In and Out of New Mexico

The next part of our trip seemed to happen too fast. We went down to Sedona, after a friend recommended it, and stayed in Page Springs, just outside of town. Sedona is gorgeous! The town is a bit like Carmel, California. The homes seem to blend into the land, it is very expensive and hip, with an unbelievable view. The weather was hot again and it felt really good to us. However, the campground we stayed in was overcrowded with cottonwood trees and it was spring. Even though we left the snow at the Grand Canyon, it was snowing on us again, this time with cotton. After a couple of nights of that, we had to move on, as the cotton was getting on and into everything.

Our next destination was to see the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest National Parks, which are connected. Starting at the north end of the park, you drive one way 27 miles into the other park. Since you can not camp in these parks, the closest place for us to stay was Holbrook. This is really not much of a town, except for hotels. Since it is the closest town to the parks, it has tons of hotels, but not much Main Street. We stayed in a hotel for the next two nights and explored the parks. The weather was dry and warm, but they forecasted high winds of 55-70 mph. We decided to go anyway and take our chances. If you have not seen the painted desert, please do. We had both heard about it, but never expected to see the amazing rainbow of colors on the eroding mesas and on the surrounding grounds as far as your eyes can see. The colors are not just reds and whites, but greens and yellows and blues and purples. Fascinating and mind blowing. The wind was definitely high. When we tried to eat lunch in our van up on a hill, we sat nervous as we felt the wind push us and bump us and so we finished quickly to get back down. The winds were moving the clouds so quickly, I imagined the shadow as a giant paintbrush passing by and leaving the bright and bold colors behind. They were also causing small dust storms from the dried up washes below. The desert has many places that they call a wash. Desert washes are dry for extended periods but can receive large volumes of water draining from higher elevations after heavy rains. They look like dried up creeks. At one point we had to run back to our car before the dust storm caught up to us. We drove until we made it to the Petrified Forest. This was also an amazing sight. Here are trees that were growing with the dinosaurs, that were buried and with perfect conditions turned the interior into gems. It is hard to believe until you actually see it. The outside bark looks like redwood or cedar, but the inside glistens with amethyst, quartz, and other gems of yellow, rust, blue, green and more. Definitely a site to see. After being blown around in the high winds for a couple more hours, we had to leave as our heads were getting filled with air. The kids earned their second junior ranger badges and it was time to continue on.

Our next destination was Four Corners and Mesa Verde. By this point on our trip, Husband and I both got a hankering for backroads. The major highways like I-40 are definitely fast, but they are also extremely boring, and when you drive as far as we had, boring is just plain painful. We decided to go up highway 191 to see another national monument, but after driving on it for about 10 miles, we had to turn around. Highway 191 has received our Worst Road on Our Trip Award. Seriously, it was so bumpy and repaired so poorly, that we were sure it wouldn't be like that the whole way, but after ten miles of bump-diddy-bump, we turned the van around and headed through Gallup and up to Four Corners.

Four Corners is on a Navajo Nation Reservation and they charge you $3 per person to go in. Once inside, you see the site where it marks the 4 corners of Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico, you take your pictures of everyone standing in 4 states at once, look around at the flea market stands of art and jewelry and goods, and leave. It was interesting for me to think about a group of people who have been on the land for thousands of years, who don't believe in owning the land, now make money showing people where white people have put imaginary borders dividing the land. Kind of Creepy.

We were off to Colorado. It seemed almost immediately that when we were in the borders of Colorado, the grass was green (heck, there was grass!) and there were snow capped mountains in the distance. We stayed at a hotel in Cortez, since Mesa Verde didn't have their campgrounds open yet, and we needed a rest. We found it at the Best Western Cortez. Not only did we get a 2 room suite with 2 King sized beds (we even had our own door with a lock) and a giant bathroom, but we had a kitchen! That's right, I was cooking in a real kitchen again! Needless to say our one night stay turned into 3. The hotel space seemed so large, that I felt I could live there forever. Now, it was probably only around 500 square feet, and that is when I realized my first goal. To live in such a small space as our van, that even a apartment would seem like a palace. We were all feeling that wonder when we were living in almost 3000 square feet, just 5 months before.

Our trip to Mesa Verde was another magical sight to behold. It also snowed on us again. This time we would stay warm and dry. We put on our northwest winter gear again, this time adding our raincoat to keep the melted snow from getting us wet. They almost cancelled our guided tour to the Cliff Palace, but luckily our ranger was a real trooper. She was nervous about the huge group making it up and down the ladders you need to climb, in the frozen snow, but she just told us to go as slow as we needed to, take our time, and she was sure we would be okay. We were okay and we were glad we were there. We all marveled at this ancient community. Building their homes in a huge alcove, gardening on top of the mesa, and traveling there by climbing the big rock every time. They didn't have the ladders we had, as they were put in by modern society. You have to see it to believe it, and to see it in the snow, you realize what a great spot this was. With a couple more ranger badges earned by the boys, we left Mesa Verde and Cortez with our next destination in mind, Taos, New Mexico.

We couldn't make it the whole way to Taos that day, so we stopped in Jemez Springs. A small beautiful town surrounded by the deep red rock. It was so beautiful, we wanted to stay, but we had no water and it was a primitive campground. So after one night, we drove up into Taos. It was of course, snowing in Taos. At this point, we have been traveling pretty fast, through high heat and freezing temperatures, low to high elevations and it is dry. It is so dry in the desert, our noses were bleeding a lot. Now we were in Taos with an elevation of almost 7000 feet, in the snow and dry. I had become sick. I was done camping in the elements and I needed to sleep for a few days. So we found a fun hotel called the Sagebrush Inn. Fun because it had the pueblo style building with a fireplace in our room. We stayed a couple of nights, but I was feeling worse, and thought it might be the elevation, so we left for Santa Fe.

Santa Fe, elevation wasn't much better, but it was much warmer. I was too tired to travel again, so we stayed for a couple more nights. We all loved Santa Fe. We took a walking tour and found out so much about this very old and internationally famous city. The weather was beautiful and we just had a wonderful time, and although I was not feeling 100%, I was feeling better. The nose bleeds were still happening and we decided to get out of the elevation. So we made reservations to camp for the week at Brantley Lake State Park which we thought was just 20 minutes (but actually 45) outside of Carlsbad Caverns (south New Mexico.) The park was beautiful and it had shelters to protect you from the sun and heat, there were free hot showers, lots of drinking water, playground for the kids and trails to the lake. There were kids camping at almost every site, so fun and playfulness was abound. It was perfect and we were so happy, we didn't want to leave and it was only $10 a night. We actually considered staying for the full two week limit.

We relaxed for a day, but headed out that night to see the bat flight. If you have never seen 1oos of 1000s of bats flying out of a cave at twilight, you should make an appointment to do so. This private population of Mexican Free-tail Bats astound you as you sit quietly for up to an hour watching them exit the cave like puffs of smoke. We left after about 15 minutes and headed back to the campground. The next day we spent saying things like, "Wow" and "Amazing" and "Wicked Awesome." Carlsbad Caverns do not disappoint curious travelers. We took the walking tour with audio guides for each of us (they even had a special guide for kids), and we had really a good hike. We also took a guided tour which was especially cool when they turned off all the lights in the cave and it was pitch black. We would actually like to go back there when the kids are older to explore the other open trails with more difficult terrain and less lighting.

On our way back to the campground, we were shocked to see a turn in the weather. Heavy thunderstorms were following us back to our campsite. When we arrived, the lightning was a little too close for comfort and we almost left, but we put the children to bed and put out the lawn chairs to watch the show, until we felt it was far away enough for us to go to sleep. The next morning the down-pour came, and we decided we should pack up and leave after only 3 nights. We traveled through a huge storm (which we found out later went all the way to Houston) trying to escape it, but lightning was everywhere and by dinner found out we had just missed a tornado by only an hour. That was okay, though, for we were safe for the moment and already in Texas and heading to visit my husband's family.