On Tuesday, David, Frank, and I went to Page, AZ to pick up tables and chairs for our Alpine SoCal Rally at Lake Powell. The rest of the Alpines are due to arrive today and we have pizza & salad scheduled for 5:30.
Here’s Frank and David strapping down the large round tables on the back of David’s truck.
Hope we make it without losing any…
We fitted all the chairs in the back of our Silverado. I was sure not to lose anything 🙂
Frank and I followed David (at a safe distance) to keep an eye on the load.
We went through the South Entrance to get back to the Wahweap Campground.
And we made it! Not a single table was hurt during transportation or in the production of this blog post 🙂
All set up… let the Rally begin!
We put out the “Alpine SoCal” sign on the main road to our loop to make sure no one gets lost.
We have all 26 sites in Loop C reserved for the Rally.
We also put out the “Alpine Southern California” sign in front of our get-together site to mark our territory.
Coaches arrived throughout the day:
Everyone gathered at our get-together site for Happy Hour and by 5:30 David Guhsé arrived on time with the pizza and salad. Here’s a collection of pictures I took of our Alpine Coach Association SoCal group enjoying our first evening together:
Everything went great and a good time was had by all. We even had lots of leftover pizza, salad, and garlic bread. We’ll try to save the leftover salad and freeze the garlic bread to have with our Spaghetti dinner scheduled for Friday.
We did learn a couple lessons; 1) Everyone should probably bring a light jacket or sweater because when the sun goes down it gets a little cool, and 2) If we stay until the sun goes down, (which is highly likely), we should all bring along a flashlight next time.
We got rained on pretty much all Monday night. And Tuesday morning remained soggy with intermittent showers. Every time it stopped raining, we would start to unload the bicycles and Harley, but the rain would start up again and drive us inside.
It finally began clearing up around mid-afternoon and we were able to get the bikes and the Harley off the truck. But in doing so, I wrenched my back taking the bike carrier off the truck, so I’ll have to take it easy for awhile. Now, at least, we can use the bed of the pickup to go get tables and chairs on Wednesday morning.
Otherwise – we pretty much just hung around the campground and watched some of our (day early) Alpine Rally attendees show up. We had several meet and greet sessions. It’s always fun to catch up with folks we haven’t seen in a while.
I think we have 7 Alpines in the loop now that have arrived so far… the rest will arrive today (Wednesday).
Meet Frank (below) a newcomer to the Alpine SoCal group. We stopped to get acquainted while walking the dog.
These nice folks (below) Nancy and Paul McPhillips, are in the market for a Class A Coach and did a drive-thru of our loop to check out the Alpines. They stopped to ask questions about our Coaches while Stilla and I were talking to Frank. We (Frank and I) filled them in on our opinions… of course you know we’re biased a little bit, but you might be looking at some new members if they can find an Alpine for sale 🙂
Orville & Mary Ann drove over in their Jeep from the Page, AZ Elks Lodge to scout out the sites and say Hi. You may recall them from my post a couple day ago when we were staying at the lodge. They’ll bring their Coach over today too. John & Lorraine Foster joined them for a photo op (below).
(L to R) Orville & Mary Ann, Lorraine, Stilla, and John.
(L to R) Greg & Marcy Vaughan; John Foster
John & Lorraine got lots of supervisory assistance while giving their Coach a quick-clean after coming off the road.
John & Lorraine Foster getting their Coach ready for the rally.
Several of the Rally attendees took a walk down to the marina after they got set up. The sun’s out now, the sky is blue…
Our windshield view of Lake Powell.
Once the rain stopped and the sun came out again, we got the flagpole set up and Stilla put out some of her solar lights.
So here we are… ready for Day 1 of the Alpine SoCal Lake Powell Rally 🙂
We’ll get our group site set up today with tables, chairs, etc., and we pick up Pizza for this afternoon’s social hour at 5 PM.
Monday we moved over to the Wahweap Campground at the Lake Powell Resort & Marina (lower left corner of map below) to get ready for the upcoming Alpine Coach Rally which starts on Wednesday.
We didn’t bother to hook up the Silverado behind the Coach when we left the Page, AZ Elks Lodge around noon because it was only a 10 mile trip to the Wahweap CG. It turns out this was a mistake…
Stilla followed me in the truck as I pulled up to the park checkpoint at the South Entrance. I showed the park ranger my disabled veterans access pass and told her the truck behind me was with me. She said the truck had to be hooked up to the Coach or I would have to pay $20 for the extra vehicle. Of course, I tried to reason with her – but in typical bureaucratic fashion she just said; “That’s the rule.”
I asked; “OK, so if I hook it up, then you’ll let me through with my access pass?” “Yeah,” she said, ” as long as you can do it in a couple minutes.” So, I put the Coach in neutral and pulled the parking brake, ran back to Stilla in the truck and motioned her forward so I could hook up the tow bar. I didn’t bother hooking up the umbilical cord for the lights or the safety hooks and jumped back into the Coach to get a wave-thru from the ‘kindly’ park power ranger. Really?!?
I towed the Silverado the final few miles to our campsite in Loop C.
All 26 sites of Loop C have been reserved for our Alpine Coach Rally, and as I mentioned in yesterday’s post, the host(s) aka “Wagon-masters” David & Nicole Guhsé are parked at the entrance to the loop in site 26 and we get to occupy site 24. We’ll leave the site between our two rigs (site 25) empty for our get-togethers where we’ll set up tables, chairs and some EZ-Up tents.
Site 24 in Loop C at the Wahweap CG in Lake Powell Resort & Marina.
Here’s David & Nicole’s Coach in site 26 as viewed from our site. Nice view, eh?
View down the Loop C road in the opposite direction.
We met up with David & Nicole Guhsé (our hosts for the upcoming Rally) and went down to the CG registration office together in their nice new Ford F150 pickup. David had arranged to get some “goody” bags from the resort management so we could stuff them with literature, maps, etc., to pass out to the rally attendees when they arrive on Wednesday.
Nicole & David Guhse “wagonmasters” for the Lake Powell Alpine Coach Rally.
We ended up having to go over to the other side of the resort to the administration offices near the lodge in order to track down the resort manager. She was out to lunch, so we had drinks and a snack at the finely-appointed lounge / restaurant in the lodge while we waited for her to return. This is the view from the restaurant windows overlooking the lake.
The lodge pool.
The resort manager finally showed up and gave us some really nice “goody” bags with Lake Powell and Glenn Canyon pictures printed on the sides. Now all we have to do is find some “goodies” to put in them. So we drove over to the Dam Visitor Center and got some brochures and information on the Dam Tours to add to the “goody” bags.
Here’s the dam as seen from the visitor center. We’ll come back here on Sunday for a tour.
And the dam bridge (no pun intended).
Then we drove into Page to the Museum / Visitor Center for more brochures, literature, maps, etc.,
We returned to the campground and organized the stuff we picked up and stuffed the “goody” bags. Then we spent a quiet evening in the Coach listening to the occasional raindrops hit the roof.
Today (Tuesday) we’ll pick up tables and chairs and get things set up in our get-together spot. Hopefully we’ve seen the last of the rain or a while. It’s been raining intermittently for the last two days. The weather-guessers say its supposed to be nice from here on out 🙂
Here’s our agenda for the Rally:
Only one more day to go before the fun begins… check back tomorrow to see what our Tuesday brings. 🙂
I started off our Sunday here at the Elks Lodge in Page, AZ with an early morning walk with our little dog “Coach” around the neighborhood.
Then I gave Stilla a ride over to the nearby Catholic church where she attended morning services while I spent the rest of the morning washing the Urban Escape Vehicle and the Silverado. Which means it will probably rain later, right?
At lunchtime, Mary Ann made some awesome chili, complete with garlic bread to share with us. Yumm! Thanks Mary Ann 🙂
Alpine owners and neighbors here at the Page Elks Lodge (Orville McGee & Mary Ann Ratliff)
After our awesome lunch, we took off in the Silverado to check out the town and stock up on groceries at the local WalMart. But first, we wanted to drive over to the Lake Powell Resort & Marina (about 10 miles) to check out the campground we’ll be moving to tomorrow for the Alpine Coach Rally. I knew from correspondence, that the hosts for the Rally, David & Nicole Guhse, were supposed to be arriving today.
Before driving into the campground, we pulled off at a scenic viewpoint and looked down on Lake Powell from above.
From the scenic viewpoint we could see our future campground in the distance at the edge of the lake (below).
We drove through the North Entrance to get to the campground. We passed by another entrance road earlier, (I assume it’s called the south entrance) just after going over the bridge by the dam. Both entrances have manned check-points to pay your fees. I was able to show my Disabled Veterans Access Pass for free entry.
We drove around the campground and checked out several of the loops. This place is huge, with 139 Full Hook Up sites and another 112 tent or self-contained RV spots. Click HERE and HERE for links.
Since we didn’t see our Alpine Coach Rally “hosts” anywhere in the campground, I gave Dave Guhse a call to see where they were at… it turned out David & Nicole were just a few miles away on their way in to the campground. So we waited at the registration office / general store and greeted them as they pulled in.
David & Nicole Guhse pulling in to the registration area at Lake Powell Resorts & Marina – Wahweap CG.
It started raining just as they pulled into the parking lot… I think David & Nicole brought the rain with them 🙂
After hugs and handshakes, and a quick stop inside the registration office, we went over to Loop C to help David & Nicole claim a spot.
David & Nicole Guhse’s Alpine Coach.
David & Nicole unhooked their nice, new Ford pickup and parked their Alpine in site 26. Since Stilla and I are co-hosting this rally with David & Nicole; we discussed the layout for the upcoming Rally and decided to use site 25 for our get-togethers. Stilla and I will take site 24 when we come back with our Coach tomorrow. This way, we’ll have the empty spot between our two rigs so it will be more convenient to move breakfast items over in the mornings, cater meals, set up the EZ-up tents, tables, chairs, etc.,
With that done… we followed David & Nicole back into Page to the WalMart so we could stock up. We exited Lake Powell Resorts & Marina on the entrance road that I passed up earlier and came out near the Glen Canyon Dam Bridge.
David & Nicole Guhse in front of us in their Ford pickup going across the Glen Canyon Dam bridge.
We parted ways with David & Nicole at WalMart. Stilla and I returned to the Elks Lodge with our groceries. We brought back some Granny Apples for Mary Ann Ratliff (per her earlier request) and she made an apple pie. She delivered half the pie to our Coach just in time for dessert. It was awesome 🙂 I can’t remember a better apple pie… Thanks Mary Ann!
Today (Monday) we pack up to make the short trip over to the Wahweap Campground to get ready for the Alpine Coach Rally which officially starts on the 7th, but I’m sure we’ll have some other early arrivals. Stay tuned for Alpine fun…
PS It’s rained off and on last night… nothing too hard, just infrequent showers and now it’s raining lightly again this morning as I go to publication with this posting. We’re supposed to have nice weather again beginning Wednesday according to my iPhone weather app… just in time for the Rally 🙂
229 mile travel day from Farmington NM to Page AZ.
It seems that today was the big parade for the Northern Navajo Nation Fair which is an annual event. According to their website; “The Shiprock Northern Navajo Nation Fair is the the Oldest and Most Traditional of the Navajo Fairs. It is held each fall (1-4 October) in the Navajo Land where the Navajo people of the Four Corners come to celebrate the year’s harvest with a community celebration.”
Now, all this wouldn’t be so bad, except the nice bartender at the Farmington Elks Lodge even warned us about this event when we shared our travel plans the day before, but I figured; “How bad could it be?” And we didn’t try an alternate route. One of these days I’ll learn to listen to people 😐 Oh well, I just kept reminding myself that I was retired and that seemed to make it better 🙂
The traffic moved so slowly, that Stilla was even able to walk the dog while we rolled down the street.
Some of the local kids sold drinks to the grid-locked motorists.
Mural on the wall claiming Shiprock to be the Capital of the World.
We finally made it to the other side of town around 2 PM and were able to clear the traffic and head northwest out of town.
View of Shiprock. (Wikipedia link HERE and more Google Images HERE).
The route we took was simply awesome, with stunning views and rock formations galore. Follow along:
Here’s the view as we got closer to Page, AZ:
Lake Powell in the background (below):
When we finally pulled into Elks Lodge 2498 in Page, AZ we saw another Alpine Coach in the parking lot! Meet Orville McGee & Mary Ann Ratliff 🙂
They’ll be attending the Alpine Coach Rally as well 🙂 I took a picture of them in front of our Coaches after Stilla parked. Yup, that’s what I said – Stilla backed the Urban Escape Vehicle (UEV) into the open spot next to their Coach while I ground-guided. She did a great job! We strategically parked nose to nose so we could maximize the available space with the tight RV sites here.
Orville snapped a (rare) picture of the two of us in front of the UEV.
We got set up in our spot, you know – the usual stuff; jacks down, slides out, satellite dish up, rolled out the throw rugs, unfolded the coffee table, put out a couple lawn chairs, etc.,
Then we went into the lodge with Orville and Mary Ann. The Grand Exalted Ruler (GER) “Bill” greeted us at the door and introduced us to all the lodge members. He also presented us with a lodge pin. Pretty cool.
The lodge was having an auction and raffle. Lots of activity going on! We had a couple adult beverages. When we went back to the bar for our second drink, we found out this lodge doesn’t offer a free second drink to visiting members as is customary in most other lodges we’ve visited.
Also, The Elks website says the sites are $15 per night, but when we went to pay, we were told it’s $20 per night. And, oh by-the-way; we’re on 30 Amp, not 50 as the website touted. Oh well, at least it’s good 30 Amp power unlike our last spot at the Farmington Lodge where we had low voltage and couldn’t run one of the air conditioners.
Auction time at the Page AZ Elks Lodge. The picture the auctioneer is holding up is of Antelope Canyon (a local attraction).
Orville & Mary Ann at the Page, AZ Elks Lodge.
Here’s an early morning view of the Elks Lodge I took while walking little “Coach”:
This view (below) shows the RV parking spots next to the lodge:
And here’s our morning view from the (currently) empty spots next to us:
We’ll spend a couple nights here at the Elks Lodge and then move over (Monday) to the Lake Powell Alpine Coach Rally to the Wahweap RV Park & Campground. The Rally officially starts on Wednesday (7 Oct), but we reserved a couple days early so we can help (hosts) David & Nicole Guhse get everything set up.
Stay tuned…
PS The dash air conditioner is still working great. Thanks again Mike! And also, no more squeaks and rattles… it seems I got them all worked out (for now). I blogged about fixing the squeaks and rattles in previous posts; (HERE) and (HERE).
I said in my last post that we drove around town on Friday and then went south to check out another local scenic attraction; Angel Peak (←click link for google images).
Before we went to Angel Peak, we spent a little time running around downtown Farmington looking for an ATM that didn’t charge fees and scouting out a couple potential dump stations to use on our way out of here. We were successful on the first mission (ATM) but not on the dump station because they all seemed to be in the wrong direction and/or they were not easily accessible. We decided to wait until we get to Page, AZ to dump unless something turns up along our route. Oh, and we also stopped at Burger King for a quick lunch and we went into a local RV supply store to see what they had. I’m running low on slide-out lubricant, but the store didn’t have anything that I liked.
Angel Peak is indicated on the map (below) by the yellow arrow. The turn-off is about 15 miles south of Bloomfield on US-550. We passed this attraction on our way here from Santa Fe last Wednesday but didn’t stop.
It’s only a short drive off US-550 on County Road 7175 on a well-maintained gravel road to the first scenic overlook. But you have to travel another 6 miles to get to the campground.
Here’s the view(s) from one of the viewpoints about halfway to the campground:
We made it to the campground loop. Great views but, wow – was it ever windy! We’ve had great weather every day since we left Colorado Springs… so one day with gusty winds won’t make us complain too much 🙂
We stopped at most of the scenic viewpoints. But sometimes we didn’t even get out of the truck due to the high winds.
This viewpoint is called Castle Rock Overlook…
There’s even a well-placed bench on a trail that can be used to sit and ponder the meaning of life or whatever while you enjoy the scenery… But for us, it was too windy – poor little Coach might get blown away 🙁
Here’s what the Rand McNally RVND™ 7720 GPS displayed after we turned around at the campground loop and headed back out.
We drove back to the Elks Lodge. Here’s a view of the steep entrance to the Farmington Elks Lodge.
And we’re back from another day’s adventure.
We enjoyed another great dinner (filet-mignon) at the well-appointed lodge dining room and then hung out in the bar area to use the free Wi-Fi to upload and edit all the pictures for my last post. My Verizon JetPack MiFi plan is 20GB for $100 and we had used it all up this month a couple days ago. It resets again on the 2nd, but I wanted to get the post done before we headed to Lake Powell so I took advantage of the Elks free WiFi. Thanks Elks Lodge 1747!
Time to close this post out and get packed up for travel to Page, AZ. We have our eye on the Elks Lodge there which is supposed to have 5 RV spots with full hook-ups (50 Amp). Hopefully there’s still one available, we didn’t call ahead yet. Their website says they have plenty of dry camping though. Check back soon… we’re looking forward to the Alpine Coach Rally which starts on the 7th. I’ll post again from Page, AZ 🙂
I was tempted to go straight north from Santa Fe on US-84 towards the town of Chama and then take US-64 west, but I talked to someone who told me that route might not be the best for a large RV. So at the last moment, we decided to take US-550 which turned out to be an awesome route. Thanks for the tip Biff!
We stopped at the Apache Nugget Travel Center & Casino (near Cuba) along the way to top off the diesel tank with 78 gallons for $188. That’s the best price I can remember paying for diesel since we started full-timing 🙂
The Elks Lodge in Farmington is at the top of a hill overlooking the police station, and not unlike the lodge in Santa Fe – there were no signs to the RV lot 🙁 We had to pull into a parking lot at the bottom of the hill to unhook the Silverado so we could scout out the best access… the turns were tight and parked cars in the adjacent lots made it difficult.
And here we are… $15 per night for 30 Amp power and water hookups. No sewer though. And the 30 Amp power is a little ‘iffy’… it waivers between 105 and 113 volts and if we turn on one of the air conditioners it drops down to 103 or 104 volts. The Coach’s power monitor displays “Lo Power” and disconnects. I talked to our neighbor, but he says his power is good. Maybe it’s just our pedestal. I don’t want to move. We’ll just have to “rough-it” I guess, and we’ll take little Coach with us in the truck if we go anywhere.
We went into the huge lodge to pay for our site and ended up having tacos and wings for dinner. This is probably the largest lodge we’ve visited to date. Very friendly folks here and our second drinks were free per Elks Lodge custom.
Main entrance of Elks Lodge 1747 as viewed from the inside lobby at the top of the stairs.Bar area of Elks Lodge 1747.Game room at Elks Lodge 1747.
Thursday was another full day of sight-seeing and picture taking… We checked out a couple of the pueblo indian sites (ruins) and went over to Navajo Lake. So follow along…
Our first stop on Thursday was Salmon Ruins(←click link). We took our little dog “Coach” along for the day and found out this place is dog-friendly 🙂
We paid an $8 entrance fee for the two of us with military discount.
The visitor center didn’t have a theater but offered a nice interactive video display that described the site.
We were given an illustrated trail guide in paper format to take along with us on our self-guided tour.
We walked out the back door of the visitor center and down the path to Heritage Park which is a series of connected pathways that join reconstructed buildings that represent the different house types of the peoples and cultures of New Mexico from prehistoric through early historic times.
The website describes it so; “The exit near the Gift Shop brings visitors onto a shaded deck, the first of many picnic areas, and the start of a paved trail down the hillside to access the outdoor areas of the site: Heritage Park, the Salmon Family Homestead, and of course, the Chacoan outlier known as Salmon Ruins.”
This is the view back up to the visitor center from the Heritage Park below.
Follow along on our walking tour:
Reconstructed Pithouse.
Old Trading Post.The old Salmon homestead.Bunkhouse.Old homestead ‘relics’ on display in front of the bunkhouse.
After our walk through Heritage Park, we got to the ruins themselves…
The picture (below) from the illustrated guide book we were given at the visitors center depicts how the same building (shown in my picture above) used to look in the early 1900’s.
And this picture (above) is also illustrated once again in the following picture from the guidebook. It describes how the sun lines up on the altar during the solstice which I found interesting.
One of the many Kiva’s:
After our tour of the Salmon Ruins, we drove the 13 miles to the Aztec Ruins.
The Aztec Ruins (←link here) visitors center (below).
We parked in front of the visitors center in what little shade we could find. I also put the cover on the Harley which I try to do often whenever we park for any length of time.
This site (Aztec Ruins) is a national monument, unlike the previous site we just visited (Salmon Ruins) which is owned by the San Juan County government, and managed by the San Juan County Museum Association, an independent 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. What all this means is that they’re not dog-friendly, so we had to leave little Coach in the truck with the windows down. I don’t think we’ve come across a single national park or monument in our travels yet that is dog-friendly 🙁 The one “good” thing about this being a “national” monument is that I was able to use my disabled veteran access pass to get us in at no cost.
We toured the visitors center quickly…
and watched a 16 minute video in the mini-theater…
This visitors center also had an interactive monitor that described the site, just like the one at Salmon Ruins.
We were also given an illustrated guide book (just like at Salmon Ruins) to take along with us on a self-guided walking tour. But this guide was fancier than the one at Salmon Ruins, it was plastic coated and spiral-bound.
The Great Kiva at Aztec West (pic above and below) is the third largest kiva ever excavated. It was reconstructed by archeologist Earl Morris in 1934.
The AmericanSouthwest.net website (←link here) gives the best description of these ruins (in my opinion) and is well worth the read.
This mat of willows sewn with yucca cord (below) is over 800 years old.
The picture (above) is illustrated in the guidebook (below).
This is one of the very few ruin sites that still have intact roofs… we went (hunched over) through quite a few doorways in the dark.
View of the mysterious green stripe of greywacke stone along the western wall of Aztec West.
A couple more views of the plaza and ruins:
View of the visitor center (back-side) as seen from the ruins.
We breezed through the ruins quickly because it was hot and we had little Coach waiting for us. He was happy to be out of the truck. Here he is enjoying some shade.
We continued on our tour of the area… since we were only 27 miles from Navajo Lake State Park, we plugged it into the GPS. I remembered to take the Rand McNally RVND™ 7720 from the Coach this time.
We took scenic Hwy 173 west…
until we arrived at the bottom of the dam.
According to Wikipedia®: “The Navajo Dam is 402 feet (123 m) high and 3,648 feet (1,112 m) long. Its crest is at an elevation of 6,108 feet (1,862 m).[4] The reservoir formed behind the dam, Navajo Lake, is 35 miles (56 km) long and stores 1,708,600 acre feet (2.1075 km3) of water. The dam has one spillway, an ungated concrete chute capable of discharging 34,000 cubic feet per second.”
We drove up to the top of the dam…
and stopped at the top…
to view the spillway…
Top of the spillway at Navajo Dam.Spillway at the top of Navajo Dam (looking towards lake)
Views of Navajo Lake:
We drove over to the state park. The Navajo Lake State Park website says; “Navajo Lake is the second largest lake in the state, with multiple campgrounds, two marinas, and two boat docks. Navajo is a haven for boaters of every stripe – motorized boaters, canoers, kayakers, water skiers and sailors.”
We checked out the campground for future reference. Here’s the fees:
And here’s the campground loops:
Most of the sites seemed pretty small. We’d be hard-pressed to fit the Urban Escape Vehicle in here.
The visitors center was closed. A mobile trailer is performing temporary duty.
We drove over the top of the dam…
and continued on back towards Farmington on a different route. We took Hwy 511 towards the town of Blanco.
Just after the dam, we passed the Elks Recreation Area sign. We heard that the Farmington Elks had a recreation area / campground here…
from this sign (below) that was posted on the bulletin board back at the lodge.
Unfortunately, it was getting late and the Elks Recreation area was still a couple miles down a dirt road, so we decided to leave it for another time.
We made it back to the Elks Lodge in time for an excellent prime rib dinner and called it a night.
On Friday, we drove around town some more and then went over to Angel Peak(←link here). But let me update you on that in my next post. We plan on moving to Page, AZ today (Saturday) to get ready for the upcoming Alpine Coach Rally. Stay tuned…
Author’s Note: Picture heavy post today – consider viewing on a laptop or desktop instead of your mobile device.
We had quite the busy Tuesday… We took our little dog ‘Coach’ and jumped into the Silverado for a loong drive around the Santa Fe, NM area.
Follow along:
We headed north through Santa Fe from our spot at the Elks Lodge on Old Pecos Trail and got on Bishops Lodge Rd (590) which was a nice scenic drive until it joined US-285 after the town of Tesuque. This very scenic route gave us a little flavor of the area. Nice 🙂
Then we took US-285 to Espanola (#1 on the map below) where we stopped for a quick breakfast at McDonalds. Then we got on Hwy 30 and headed southwest again until we saw signs for Puye Cliff Dwellings.
Puye Cliffs(← link here) was home to 1,500 Pueblo Indians who lived, farmed and hunted game there from the 900s to 1580 A.D. Puye Cliffs’ inhabitants then moved into the Rio Grande River valley. They became the ancestors of today’s Santa Clara people, who now live at Santa Clara Pueblo, 10 miles east of Puye.
We stopped inside the Welcome Center along Hwy 30 which served double-duty as a gas station and convenience store to ask how much and how far. It’s free to drive up to the dwellings; tours are available for a fee upon arrival; and the distance was about 7 miles…
we drove through the entrance and headed west…
until we got to a scenic overlook…
Here’s the informational placard I’m looking at in the pic above:
From the scenic viewpoint we could see a forest fire in the distance.
We drove on to the Cliff Dwellings and parked in front of the visitors center.
Once inside the visitor center…
we viewed the tour prices…
and took into consideration the length of time and distance one of the tours would require; we decided we couldn’t leave little Coach in the pickup for that long.
Notice the “Tour Pass Required” sign:
We read the literature available in the visitor center to gain some knowledge about this neat place. There was no film or documentary available to watch, as in many visitor centers. We went behind the center and took pictures.
You can see some folks on one of the tours climbing the ladder (below).
After leaving the Cliff Dwellings we got back on Hwy 30 south and stopped at White Rock where we saw a huge parking lot and visitor center for Bandelier National Monument (← link here), (#2 on map below).
A nice lady inside the visitor center told us that shuttles are required to get to the Bandelier National Monument and no dogs are allowed 🙁 but we could drive along scenic Hwy 4 right next to the monument and go into Los Alamos from 501 on the west side. Click HERE to see google images of Bandlier National Monument.
We drove along Hwy 4 to the campground at the entrance to the monument.
We toured the campground for future reference. Here are the rates and a map:
Since we couldn’t take little Coach to the monument in a shuttle, we continued west on Hwy 4 and passed our turn for Los Alamos to see the Valle Grande Scenic Viewpoint (#3 on map below) which was prominently marked on the literature and map we got at the visitors center.
It was a steep and windy road and we’re not sure it was worth the extra miles drive just to turn around again, but hey – we were here now.
Click HERE and HERE for more information on Valle Grande aka Valles Caldera.
After checking out the reportedly ‘largest extinct volcanic crater’ from the viewpoint, we turned around and headed to Los Alamos.
In Los Alamos, (#4 on my map above) we stopped first at the Historical Museum. (Don’t forget to click on the links).
This was a really neat museum! We could spend hours here, but it was getting late in the day. We watched a very informative documentary film in the theater about the history of Los Alamos.
We left Los Alamos around 4:30 PM and headed back to Santa Fe. When we got close to the Elks Lodge, we remembered that the town of Madrid was nearby. Madrid was made famous by the movie Wild Hogs starring Tim Allen, John Travolta, and others. Click HEREfor a link to an informational website provided by several businesses in town. We have to stop by Madrid since we’re this close, right!?!
We plugged Madrid (#5 on map below) into our iPhone GPS and drove the ~25 miles from our camping spot at Elks Lodge 460.
We stopped at the Mine Shaft Tavern (←link) known as one of the ‘last great roadhouses’.
We enjoyed a nice dinner while looking down on the main street of Madrid.
Giant chile pepper archway behind the tavern.
After an enjoyable dinner and an already long day, we stopped in front of Maggie’s Diner for a couple more pics before the sun went down. We found out from the website that the diner was built for the movie and is now a gift shop. Unfortunately it was closed for the day 🙁
Hope you enjoyed the tour today.
We’ll probably start heading towards Lake Powell today, the intermediate destination we have in mind is Farmington, NM. Check back to see if we made it… 🙂
More pictures – less words today… just want to get the blog post done so we can go check out more local attractions today 🙂
On Monday, we drove into Santa Fe to check out some of the downtown attractions. Stilla especially wanted to see more of the churches. (Click on the link above for info on Santa Fe from my friend WIkipedia®).
We parked in one of the downtown parking lots and paid $6 for three hours. Then we walked over to the Cathedral Basilica of St Francis of Assisi. In yesterdays blog, I incorrectly identified this church as the one with the famous spiral staircase.
We found out that the church with the famous spiral staircase was around the corner as evidenced by this sign (below) on the post in front of the Cathedral Basilica of St Francis of Assisi. So we followed the signs and went into nearby Loretta Chapel.
Here’s the Loretto Chapel.(Click the link for history on this attraction).
This is the famous Loretto Chapel staircase. This amazing spiral staircase has two 360 degree turns and no visible means of support. It is said that the staircase was built without nails—only wooden pegs.
More pictures inside the Loretto Chapel…
These banisters and rails were added ~10 years after the staircase was built. (Click HERE for more from Wikipedia®)
This is what the original staircase looked like before the banisters / handrails were installed.
After our tours of the local churches, we wandered around the downtown area and soaked in the sights…
We found a nice place to have lunch which included chicken green chili stew and a “world-famous” frito pie. Yumm 🙂
We also did a little shopping. Stilla found a good deal on a couple of earrings and I bought a cool Route-66 Santa Fe T-shirt, (because you can never have too many t-shirts, right?) 🙂
We wanted to take one of the local sightseeing tours (see sign below) but when we showed up 10 minutes early for the tour, we found that they depart early when they get full. Do you see the small print below the departure times in red (below) 🙁 Ten minutes wasn’t early enough…
We should have taken a tour in one of these instead of the trolley tram… but, !$!
We walked through the old town plaza…
and saw the end of the Santa Fe Trail marker…
and then we checked out the chapel gardens on our way back to the parking lot…
When we got back to the Elks Lodge, little Coach was ready for a looong walk. This is the infamous hidden entrance to the lodge with the overhanging trees (below) that I wrote about in my post yesterday.
We closed out the evening with a visit inside the lodge and paid the nice bartender for our camping spot here in the parking lot / field. We paid a $15 (donation) for three nights because we want to spend another night here and leave on Wednesday. This is a very nice lodge with very nice people… our second drinks were free per lodge tradition. Unfortunately they don’t have any food at this lodge so we had to go back to the Coach to make dinner.
Check back tomorrow to see what we get into… There’s a lot of museums here to check out and also we read about some nice driving tours up north of here 🙂
We left Storrie Lake SP around noon and plugged the Las Vegas, NM KOA into our iPhone for directions… which was mistake # 1.
After we took exit 339 off I-25 just south of Las Vegas, the iPhone said to turn left over the highway and then left again on the frontage road, “your destination is 700 feet” Siri said. Well, the destination was actually to the right along the frontage road!?! And most of you know what it’s like trying to do a U-turn in a big rig 🙁 I had to go at least a couple miles before I could turn around. In hindsight, there was a sign for the KOA after the exit but I didn’t see it in time – darn google maps 🙁 I probably should have used our Rand McNally RVND™ 7720 GPS, but it’s just so darn complicated sometimes to plug in a destination.
And then, mistake # 2 was trusting the iPhone app for dump stations which turned us on to this KOA in the first place. I think I incorrectly stated in yesterday’s blog that it was their website that told us about the dump station, but it was an iPhone app that Stilla has on her phone that we had consulted. The app said the cost for dumping at that particular KOA was only $5. The clerk behind the counter told me it was $15!?! – darn iPhone apps and expensive KOAs 🙁 If I would have known before-hand that it was $15, I wouldn’t have stopped here because we were only 1/4 full on the grey tank and the black tank wasn’t even registering yet. We dumped before we left Colorado Springs only 5 days ago. We have a combined capacity on the tanks of 178 gallons, (100 black and 78 grey). It’s just that we knew we would be dry-camping at the Elks in Santa Fe and wanted to start off empty. At least the clerk gave us a $5 discount when I showed my military ID.
After dumping our tanks, we continued on to our next adventure of the day…
We headed south towards Santa Fe and passed a lot of smoke from a nearby forest fire on the north side of I-25. We followed the iPhone map (I know, I just don’t learn) to the Elks Lodge and took the first exit into Santa Fe, NM along Old Pecos Trail.
We found the Elks Lodge easily enough – sitting on top of a hill, but we weren’t sure how to get there.
Once again, the iPhone google maps feature didn’t show enough detail to tell us where the entrance was, and unfortunately the lodge didn’t have any signs posted. 🙁 We passed one small road that looked like it might go up the hill to the lodge but it winded through some overhanging trees and looked too narrow… then we passed a second small road but it was a sharp right turn that we couldn’t make while towing the Silverado. Then we passed a third road after we went past the lodge but it clearly went into a residential area and the iPhone map showed a lot of cul-de-sacs, I definitely didn’t want to get stuck in there. Along came a fourth road that had signs for Museum Hill, and I thought, hey – museums usually have room for RVs so let’s turn here and maybe we can unhook the Silverado and go scout out the entrance to the lodge. Well, that didn’t work out too well because the museum(s) were clearly farther away as more signs indicated. So, we were finally able to make a few left-hand turns in a residential area and got back on Old Pecos Trail. We went past the lodge again on the divided road and the two roads that looked the ‘most-likely’ to be the entrances to the lodge parking area taunted me as we drove past.
We ended up going all the way back to the highway to find a wide enough spot to unhook the Silverado and turn around again. This time, Stilla led the way back in the Silverado with her phone in hand. She turned at the first narrow entrance road that had all the trees around it and called to let me know this was it. I barely maneuvered through the trees without scratching the sides of the Coach and drove up the hill on the narrow entrance road to a large field; (let’s call it a parking area).
We picked a nice spot in the corner after our 70 mile trip for the day.
Parked at Elks Lodge 60 in Santa Fe, NM.View towards Elks Lodge from in front of our Coach.
After getting set up, we walked around the lodge…
A lady peeked out the back door to tell us that the lodge was closed for the day (Sunday) and that they (a small group) had it reserved for a baby shower. So we’ll just have to wait until Monday to go inside and pay for our spot.
We downloaded the bicycles off the back of the Silverado and headed into town to check things out.
We stopped at San Miguel Church, reportedly the oldest church in the USA. (don’t forget to click on the link to learn more from Wikipedia®)
Then we had pizza and salad at Upper Crust Pizza, right next to the mission church.
We then drove further into town to get oriented.
We’ll stop at this church later (maybe on Monday). It’s supposed to have a really cool spiral staircase that was handmade without using any nails.
On the way back to the lodge we drove back up to Museum Hill (near the Elks Lodge). The museums were already closed for the day but we stopped at this sculpture to take a few pics…
Then we returned to the Coach and ran the generator for a while to charge the batteries while we watched some TV and took pictures of the ‘super blood moon’ eclipse…
Pretty cool pics, eh?
Gotta run now… check back to see what we did on Monday 🙂
