We decided to make a family vacation of moving our oldest son to Phoenix, Arizona for college. We went about 1000 miles out of our way, turning a 22 hour trip into a week long vacation. LOL So here's the story...
I'm writing this the old fashioned way,
pen & paper,
while sitting at a campsite a couple of miles from the Grand Canyon. We know we have chosen the right spot to camp because of the black cloud overhead. This black cloud has gone from being a standing joke to being a good friend.
We decided to leave Texas just after sunset to avoid the heat. As it turned out, there was a storm following.
We made it all the way to Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico with our black cloud in tow. The caverns are one of the most amazing sights I've ever seen! I decided to videotape this excursion. We went through the museum while the kids played arcade games, then drove up to the caverns. The three older boys chose to take the natural entrance. Dave, our youngest son, and I chose to take the elevator. The elevator goes 75 stories underground
in 1 minute.
Low & behold... 5 minutes underground and the camcorder eats the tape! This can't happen, it was repaired just before we left home!!! But it did happen so I've had to revert to using our old Minolta with the burned out flash.
Our plans to watch the bats fly from the bat cave that evening were washed away by our black cloud. We decided to try to outrun it (again) so we were off to Roswell, New Mexico. We found a place to camp at Lea Lake, one of the Bottomless Lakes about 12 miles outside of Roswell. The landscape was beautiful but more importantly... they had hot showers! Everyone was shiny and smelling fine by bedtime. We didn't see any U.F.O.'s, just ants, frogs, a couple of tarantulas, and a lizard. You haven't seen anything until you've seen a 6'2", artificially bright red-headed, 15 year old hopping eye level with a frog saying, "ribbit-ribbit"!
Our black cloud hung overhead but kept to itself.
Does anyone want to guess how hard it is to find a campsite that accepts tents?
Show of hands please?
We were stopped in Alburquerque, a large city that appearred to have no camping in sight, except for RV's, for about an hour. While there I was able to call my first cyber-buddy, Lucy, who lives there. It was nice to talk to her for the first time. Dave was, ummmm... in bad spirits? Our van is obviously NOT a mountain lover. There we were cruising along, listening to Creed, enjoying the scenery when I saw smoke coming out of the glove-box! It turned out to be the transmission!!! Luckily it quit leaking (and burning off) once we were done climbing. Since the nearest campsite that accepted tents wasn't very impressive, and we were running way ahead of schedule, we decided to just follow the black cloud!
It led us to a town called Grants in New Mexico. This was such a cute town! They have the world's only Mining Museum, so it's back... you guessed it ...underground for us. This place was just too kewl!!! It was set up like the mine was set up when it was a working mine, and you got to touch everything. The boys made it around one full tour before finding the miners toilet. Dave, our youngest son, and I decided to walk to the post-office so I could buy stamps. The older three spotted a "hot chick" near a fountain and stayed behind. After the post office we went across the street to a "trading-post" that also offered wine tasting. I enjoyed the Chili Wine very much. Nice wine flavor but with a pepper aftertaste. YUM!
Grants has a lot to offer and I fell in love with the place. It's gorgeous country spotted black by nearby Bandero Volcano thousands of years ago. We hiked to the rim of the volcano. Now, I'm not used to walking so I was pretty sore by the time we reached the top, but it was more than worth the pain. What an awesome sight! It doesn't look 8000 ft. to the bottom. On the way back down we stopped at an ice cave, the product of a collapsed lava tube. The cave maintains a constant temperature of 31°. It was paradise after the hike.
So cool and comfy...
AAAYYYEEE!!!!
Charlie-horse in my foot!
Charlie-horse in my foot!
It only lasted until we reached our starting point, and there waiting on us was our black cloud! It's become friendlier though and we follow where it leads.
Our next campsite was at a power plant lake that had hot showers, so it's all good. At 8:25 that morning we walked into the visitor center at the Petrified Forest Naional Park. As it turned out, it was the summer solstice... and the solar calendar at Puerco Pueblo would reach it's apex at 9:15! The petroglyphs were drawn sometime around 1400. It was cool, but not as cool as hoped. There were some very rude people crowded in where most everyone else couldn't get a good view, and they just wouldn't budge. That tends to happen a lot these days, doesn't it?
We back-tracked and went on the 28 mile drive through the petrified Forest and the Painted Desert. This is the kind of scenery that makes you realize where the ideas for Native American crafters are hatched. After we pretty well wore out this area and had about as much "eye-candy" as we could handle, we headed for the Grand Canyon.
It's at this point that I stopped writing and now I have to depend on my feeble memory.
We saw most of the sights that are at the South Rim of the canyon. You can't grasp the magnitude of this place until you've seen it first hand. It's awe inspiring. We were camping among the Ponderosa Pines in the Kaibab National Forest. Most of our national forests are closed right now because of the extreme fire danger. There are no campfires, outdoor cooking, (other than on camp-stoves) or smoking allowed right now. It's an eerie feeling, camping somewhere that you would never be able to make it out of, in the event of a fire! Our closest neighbors were walking around from site to site in an attempt to find a place to cook their steaks.
We saw ruins, and the Watchtower over-looking the canyon, among other things. The Watchtowr was built in the 1930's but was designed to look like it was built by Native Americans. It was way-cool. The inside had petroglyphs drawn on the walls and ceilings, and the center of the tower is open so you can see to the bottom. It's round 5-6 stories to the top. I'm normally shaky with heights but for some reason it didn't bother me at all on this trip, and THAT was great.
Eventually the time came and we had to deliver our son to Phoenix...
But on the way......... we made a stop at Montezuma's Castle. This is a 12th century ruin, 5 stories tall, built into the side of a mountain. I really enjoyed these ruins, even if all of the wildlife and insects in the area are potentially deadly. The smell of bat guano was a bit overwhelming though. We finally made it to Phoenix, and yes, our black cloud even led us there!
We camped at a lake called Lake Pleasant that is just beautiful. Unlike Lake Waco, this lake is blue and clear. And thereare tumbleweeds IN the water. We swam for awhile and even Josh joined us. If you don't know Josh personally, you would have no way of knowing that he fears sunlight and melts when hit by water. LOL I think he only did it to give us the memories but it was next to impossible to get him back out of the water, so maybe he was actually enjoying himself? This is an area covered in Saguaro cacti... they are HUGE. They are easily 30+ feet tall. These are the traditional cactus that you see drawings of... you know, main body with two arms? There were also wild donkeys at night, and little field mice with lion tails. I chose to call them "Hanta-virus mice". I don't know the actual spelling for the name of the disease, but you get the idea.
My son has a garden apartment with a pool. He shares it with 3 other guys. We met two of them briefly. Gilbert is a very polite young man who is most likely hiding a wild streak. And then there is James. My first impression of him was Peter Pan with "stickstraightbleachedhair" shooting from his scalp at a high rate of speed. Then he brushed his hair... no change. He also seemed like someone who would fit right in at our house. But that's first impressions, only time will tell I suppose. (No offense implied guys... Josh got his warped sense of humor from me.) As we left that night to return to camp, and those from TWG have already heard this, we witnessed a couple of awesome sights. I should mention that our black cloud was hanging over our camp. As I was saying, we were driving to the lake, and there was a fat rainbow on our right and the most amazing sunset on our left. You know those sunsets that Native American artists draw, the ones with the straight line clouds and sun-rays shooting out at the top, rain falling from the bottom? THAT'S what this sunset was!!! I can't describe it at all. I'm hoping the photos came out but if not it's a memory I will hold forever dear. We left the next morning after saying good-bye to my baby.
Nuff said
Rhonda
June 2000
