Day 9 -- Just hanging in old Santa Fe, New Mexico -- 18 Miles

It seems that weird weather is going to be our fate, at least for awhile. After we'd gone to bed last night the rain started yet again and pelted the old tin RV for at least an hour or more. Then the wind started up and though it wasn't northern Nevada strong, it still had us a swaying a bit. This morning, when I stepped outside the comfy confines of our home away from home, it was just darn cold, cold enough to require a jacket if I had wanted to dig under the tilt-up bed frame and extract one. Then, when we had left our camp north of Santa Fe and were searching for the camp we had chosen for our two-day stay near the downtown area of New Mexico's famous capital city, it actually starting hailing on us. Windy, cold, and spitting ice, the weather seemed intent on making us roll on south to the Mexican border or something to find summer.

The downtown RV park turned out to be something of a challenge to locate, and at one point had us going opposite directions seeking the same destination, but we finally did the requisite number of u-turns and rolled into the Los Suenos RV Park (photo top left) just before noon. We visited Wally World for groceries, well, most of them. Next we had to locate a Smiths since the older Wally World had no deli. Finally, just before lunchtime, we had everything set up and turned on and had moved into clothes-washing mode. Simultaneously the blue skies arrived and it appeared as though the weather was going to give as a break.

One of the things I saw as we drove in was a really, REALLY vintage travel trailer. Once we were set up and Concetta had started in on the lunch prep, I wandered over to snap a few photos of a rig which I figured must be no newer then the 1940s (photos 2 and 3). I had just finished shooting and was walking back to the rig when a SUV drove up and stopped next to me.

"Hey," the driver called out the window. "I see you've got one of the new Nikons."

I bent down and looked in the window and saw a thirty-ish chap in a ball cap and dark glasses. He looked friendly enough, so I said, "Yeah, just got it for this trip. It's the new D7200."

"Ah," the the driver said. "I use the D610 myself. Well, and I shoot Canon as well."

After that beginning, I and the chap, who introduced himself as Lucas, launched into stories of our respective lives like we'd been buddies for months. Turns out that Lucas is a semi-professional photographer, massage therapist, and college student, as well as a support person in the movie business.

"Movie business?" I said with surprise.

"Sure," Lucas said. "Latest job was with Longmire."

Now he had my attention for sure. "Longmire!!!!" I said, my voice rising a couple of octaves. "At one time that was our favorite TV show. Was until the idiots took it off the air."

"Yeah, I know," Lucas said, shaking his head. They went over to NetFlicks." And then he went on to tell me how the head of A&E had gotten greedy since she had her own film production company and wanted to throw more money their way.

Our conversation bounced around after that, but always came back to photography. "How long you going to be here?" Lucas asked at one point. "We could go out and do some shooting together. I could take you guys into Santa Fe and really show you the good places to shoot."

"Just two days," I said.

When he looked disappointed I hastened to say, "But why don't we go out tomorrow?"

Lucas thought for a moment, then said, "Yeah, I can do that. I'll put my college studies off a day."

"Why don't we get together right after breakfast, then?" I said.

"It's a deal," Lucas said. He thrust out his hand. "Glad I stopped to talk."

We shook hands. "Me, too," I said. "I'll see you tomorrow."

Lucas drove off toward his shiny Airstream travel trailer and I stood there looking after him just in awe of how life can send you off in a new direction at the drop of a hat. Lucas had told me that many of the interior shots for Lou Diammond phillips on Longmire had been done in his Airstream. The exteriors were shot of Lou's much shorter trailer, but the interior shots required more room.

Most people think that working in the movie business is a cakewalk, but once upon a time I found out differently. I moved to Carson City, Nevada, back in 1974. My parents had moved there while I was in the Naval Air Corp and my intention was to live with them, make some money, then head out on another adventure. At the time I had just come from a job on a sixty-foot yacht (photo right) that was based in the Mediterranean area, one of Spain's Balleric Islands. My job was to work as boat crew and film crew for a self-made millionaire who had decided HIS next adventure would be film-making. I and my buddy John Riise spent over a year helping to make a documentary. That's when I found out that the movie business is most times just plain hard work. Schlepping equipment, repeated takes, underwater work, impossible shooting schedules -- you name it. The job is fun at times but always exhausting. Plus you have the stress of limited budgets and the overarching need to get things right in the shortest possible time.

Once I had lived in Carson City for 18 months and I had earned, I thought, enough money to go and seek out another adventure, I moved back to the L.A. basin and took up residence with my buddy John and Dennis, our underwater photographer from the Mediterranean documentary. Soon I was recruited by a another chap who wanted to shoot a movie western and who wanted me to help him build a movie set which which would be a saloon interior. I wasn't making any real money -- about ten dollars a day -- but I hoped that it would do until I decided where I was going next.

The man that employed me to help build a saloon did have some movie credentials. He had been in charge of the "second unit" photo crew for the movie, "Jaws." He was the one who shot the boat interiors where the shark is banging on the outside of the boat hull and water is spurting everywhere from the loosened seams. He also did second-unit work in the movie, "Lucky Lady." I'm sure there were many other movies, but those are the only ones I remember.

Anyway, Mike the cinematographer who had me building a saloon decided one day that we were going out on the Mojave Desert somewhere to do some exterior shots. When the sound tech didn't show up to do his part, I was drafted to do the sound work. "Me????" I said. "I don't know jack about sound work."

Don't worry about it," Mike said. "You'll get the hang of it. Just lower the sound boom into the frame until I can see it through the camera viewfinder. When I see can it I'll tell you to raise it up a bit. Then all you have to do is keep it there. Nothing to it."

Well, it sounded easy enough. Trouble was, when we went to Universal Studios a few days later to take a look at what we had shot, some of the takes included just the very tip of my sound boom. Man, I thought Mike was going to rip the arm off his chair and kill me with it. It was then that I began to doubt whether I was entirely suited to the movie business. Some time later when mike announced he wanted the two of us to fly to Costa Rica and scout locations for a war movie he wanted to shoot I decided to seek my fortunes elsewhere. I figured that Mike's hot temper would probably cause us to run afoul of some central American government and would certainly get us locked up. And thus ended my short, but semi-sweet career in low-budget films.

Still, I know I made the right decision. Even though Mike had promised to get me accepted as a trainee in the cinematographers' Union if I stayed as his assistant, when I left him and traveled back to Carson City I almost immediately met Concetta in a local Laundromat. Had I stayed in Hollywood and become a cinematographer I would have missed out on the woman of my dreams (photo above left). As you can see, it was good that I let fate have its way.

Tomorrow if the weather isn't awful, Lucas will come by and we'll head into Santa Fe for what we hope is more adventures. Stay tuned and, of course, we wish you Happy Traveling.

Day 8 -- Bayfield, Colorado to Santa Fe, New Mexico (almost) -- 180 miles

Today didn't turn out anything like we envisioned. We had planned on going to Durango to walk the vintage streets of Old Town, but when we got up this morning it looked so much like rain that we decided to cancel those plans and just hit the road in the direction of Santa Fe, New Mexico. The TV News weatherman also helped in the decision as he enthusiastically proclaimed, as I was setting up the coffeemaker, that Colorado was getting set to receive a mega storm that promised to dump from 12" to 48" of snow in the mountains west of Denver and the rest of the state would at least get copious amounts of rain. The graphic on the TV screen showed this massive circular storm pattern that stretched from northern Colorado to Southern New Mexico. "That does it," I told Concetta, "we're heading south for awhile."

So most of the day the weather drifted between gray and overcast, to lightly raining. We stopped at a U.S Forest Service picnic area for lunch, otherwise we rolled along through the mountains of southern Colorado and northern New Mexico and listened to our latest murder mystery. We didn't stop to shoot photos since the light was so poor.

This afternoon we stopped at a Good Sam RV park about a dozen miles north of Santa Fe and grabbed a spot for the night. The park didn't have much to brag about in that the spaces were bare bones and not very level, but the manager was a happy and helpful guy and I can't really complain about anything. It was raining as we pulled in, but by the time I had changed into my "mud shoes" and had gotten my rain jacket on the rain stopped and stayed that way the rest of my setup time.

Once we were set up we decided to take a walk since we'd been cooped up in the rig all day long. Right across the freeway from the RV park was a Native American art gallery that we could see from our camp. The gallery quickly became our destination and we set out hoping that the rain would hold off until we got there.

The sun slipped in and out of the overcast skies and thankfully it happened to be out when we approached the gallery and I was able to grab a few shots of the building. Once inside the front door we were informed that they were getting set for a showing of one of their featured artists in 30 minutes and we were welcome to tour the gallery and then remain for the open house, food, and drink.

Concetta and I toured all the gallery rooms and then entered the architectural manifestation of a Pueblo Native American's world view. In the creation tales of Pueblo Native Americans their ancestors began their journey underground in what they call their "winter room." They lived in caves that kept them warm and the tradition of story-telling began at this stage. In the spring of their ancient lives they built pit houses and they begin to explore the outside world. In the summer of their ancient lives they had moved completely above ground. They tended crops, they built water systems, and they made pottery. Their lives were ruled by hard work and by survival based on the passage of the seasons. Then, finally, in the autumn of their ancient lives the Native American Pueblo peoples gather the bounty of their hard work as winter approaches. But also in the autumn of their ancient lives the Spanish Friars arrive and try to make them forget their ancient ways. Conflict and death result and the native peoples spend many lifetimes away from their roots.

In the art gallery you could enter a dark tunnel symbolizing the Native peoples' days of life underground. Then, as you moved beyond that underground stage, you moved into the pit house state and then into the agricultural state. You ended up in the Spanish conquest room and then the modern influences room where you saw a child clutching a cell phone, a TV remote, and sat glued to a mindless TV show. Concetta and I were certainly impressed at the lengths to which this tribe, known as the Peoh tribe, had gone to tell their story. It was incredible and magnificent and extremely well done.

After we wandered the interior of the gallery we went outside and began a tour of the gallery grounds. We found that each and every building on the property was devoted to some form of artistry. There was a wood shop, a pottery studio, a sculpture studio, and a brick-making area where students learned to make adobe bricks. We got to poke our heads into the wood shop since it was unlocked, but all the rest were not open for visitors, which was unfortunate.

To me the high point of our tour around the grounds was the discovery of a huge chunk of Limestone over near the mud brick production area. This was obviously limestone because we found an actual fossil shell embedded in the stone. It was a sort of gray color in some places and cream-colored in others. It didn't look anything like the chunk of rock I collected several days ago that I thought was limestone. Guess that settles the controversy, well, except I'm not giving up until I show my piece to a knowledgeable rock guy. It's just stubbornness on my part.

I mentioned earlier that we had stopped for lunch at a Forest Service picnic area. What I didn't tell you was that the picnic area had been placed at that specific location because of a natural phenomena that existed there, a concave amphitheater at least twenty stories tall, made out of the most colorful of sandstone. I almost didn't take my camera when we went to explore since the light was so poor. Once lunch was done we decided to get as many steps in as possible so we set off to explore the trail up to the amphitheater.

When we had climbed the path and concrete steps up to the gigantic natural "bowl" that had been formed by the sloughing off of the colorful sandstone, Concetta asked me to sing something so we could hear our echo. For some reason I chose the theme song from the TV show of the 1960s, "The Happy Wanderers:"

I love to go a-wandering, Along the mountain track, And as I go, I love to sing, My knapsack on my back.

Chorus: Val-deri,Val-dera, Val-deri, Val-dera-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha Val-deri,Val-dera. My knapsack on my back.

The echo from the sandstone cliffs boomed back at me as I sang that long-ago theme song.

I really relate to this song and to that TV show from fifty some odd years ago. The Happy Wanderers TV show, which detailed the exploratory adventures of one Slim and Henrietta Barnard, featured the twosome headed out each week on some adventure in the southern California and southwest desert areas. The show was sponsored by local area Ford dealers and each week fans of the show could go down to their local Ford dealer and get a copy of that week's road map detailing the Happy Wanderer's adventures.

So why is this a big deal? Well, you may have noticed that our web site has the same name as the show. The reason is that when I was only a youngster the travel bug had already begun to grow in me. My parents' southwestern vacations in the early 1960s awoke that urge. Then, when I watched Slim and Henrietta having so much fun as they toured all the nooks and crannies of the desert southwest near Los Angeles, I determined that someday, someway, that life would be mine, too. Though I was too young to drive at the time, I prevailed on my mother to drive me to the local Ford dealer each and every week so that I could collect the travel maps. Indeed I have those maps to this day.

But that's not the end of the story. When our Happy Wanderers travel blog appeared a few years back I was contacted by a gentleman who wanted to know just why I had chosen that name. When I told him he confessed that HE was the son of Slim and Henrietta and was impressed that I had been a fan of his parents' show. He went on to send me more copies of the maps from their weekly show as well as some Happy Wanderers bumper stickers. How cool is that? I never heard from the son again and I suspect that he was very elderly at the time. But that bit of history still counts as one of the high points of my life.

Tomorrow we hope to visit historic Santa Fe and especially its historic central plaza. We'd also like to visit Taos which lies just to the north of Santa Fe. We're not sure how long we'll be here, where we'll end up staying, or just what direction we'll head when we leave. We'll leave that to serendipity. We wish you Happy Traveling and best wishes from the Happy Wanderers of yesterday and today.

Day 7 -- Cortez to Bayfield, Colorado by way of Hovenweep -- 154 miles

This morning we got up, had breakfast, got the rig ready to roll, and basically had no idea where we were going. In my mind we had three choices: we could go south into New Mexico and visit the premier archaeological site of Hovenweep; in the opposite direction -- sort of -- we could go east and visit the simply outstanding Mesa Verde site where you saw where the cliff dwellers lived; or we could bypass both per-Columbian history sites and drive straight on to Durango, Colorado where one could visit the pioneer west of the 1870s and that most famous steam train in the west, the Durango and Silverton. What to do?

After the rig was buttoned up and ready to go, Concetta announced she wasn't quite ready to hit the road. "That's okay," I said. "I'm going down to the office to see if they have facilities to fill our propane tank." And so I did. I forgot to mention that when we pulled into the most excellent RV camp in Cortez, Colorado yesterday called the "Sundance," I discovered that the desk clerk had lived a huge chunk of her life about fifteen miles from me in the town of Gardnerville, Nevada. Now she lives in New Mexico and comes to Cortez during the summers to reside somewhere cooler and earn a little cash. This morning when I dropped by the office the clerk was chatting with a older lady in a ridiculously floppy hat who, when I mentioned that the clerk and I had lived in the same place, got real excited and said that she also was from Gardnerville, Nevada and had lived there for the past three decades.

After further questioning the woman, whose name was Maple, told me that she was in Cortez looking for a new place to live, but she also had been looking in my own neighborhood of Jacks Valley near Carson City. How's that for coincidence? At any rate, we three got into a lively discussion -- while Concetta waited semi-patiently back at the RV -- about the best places to live and the best places to visit, and pretty soon I was asking their advice on whether or not to go to Hovenweep or to move on east. "Well," they both chorused, they were planning to go to Hovenweep themselves that day, and they thought it was just simply beautiful, both the destination and roads out there.

"Roads?" I said.

"Sure," they said, and told me that you can go out one road and return on another and it's just simply a terrific drive.

And so it was that after a futile attempt to find propane further down the road at a spot suggested by the RV park clerk, Robin, we headed on out to Hovenweep to see what we could see. It was forty-five miles out there, and forty-five miles back, and the roads were twisty-turny as they could be. But the scenery was just wonderful, full of small farms, and tin-roofed homesteads, and wandering bands of horses and cows. Roads like that are seldom maintained to modern standards, and more than once the dishes in the dish cupboard rattled like crazy, but the vistas were wondrous and beautiful. No pix for y'all, on this stretch, but then there was nowhere to pull off that wasn't either somebody's driveway or much too tiny for a 31-foot rig to fit.

Before long, however, we made a turnoff at the suggestion of a little brown sign that directed us to "turn right" to Hovenweep. Running along this stretch, on a road that was in even worse shape then the last one, we soon came upon an unbeatable opportunity for a little photography. Though there was absolutely no fences on either side of the road to retain any sort of livestock, we found a herd of horses just sort of lounging around waiting for the next pickup-load of hay, no doubt.

I slowed way down to a crawl so we wouldn't either alarm them or cause them to come onto the road thinking we were the hay truck. Actually, I think they didn't care one way or the other. For awhile I just shot a few frames out the window of the rig, not knowing whether they'd gang up on me if I got out. But then Concetta and I hit on the idea of luring them over with some genuine Jacks Valley carrots, a sack of which we had brought along on our adventure.

Well, the horses showed all the interest in the carrots as your average Republican would show in a Bernie Sanders rally. That is, they sort of glanced in my direction as I tossed the carrots as near as I could then went back to "resting." Good thing the carrots weren't hand grenades, because the whole herd would have been history. But in the end I did manage to get a carrot so close to one horse that his curiosity kicked in and he ambled over to see what had just landed in his world. Then he nudged it a bit. And finally he took a chomp and went to crunching (photo 2).

I looked intently to see if the horses would notice that their fellow had scored a treat, but they paid no mind. And the subject carrot-eater didn't let on that he was heir to something special. Since I was not prepared to let good Jacks Valley carrots go to waste -- the ones I had thrown without stirring up any equine interest -- I got out of the truck and went and retrieved them. Then I lobbed them much closer to where the group was standing. They didn't take much notice even then, but we assumed that sooner or later they'd be asking the nibbler just what he was nibbling on. After that we continued our journey to Hovenweep.

Once we discovered the object of our search we found a nice level spot for the RV -- RVs are cranky if you don't keep the fridge level or nearly so -- and then we trekked into the wonderful visitor center. We watched the twenty-minute film, browsed the book collection, and read all the history behind the discovery of Hovenweep.

I had known about the site since I was a kid, but had never tried to go there. The amazing thing is the place was found by the Mormons in 1854, and further explored in the 1870s. These same Mormons eventually settled the community that we visited yesterday in southern Utah called Bluff. Amazing co-incidence.

Hovenweep is a Paiute/Ute Indian word meaning deserted, though it was far from deserted today in view of all the tourists who had somehow found the place. The overcast skies didn't especially make for good photography since everything suffered from lack of shadows and definition. Still we walked the paths of the ancients and absorbed as much of the history as we could. The heyday of Hovenweep was around the 1200s. After that, like many of the vanished peoples once known as the Anasazi, the climate changed and the many canyon and cliff-dwelling tribes moved to other locations. These peoples are now thought to have become the pueblo peoples further to the south.

After purchasing the obligatory Hovenweep T-shirt, and an armload of books on geology and local flora, we made our exit and headed back to Cortez using the alternate route. This route, which runs more to the north, is not quite as interesting, well, unless you just adore miles of rolling farm land, but the road still landed us back in Cortez about forty-five miles later. I might mention that the resident ranger person at Hovenweep listened to my questions about the probable geology along Route 162 from yesterday's travels and vehemently proclaimed that my rock sample was definitely sandstone and not limestone, as very little limestone is found in that area. Sigh!

After gassing up the rig, we headed east toward Durango, Colorado and found a camp about 18 miles beyond Durango in the community of Bayfield. For some reason the GPS took this opportunity to play with us and had us going hither and yon on a bevy of incorrect streets before it settled down and delivered us to our destination. We rolled into the Riverside RV Park on the Pine River in Bayfield about cocktail hour, and I marched up to the office. No one was there to meet me. Well, okay, I next took the advice of a small sign at the entrance to "find your own spot" and tell them later. Okay, will do.

Picking our way through the park I found a nice spot which promised to have all the utilities I needed and was about to slide right in when a park employee popped into view. I stopped the truck, jumped out, and said, "Well, your sign said to just park it and let you know later."

"That would be fine if we had any spaces left," the young woman said.

"No spaces?" I said.

"Got a travel club coming in," she said. "But let's check and see. Drive back to the office and I'll meet you there."

This we did, and miraculously by the time we pulled up to the office the lady was just arriving herself. "Just got a cancellation call on the phone," she said. "We should be able to park you after all."

It turned out that if the cancellation hadn't come in at just that exact second, we would have had to go on down the road because ALL the spaces were spoken for. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the Davis luck at work.

Fortuitously, the park lady put us in a space that just happened to be next to the most garrulous and friendly human on earth. He and I spent so much time talking while I was setting up that the ice in my cocktail had melted and Concetta was beginning to wonder if she was going to see me at all. But as I told her, if I didn't talk to my fellow RVers I wouldn't learn some valuable stuff on how to survive the road while making it look easy. This afternoon I learned a handy trick on how to keep your RV generator's carburetor from going to hell, as well as some tidbits on the advisability of using a "power regulator" on your incoming power source to keep the park from zapping your electrics and a lightning strike from blowing things up even worse. Advice like that is worth its weight in gold.

So tomorrow I hope to pay the town of Durango a visit before we head on down to one of my favorite places on earth, that of Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico. Whether or not we actually end up there time will only tell. But until then, I wish you happy traveling.

Day 6 -- Monument Valley, Utah to Cortez, Colorado (Sidetrip to Four Corners) -- 130 Miles

Today's sensory input involved everything from incredible distant vistas, to the miniature flora of the Utah desert; from pondering the nature of geology millions of years old, to the more immediate nature of artwork made of rocks; from the pioneer struggles in the unforgiving old west, to the modern equivalent of finding a good camp site. We started early and finished late -- well with our usual cocktail on the lanai. Great scenery, great food (made by Concetta), great discussions with the local inhabitants, and yet another great sojourn through the heart of the west.

After gassing up the rig this morning (they predicted lack of services for the route we had chosen), we started the day at the Navajo tourist center in Monument Valley. Turned out to be a huge new building that Concetta and I had mostly to ourselves, but I'm not sure why. They had some really cool exhibits everywhere you looked, including a nice portion devoted to John Ford and the movie industry in the valley.

I set my sights on one young Navajo twenty-something sitting on a nearby bench just sort of staring out one of the picture windows. He looked friendly enough, so I ambled over and asked him if he was keeping an eye out for horse thieves or something. That cracked him up and we spent the next quarter hour just talking about this and that and getting acquainted. I told him I sure liked where he lived, that it was just breathtakingly beautiful, which made him smile. "Yes," he said. He thought so, too.

"So what are you looking for out there?" I asked.

"Lizards," he said.

"Lizards?" Not knowing just how to follow up on that declaration I said, "How about that sky yesterday? Have you ever seen anything like that?"

He smiled and his face lit up. "The clouds?" he asked.

"They were perfect, weren't they?" I said.

He just smiled even broader and nodded."

We talked for awhile about this and that and nothing of real importance, then I bid him goodbye and rejoined Concetta in a tour of the building exhibits. Soon we had gathered up all the maps and brochures we could easily carry and were back to the RV. Our plan was to continue north on Utah Route 163 until it intersected Route 162 and then Route 160. Our ultimate aim was to end up in Cortez, Colorado for the night, but not before we visited the Four Corners area that neither of us had ever seen, which would be a side trip.

Utah Route 162 is a wonderful, lightly-traveled, ribbon of asphalt meandering amidst the buttes and mesas of Monument Valley with seeming indifference to modern highway building techniques. It flows up and down and around rock formations and rolling hillocks of sand. The road is flanked often left, often right by craggy ridges and exfoliating boulder fields. It could use a good resurfacing someday. I had to reduce speed to fifty at one point because the undulating surface was starting to make me seasick. But because it is so lightly used you can sit back and just enjoy the scenery without the constant scouting for oncoming 18-wheelers.

The highlight of the morning revolved around our mutual appreciation of geology. We had been rolling by some fascinating roadside rock formations all morning which involved many feet of what looked like mudstone topped with a creamy white layer that I figured must be limestone. When I finally spotted a pull-out that came complete with a historic marker which was surrounded by some absolutely fascinating rock formations, I pulled over. The historic marker had to do with early Mormon pioneers. But the rocks were what I found most interesting. The limestone or sandstone was arranged in what looked exactly like the rippled bottom of some body of water. And there was acres and acres of it. We spent perhaps forty-five minutes prowling the surrounding desert, looking at the rocks, and wondering if we were looking at the one-time bottom of some ancient sea. We photographed both the rocks and the local flora which I wish I had more room to display. Good times!

I brought a couple of books on rocks, but I neglected to bring my geology textbook. So it was tough to determine if the cream-colored rocks that I wanted to study were limestone -- that is derived from living creatures who died and fell to the bottom of a body of water -- or were just a light form of sandstone. After taking some samples and looking at them through a magnifying glass I still don't know. Like I said, the rock outcroppings were arranged in what looked decidedly like the ripples at the bottom of a body of water (photo above right) Maybe you know what the answer is?

Back on the road we soon stumbled over our next adventure for the day, the 1870s Mormon settlement of Bluff Fort. Though the settlement was ultimately unsuccessful, flooded out by the nearby Animas River, the modern Mormon docents have reconstructed the settlement composed just as it was, made up of replicas of the individual cabins of the early settlers. Of course I'm drawn to western history settings like a moth to flame, and thankfully Concetta likes them as well, especially when it involves lots of information on how the settlers led their daily lives. Since it was close to lunchtime anyway, we pulled into the parking lot intent on some pre-lunchtime exercise and historic exploration.

The photo tells the tale. The Mormon docents, some of whom are even related to the original pioneers, have done a fantastic job of telling the story of the original pioneers' struggle to tame the wilderness and establish a bit of civilization.

After our tour of Bluff Fort we had a nice lunch in the adjacent, tree-shaded parking lot, then it was off for our next destination: the famous Four Corners of America. Four Corners is the only place in the U.S. where you can be in four states at once. You might have to put your left foot in New Mexico and your right in Colorado, and your left hand in Arizona and your right in Utah -- and look a bit ungainly and dorky doing it -- but it can be done. Concetta and I elected to tour the many Native American craft booths which form a huge square around the actual brass plaque in the center of the facility. We decided to save the hand and foot ceremony for last. Truth be known, after watching all the other tourists do their calisthenics whilst trying to be in four states at once, we elected to have me stand in the middle and wave.

The facility at the Four Corners appears to be fairly new and belongs -- we're guessing here -- to the Navajo tribe since they are the ones collecting the $5.00 per person entrance fee. The square structure is made up of several dozen separate sales "rooms" where Native Americans can lay out their hand-made wares and sell them to the visitors. I was especially entranced with the guy who was etching pictographs on stone, I think he said it was chert. Might have been sandstone. His pictographs looked just like the ones you see on large boulders throughout the southwest. His artistry was finer in detail, but the designs were drawn from the designs of his ancestors. The other booth that drew my attention was the man who was doing flint knapping and making his own arrows. He was using Oregon obsidian for the points and turkey feathers to make them fly straight. Concetta spent her time chatting up another vendor who was selling T-shirts, tapestries, and jewelry. We didn't attempt to photograph any of the artists, though I certainly would have liked to have done so.

Four Corners required a detour off our intended route, but only about five miles. After our visit with the Native American artists we backtracked to Route 160 and headed for Cortez, Colorado, our intended stopping place for the evening. Thanks to the Good Sam guide, we scored a really nice camp which lay only a short walk from a nice grocery store. We got in a few more steps -- Concetta says 7500 for today -- and loaded up the fridge in the bargain. Tomorrow, we're either going off into the boondocks to explore the archaeological site called Hovenweep, or we might end up exploring the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde, or we might just head for Durango. We'll decide over breakfast no doubt. So until tomorrow, I wish you happy traveling.

Day 5 -- Tusayan, Arizona to Monument Valley, Utah -- 180 miles

This morning it was 40 degrees in Tusayan, Arizona, just outside the southern entrance of Grand Canyon National Park. It made me glad that I left the heater in the RV set to 60 degrees last night. Still, when I stepped outside the rig to see how wet the evening rain and gotten the entryway rug that I had thoughtlessly left outside, I was pleasantly surprised at how warm the air felt. The rug was soggy, but that was no big deal. I had a plastic tub to hold it until it could be dried out. The sun was shining, which has been something of a rarity in the last four days, the birds were chirping away enthusiastically, and I looked forward to hitting the road.

Our plans today called for re-entering the Grand Canyon Park via the southern approach, but keeping to Route 64 as it formed a right angle and headed for the eastern entrance to the park. Although the canyon beckoned just beyond our RV windows, we only stopped once to view the canyon in the morning light. There I got into a fascinating conversation with a fellow photographer who had perched himself on the edge of the canyon wall, outside the safety fence, and was busily snapping shots with a 2 1/4 x 2 1/4 Rollicord film camera. This is the type of old fashioned camera your father or even grandfather might have used. The Rollicord shoots perfectly square photos and was one of the cameras of choice a half century ago for sophisticated photographers.

At the sight of the chap's camera I completely forgot about the grand canyon -- is that possible? -- and spent the next fifteen minutes talking photography with him. He even let me take a photo of the camera so you could see what I'm talking about. This guy, though proficient in digital shooting and had a digital camera in his backpack, has decided to take up the hobby of film shooting once again so as to, as he put it, make himself slow down and consider his every shot more carefully. After all, the Rollicord produces only twelve shots per roll. Sometimes I wish I'd do some film shooting, especially since I have at least fifty rolls in my fridge, but digital is just so convenient.

After exiting the park we cruised east on Route 64 until we intersected Arizona Route 89 north. Then we motored north on Route 89 until we intersected Arizona Route 160. Our plan was to travel the northward-trending arc of Route 160 until it crossed the New Mexico state line. At least that was the plan. But something very important got in the way of our plans: the sky! Yes, the sky was so incredibly beautiful today that I kept pulling off the highway into any convenient driveway, weed patch, or semi-level turnout and dashing off into the brush to shoot the sky. Concetta kept telling me to be careful opening the door since we were often parked so close to the road that she feared a passing 18-wheeler would take the door off and send me flying a hundred yards down the highway. Fortunately that didn't happen, but my constant photo ops definitely slowed our progress a bit

So it was that when we reached the town of Kayenta on Route 160 and were nowhere close to the New Mexico state line we decided, quite on the spur of the moment, to turn north on Arizona Route 163 which promised a nice RV park just twenty some odd miles up the road. At first we didn't realize that we had just chosen the route into Monument Valley, that oh so revered territory of director John Ford, actor John Wayne, and film classics like Stagecoach and about a zillion other black and white westerns from the 1950s. But as we headed north into this most sacred of places of western lore, we started coming across the beginnings of the famous Monument Valley buttes and mesas. I just couldn't believe it. Though I have seen most of Wayne's westerns like Stagecoach, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, and The Searchers, I had never plotted a course to the filming locations on one of our vacations. Just an oversight, I guess. Even films like Back to the Future III, How the West Was Won, and Forest Gump shot footage in Monument Valley. Okay, enough said. I was definitely in heaven and managed to pull over another half dozen times before we'd gone the twenty miles to camp.

The camp turned out to be very pricey, but very well maintained unlike last night's rather shabby park. We got a great spot, almost level, and couldn't be happier. We're situated in a sort of "bowl" with rust-red sandstone cliffs on all sides except the canyon entrance. There are paved streets, easy hookups, and each space comes complete with a picnic table and stand-type barbecue. You can sign up for tours here at the park office and they will pick you up and carry you around the valley pointing out key locations. One tour even comes very, very early so you can see sunrise on the valley. Concetta and I will probably skip the guided tours and just wander around on our own.

Our destination tomorrow is -- well, who knows? Maybe north toward Durango, Colorado, or east into New Mexico. We'll just have to study the map and decide. Personally, I like not knowing and serendipity is my very favorite thing. So until tomorrow, we wish you Happy Traveling.

Day 4 -- Seligman to the Grand Canyon to Tuseyan AZ -- 100 miles

Today didn't turn out anything like we expected. And last night it rained so hard that I had to pull in the dining area slide because it was leaking water past the rubber gasket close to the driver's seat and we had to keep mopping up the puddles. Definitely a pain in the petootie. This morning when we ventured outside the rig at the camp in Seligman the skies were gray and foreboding and there seemed to be little hope of even a hint of sunshine for the day. So, resigned to yet another day cooped up inside the rig listening to our current murder mystery on the stereo, we set off in an easterly direction on Arizona Route 40. My hope was to catch route 64 once we reached Williams, Arizona, then head toward the Grand Canyon. At the time I didn't think we'd actually stop there other than to have lunch. I had hopes of skirting by that august attraction and heading still further east into New Mexico.

All went according to plan except we were warned as we approached the Canyon that there was no parking available and, we assumed, no camping there either. I was glad we weren't going to be trying to stay or even park. I hoped to just drive past the entrance and go our merry way. Hopefully, somewhere in a nice tree-shaded glen we'd pull over and have lunch before heading on to the land of Enchantment.

All the way to the Canyon, which lay about 95 miles from out last camping site in Seligman, Arizona, the skies remained gloomy and nothing promised to change. It was a perfect climate setting for the murder mystery on the stereo. But I had been wrong about being able to skirt by the Grand Canyon as Hwy 64 ran right up to the southern entrance and you had no chance to turn off and bypass. Resigned to the need to navigate the park amidst the already portended wall-to-wall cars and people, we rolled up to the entrance and presented our Senior Pass for National Parks.

"That will be no charge" the female ranger person said sweetly, and handed back our ten dollar bill that we thought we would be required to pay, at least according to the information on the entrance sign.

Right about then the sun suddenly burst through the cloud cover and lit up the cab of the truck. Concetta and I looked at each other and nodded. "Looks like this isn't going to be as painful as we thought," I said.

Okay, now we had to find a place to put a 31 foot rig so we could have lunch. Hopefully there was at least one space left somewhere. But as we approached the first parking area near the visitor center our hearts sank as nothing greeted us but a sea of cars and, off to one side, a solid block of motor homes with every single space filled. So off we went in search of something a little less popular. We finally found a little-used parking lot next to the park headquarters building which was so far from anything popular that no one wanted to park there. Good enough, we decided, since all we wanted to do was have lunch and be on our way.

Which is what we did, except once lunch was over we decided that wouldn't it be great to take a little walk since we'd been marooned in the RV for most of the day and all of the previous day. So, after lunch, off we went to find a shuttle that would deliver us to the visitor center. We thought that maybe we'd get some of our desired 10,000 steps if we just hoofed it around the visitor center grounds. That wouldn't take much time and we'd still have plenty of time to get on the road and find a nice campsite for the evening.

But once we got to the visitor center via the shuttle, the sun really began to shine in earnest and we decided, well heck, why not hoof it out to the edge of the canyon, grab a photo or two, and get a few more steps in. What's the harm? We could still be on our way soon enough.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how the day got completely out of hand. Not only did we find the rim of the canyon totally irresistible, but with wild abandon decided on the spot to take the rim trail back to the rig instead of the shuttle. And naturally, I had to take half a hundred photos or so, we had to visit the geology center, chat with various fellow visitors, and just generally do the touristy thing like the rest of the multitudes.

So it was that quite late in the afternoon we finally got back to our home on wheels and tried to decide just what to do since all the camps were just too far away. We did try the in-park, full-service camp, but the nice lady told us in no uncertain terms that they were sold out and God himself wouldn't be able to get a spot this time of day. Fortunately, she suggested a small camp just outside the park's southern entrance, and we set our course in that direction.

Turned out the camp WAS quite easy to find and just a short distance away, which was the good part. The bad part was the place was 40% more money than it should have been and was basically falling apart at the seams since it had been sold (the desk clerk told me when I complained) to the Marriot, or someone similar, and was soon going to be ripped out for a nice new hotel. In the meantime the electrical panel looked like it had been vandalized sometime in the 1950s, the sewer connection pipe was so tall that no amount of elevating of the rig would gain me the necessary slope on the sewer pipe, and most of the campsites were muddy and bare-bones without any hint of amenities.

But on the positive side, the sun is STILL shining, the cocktails and hors d'oeuvres were heavenly, and the park store had a cool piece of electric cord that converts a 30amp rig to a 50amp connection should you need to do that when a 30amp is lacking at some future destination. The price was so cheap that I immediately bought it for my possibles box and made the pain of paying $51.00 for the camp site a little more bearable.

So even though we didn't set off this morning in very high hopes -- well except for the future of the cop in the murder mystery -- our day turned out to be absolutely wonderful. Even though we've been to the Grand Canyon on several occasions, and we really had no intention of going there this time, that magnificent window into time never fails to captivate us and make us glad to have the extreme privilege of visiting again.

Tomorrow, well we intend to head back into the park, and then seek out the eastern entrance so we might yet find our way into New Mexico. Not sure of the timing, the route, or the eventual destination, but stay tuned and you'll know about the same time we do. Until then, we wish you Happy Traveling.

Day 3 -- Pahrump, Nevada to Seligman, Arizona -- 227 miles

Today was one of the weirdest and wettest traveling days we've ever experienced. The fact that we were motoring through some of the driest terrain in the country made it all the more strange. It rained from the time we left camp at the Wine Ridge RV Resort in Pahrump near Las Vegas (photo left), until we slogged into the Seligman RV camp on old Route 66 in northern Arizona. The journey reminded us not so much of the American desert southwest as it did of our soggy visit to Scotland in 2008. It rained and it rained. And when it didn't just rain, it rained like someone was pouring water out of a bucket. We did luck out shortly after arriving at the camp in Seligman for just as we paid our fee and rolled into our designated spot the rain stopped for about a half an hour so I could do all the setup work without getting soaked.

Right now? Well it's raining ferociously. Several rigs have just pulled into the park and no one is even venturing outside to do their setup. And I'm just sitting here comtemplating what I might write about since we didn't even venture outside the rig today except to get gas under a covered canopy in Pahrump. Well, actually I did take a small detour in Peach Springs, Arizona, this afternoon because there was an adjacent railroad crossing and I thought I might catch a train going by in the rain and the lights would be cool. We waited at the grade crossing for about ten minutes and sure enough, said train did appear.

Then I had to grab the camera, hold it under my shirt while dashing for the tracks, and succeeded in getting my shot. Though as you can see, the rain wasn't hard enough and the lights were not bright enough to make a good shot.

The worst rain I ever encountered was in the state of Tennessee. The time frame was in 1970, when I had joined the Naval Air Corp and was posted, of all places, to Chicago. After I had been in Chicago for about six months I was posted to Millington, Tennessee, for Navy electronics school. Most of the 10,000 or so sailors on that base had come directly from boot camp and had no easy way of seeing the countryside. I, on the other hand, had come from active duty and had driven my own car to the base. This meant, while most of my shipmates were stuck on the base or had to use public transportation, I was free to roam anywhere I wanted on my time off. Along with a cadre of friends that I made in my own barracks, I did just that.

So it was that I discovered driving in the rain in Tennessee. Today's rain was nothing like Tennessee. In that lovely state just south of Kentucky, so green that it reminds you of glossy photos of Ireland, one of the first things that strikes you as you motor down the many country roads surrounded by verdant farms and fields is the magnitude of the roadside ditches. We're not talking small gullies here that might be a couple of feet deep that stand ready to catch the odd runoff from some spring freshet. No, these gullies are wide enough and deep enough to hide an average sized car were it to roll over and land upside down some dark night when the driver had had too much southern "comfort" in town.

I found myself pondering these massive arroyos when I would go out exploring the countryside, initially by myself, before I had a acquired a "crew." Until one afternoon when the sky opened up and began to dump so much water on the windshield of my car I thought I had inadvertently driven into a lake or something. But no, it was just rain. Rain like I'd never seen it. Rain so heavy and so incessant that the windshield wipers on maximum velocity did absolutely NOTHING to stem the tide. Rain so thunderous and enveloping that I had to roll down my side window, stick my head out, and steer the car to the shoulder and stop.

And that's when I beheld the reason for the ditches large enough in which float full-sized sailboats. Adjacent to where I had parked on the shoulder was what had so recently been a cavernous empty ditch. Now that empty ditch had become a major canal, full to overflowing with a raging torrent of rainwater. I was stunned! I scooted over and rolled down the passenger-side window and checked the other side of the road. Yup, that ditch was flooded right up to the highway right-of-way as well.

So I sat there for a time just appreciating the magnificence of mother nature. No reason to begrudge the time spent. Both ahead and behind me lines of motorists had pulled over as well. But soon, the rain tapered off and the line of cars slowly, cautiously began to ease back onto the blacktop and pull away. I sat there for a time just enjoying the spectacle. Finally, as the sun came out and everyone had pretty much gone on to their various destinations, I too eased back onto the tiny country road and sped away.

But nature had one more trick up its sleeve for me that I could not have anticipated. Of course in those days of teenage bravado I always drove a little more "expeditiously" then was warranted. In this case, that turned out to be a big mistake. As quickly as I could, I shot up to fifty on the tiny road and left the other drivers far behind me. I was having a great time and it didn't cause a problem until I crested a hill and, in the process of plunging down the other side, hit a portion of the highway where the recent rain had completely flooded not only the ditches but the road surface as well. As I sailed down the other side of the hill I smacked right into about six inches of water on the road surface which immediately caused my '65 Chevy (photo above left) to begin hydroplaning across the surface while drifting steadily toward the driver-side ditch.

Well, fortunately for me, I hit pavement just before I would have ended up driving a submarine. And thereafter, I had a great deal of respect for the power of rain in the great state of Tennessee. I let other drivers power by me and I just would lope along and take my time. Live and learn.

And that's all I have to say about that. So until we hit the road tomorrow and have more exciting things to tell you about THIS trip, I bid you Happy Travels!