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Los Alamos, NM – Sunday June 7, 2015

Happy Birthday Christine, a day late.

Today was two museums in Los Alamos; a small historical museum and Ray Bradberry Museum.   The small town museum told the story creating the town of Los Alamos as part of the Manhattan Project to build the first atomic bomb.

The Ray Bradberry Museum is very high tech and more of an advertisement for the Los Alamos National Laboratory them what I would call a museum.  They had a great section on the atomic bomb and then several areas showing all of the important things they are doing now and why we should continue to give the lab 3.5 to 4.0 billion a year for all the projects they work on.

Santa Fe, NM – Saturday June 6, 2015

Drove 41 miles into Santa Fe to see the sights.  There were three mission churches Jean wanted to see and a couple of museums.  We ended up seeing all three churches and then spending the rest of the day walking around the shops at the Santa Fe Plaza.  There are hundreds of shops to walk through.  It is really hard for me to understand how all the jewelry shops can all stay open and make a profit.

Pictures of the churches ( when I get pictures formatted I’ll post them here ). 

I put them HERE. 

Bandelier National Monument – Friday June 5, 2015

This morning we got up and went down into the valley to see the ruins.  With limited parking in the valley the county is paying for a bus shuttle system to ensure people keep coming to the park.  My guess is there may be 30 –  40  parking spaces at the parks visitors center.  Visitors can drive their own cars into the park before 9:00 a.m. and after 3:00 p.m.  We left the campground at 8:30 and drive to the visitor’s center, there were about 20 available parking spaces.  The shuttle system allows 100’s of people a day to be in the park.   The shuttle starts at a county visitor’s center in White Rock, NM.  They have a lot of parking spaces for visitors and even spots to park your RV.  The RV spots have power available for $20.00 a day if you’d like to leave the A/C running.  The A/C is important if you have a pet who can not ride into the park on the bus.  This a really great idea.  The $20.00 will than allow you to stay in this RV parking area over night.

Jean and I spent 3 hours walking along the interruptive trail viewing the ruins:  ( when I get some pictures formatted I’ll post them HERE ).  Pictures from today start half way down the page.

Bandelier National Monument – Thursday June 4, 2015

We were up early today and on the road by 7:00 a.m.. I wanted to get to Bandelier early because of the limited choice of campsites.  This campground is an older national park like campground which means there will only be a few sites we’ll be able to fit into.  We got here at noon and got the only pull through site in the park ( lucky Harry  and Jean ) site 55.

Paying for the site was an interesting endeavor.  Most things here are pay by credit card machine this includes entry into the park and camping.
Here are the registration instructions on the campground map.
TO REGISTER:  Choose a vacant site (DO NOT put anything on the site until the site is paid for) and return to self-registration area at campground entrance.  Follow directions posted by the fee machine.  Place
receipt from machine on dashboard.  Note: Machine give $1 coins for change.
If you wish to extend your stay you must do so after 12:00 Noon.
Camping fee is separate from the ENTRANCE FEE.
Campers must stop at the entrance station to show valid entrance pass upon every re-entry into park.

Two paragraphs below this on the registration instruction sheet the instructions say; “Campsites must be vacated by 11:30a.m. unless payment has been made for the following night.”

My first question is how can I extend my stay if I must make the “extend your stay you must do so after 12:00 noon” but I must be, ”vacated the site by 11:30 a.m. unless payment has been made.”?
Second question, “DO NOT put anything on the site until the site is paid for,”  When I find the site I want how do I know that someone else has not selected this site and is at the pay station paying for the site.  If I get to the self-service credit card pay station and someone else has already paid for the site I have to find another, this could be an interesting challenge when 10 people are driving around the 3 campground loops looking for a site.

Another great opportunity is at the automated pay station.  On the payment machine it says you can use a credit card $1.00’s, $5.00’s, $10.00’s and $20.00’s.  On the sign about three feet to the right of this payment machine, in the middle of the instruction for registration it says, “ DO NOT USE $20.00’s”  You’ve got to love the great ability of our government.
Oh  yea, on the receipt which is printed from the automated payment machine it says we have to be out of our site by 11:00 a.m.,  Thanks that is really useful information.

 

Bluewater Lake State Park, NM – Wednesday June 3, 2015

View from camp.

We are here for another day and will move on to Bandelier National Monument early Thursday morning.  The plan is to stay there through the weekend before moving on.

Camping in New Mexico is really great.  The state parks and nice and have both reservation sites and none reservation sites for drop in’s.

Here is the pricing structure:

$10.00 for basic site
$14.00 for site with electricity and sometimes water

$180.00 for an Annual Camping Pass (good for 13 months) all basic sites are free, electricity and water site is $4.00
$100.00 for an Annual Camping Pass at age 62
$225.00 for an Annual Camping Pass if you are from out of state.

We purchased an Annual Camping Pass when we here in October and it has more than paid for itself.

High today should be 85 with low of 52.

Pictures From Days Past – Tuesday June 2, 2015

I’m a little behind in posting pictures I have taken.

Here are some of the pictures from our tour around Homoliva ruins.

These were large villages with over 1200 rooms at one of the 4 sites.
This is a drawing of what the village might have looked like:
Some of the rooms where rather large.
This is where they think this kiva was and some of it rebuilt.
And of course there are always lizards:
I also got him out on the side walk, Look at the length of his rear toes.
There is a lot of pottery around these sites and it is illegal to remove anything from the sites, so people place the things they find on flat rocks.

There are a lot of these rocks around the sites, it’s really kind of cool.

Winslow, Az.

This was fun, Jean and I had stopped by here several years ago.   At that time we texted the kids, “Standing on a Corner”.   I think Brian was the first to answer, “Winslow, Arizona”

 

Bluewater Lake State Park, NM – Monday June 1, 2015

Monday morning we were up early.  After two weeks on road it was time to visit a laundromat.  We went to “Handee’s Laundromat and Car Wash” it was actually  very clean and we were out in about and hour and a half.
We are still moving east and are now at Bluewater Lake State Park just off of I-40 west of Albuquerque, NM.
In site 41, New Mexico has sites that are reservable  and also always have sites that are available for drop ins.  This is really nice since  we don’t always know where we are going until we get there.

Homoliva State Park, Winslow, AZ – Sunday May 31, 2015

Jean and I went out looking at the two ruins in the park and then drove into Winslow.    While you are in Winslow it is important to go stand on THE CORNER.

This year I got the T-shirt.

Also went by the Flying J truck stop to see if I can get in and out while towing the car.  It looked good and we’ll get gas Monday morning.

Here is our drive around Winslow, we were also out looking for a laundromat.

Homoliva State Park – Winslow, AZ – Friday May 29, 2015

We are in site 32.

There are 53 sites in this campground and only 12 sites are being used. Of that 12, 5 are for one boys youth group.  We stayed here on September 14, 2011 and at that time there was only a couple of people here.  It is really a nice campground with 40 to 50 feet between sites which are level and paved with electricity and water.

Today’s drive was 429 miles.  We were on the road by 6:30 a.m.  and got to Homoliva at 4:00 p.m.
I had planned a stop in Flagstaff to do our grocery shopping at a SuperWalmart however that did not work out so well.  I have read a lot of blogs about how unfriendly Flagstaff is to RV’ers and they again proved it to be true on all accounts.   It was difficult to find the store because of no signage.  We saw a large brown building with a large parking lot and figured it to be the Walmart.  When got right to the turn lane we could see the four foot high Walmart sign at the parking lot entrance.  However, I could not see a good path into and out of the parking lot.  One of the challenges of pulling a car is you can not back up.  If I get myself into a place where I can not make a turn I’d have to stop unhook the car and then backup.  I actually have had to do this once.  We were on Hwy 50 (out in the middle of nowhere) half way across Nevada when we stopped for lunch at a pony express historical site.  The parking lot was empty and I thought I could make a large circle and make it out the only entrance point.  I was wrong, unhooked the car, backed up three feet and made the turn J.  Back to Flagstaff Walmart, the parking lot was so broken up the curbs and light posts I was not sure I could get in and out with all the tight turns and other vehicles in the lot.  After driving around the area looking for a place to park we decided to move on down the road.

Here is a Google Earth view I got after we arrived at Homolovi.  It doesn’t look to bad until more cars and a few motorhomes are added.

Flagstaff was also a scheduled  pee stop for Hank so he went 5 (FIVE) hours without a pee (poor traveling Hank) we usually stop every two hours.
Nice day with a temp of 92 here.

 

Calico Ghost Town Regional Park – Barstow, CA – Thursday May 28 , 2015

We decided to stay here for one more day and look around the park/ghost town.  This will give us a 410 mile drive to Winslow, Az on Friday.
The campground is about a half mile down hill from the town.
Some of the information about  the town points out the town is on one of the many ground faults.  This is not a very good picture however you can still see how the rock is twisted.

This picture is looking down onto the town.  It was interesting and Jean and I had a good time.  Spent the afternoon enjoying the heat, 95 I think was the high.