of an Indian pueblo, that was abandoned around 1400. A small part of the ruins have been reconstructed, as shown in the accompanying photograph. The inhabitants of this structure are thought to be precursors of the Zuni tribe, who now live in a pueblo about 40 miles from El Moro.

Since this has been a popular stop for travellers, their are numerous petroglyphs and inscriptions on the cliffs. Some of these are ancient Indian petroglyphs, as well as more recent inscriptions by Spanish Conquistadors, American soldiers before and after the Civil War, and many others. The photograph shows a typical piece of graffiti written in Spanish in 1692.

On the way back to Grants, we stopped at another El Malpais, Spanish for "badlands", another National Monument. This place is for the most part devoted to volcanic geology. There are vast lava fields deposited over thousands of years, the most recent eruption occurring about 2,000 -3,000 years ago. There are volcano tubes to explore, it that is your wont. We did not spend to much time there, as we find lava fields hard to get walk in, and my balance is to unstable to be exploring caves.

The area around the lava fields and cider cones is interesting and quite striking. One interesting feature is a natural arch, shown in the accompanying photo.

From Grants, we drove on and stayed overnight at the top of Raton pass. This pass is of historic interest, as it was one of the more physically trying part of the Santa Fe trail. It was a beautiful place to spend the night.

Today we are in Longmont, CO, and getting ready to celebrate Memorial Day with out daughter, Debbie.

Camp Verde, AZ, May16, 2010

It has been over a month since our last posting. It seems to taking more and more of an effort to keep this blog up to date. I am tempted to give it up, and publish only on Face Book. Perhaps I will start publishing commentary here, and send pictures to the Face Book album.



Since our last posting, we left Red Bay, and started working our way west. We stopped at Round Rock, Texas to visit Chris' family. Chris is now a grandfather and of course, I am a great great grandfather, since Meredith had a baby boy. Attached see a photo of a very maternal acting Madeline and Meredith's baby, Jet, regarding each other.

After a few days in round Rock visiting Chris' family, we drove on across Texas. We must have hit it just right for the fields and later the desert was covered with flowers -- bluebells, Indian paintbrush and many other flowers of all colors. I suppose it has been quite wet here recently giving the flowers a chance to bloom. We stopped the first night in a lovely campground in the Texas hill country. We took a walk next to a river, and here you can see a picture of Madeline taking a picture of flowers.

We stopped for a couple of nights at Lost Dutchman State Park, just outside of Phoenix. This park, one of our favourites, nestled up to the Superstition Mountains, and has some wonderful hiking trails. We did not have time for an extended hike, but did take a little walk in the desert, among the Saguaro cacti --- as shown in the accompanying photo.

From the Phoenix area, we moved north about 100 miles to Camp Verde, Arizona. Camp Verde is a small town on the Verde river, and a little south of Sedona. This is the famous Red Rock Country, and is one of the most beautiful areas of our country. I really wonder why they dont make it a National Park. This area has everything --- wonderful scenery, good hikes of varying length and level of difficulty, and many trails for ATV and 4-wheeling. Although I have not done it, there is canoeing down the Verde River. This River will become one of the National Wild Rivers. The valley has mountains on the south side and the Mogollon Rim rising on the north side.The Mogollon Rim is an escarpment arising as the edge of the Colorado Plateau. When the Plateau rose, the results were the cliffs and the Red Rocks, and of course, the Colorado River eroding, forming the Grand Canyon.

We have done considerable 4-wheeling in this area in recent days. The photo above shows a view done into the valley, overlooking Sedona.

There are quite a few ruins of ancient Indian dwelling in this area. These are for the most part multi-storied homes formed in overhanging cliffs ---- the cliff serving as one wall and stones piled with a mud-type mortar making up the other walls. There is usually some rock art --- petroglyphs and pictographs in the same area. The photograph here, shows a a typical site of such ruins. These prehistoric people are thought to be ancestors of the Hopis, and other pueblo-living Indians.

We have taken some exciting trips into the back country. This picture show an Agave the tall stalk or "mast", about four feet high, is used to make tequila. If left alone, this will eventually form flowers and then dry out, ant the plant subsequently dies. We saw these agave, on a jeep trip up in the mountains in high desert to the south of the Verde River Valley.

On this same jeep trip, we stopped to have lunch. A truck hauling a horse trailer drove up. Out of the truck came two cowboys, who got their horses our and started chasing a cow. We knew we were in the West!

We continued that Jeep trip, driving out of the desert into a very rocky canyon. Madeline did all the driving on this trip. The accompanying picture is of Madeline driving the our Jeep up on old river bed in the canyon. Unfortunately on this trip,as went along to drive out of the canyon, the stones and boulders in the river bed got larger and larger. When we had less than a quarter of a mile to go to complete the trip --- the river bed became so rough that we were forced to turn back for a twenty mile return ride on a pretty rough trail. Still the trip was lots of fun.

One day we took a trip up into the mountains near Prescott with our niece, Carmen, and Madeline's brother Carl. After a nice ride and a short hike, we ended up a what is said to be the world's largest Alligator Juniper. This is indeed a huge tree, and it it is almost impossible to get a picture that gives justice to its true size. The picture here shows our neice, Carmen, perched on one of the huge branches.

An interesting thing about this huge tree, is that the branches seem to increase circumference only from the bottom, with the top of the branches eventually becoming bare, with no bark. I looked at other smaller Alligator Junipers, and this seems to be a characteristic of the species --- as the branches age, bark stops growing on the top, and the branches grow from the bottom.

I am not sure if i have ever posted a picture of our home.This photograph of our RV and toad (RV talk for towed vehicle)was taken in Texas, on our way west. You can see two of our four slide-outs extended. These increase the living space by a fair amount.