Yahoo, look at that! My 100th Post!

 

It took me about 3 years but I finally reached # 100! I don't know what that says about me but if you're still reading this I'd say it says more about you! So thank you! And if you have a little time, drop me a comment every now and than. I'd love that! 

A special thanks to Judy who faithfully does just that! Thanks, I really appreciate it!

 

 

So here we are again! Let's see, where were we? Oh, just over the border in New Mexico where we left the I-25 and drove to Eagles Nest, through Cimarron Canyon that started to show some pretty fall colors!

 

 

 

 

We spent the night at Eagles Nest Lake at a very nice National Forest campground:

 

 

 

 

 

 

That afternoon we drove the small 'loop' road into the mountains to climb the 9820' Bobcat Pass and into the beautiful canyon towards Taos.

 

 

 

 

 

Beautiful fall colors again! 

 

 

 

 

 

The next day we visited Taos, very touristy but with lots of beautiful adobe ...

 

 

 

 

....... and lots of cute, small shops with beautiful local pottery, silver, turquoise and tapestries:

 

 

    

 

 

 

Afterwards it was only about an hour to Santa Fe on a good road through the beautiful Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We'd determined we needed a little luxury after a couple of days of "roughing it' at a truck stop, a Walmart and a 'dry' national forest campground, so we settled in for the night at the  Santa Fe Skies RV Park and went for the full hook-ups!

Which was really nice since we got hit by a nice big thunder storm just after hooking everything up!

So we ran the dishwasher, did some laundry, took a nice hot shower and watched some TV until the storm had passed through and the rain stopped long enough for us to make a visit into Santa Fe.

 

 

 

The Cathedral Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi

 

Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico, is basically a bigger version of Taos. The city and the surrounding areas sure have a high concentration of artists.

Lots of tourists and lots of junk for sale around the central plaza in the historic downtown area. The 'real' stuff you find in ridiculously expensive galleries that are definitely not in our budget but it's always nice to drool over.

 

We visited some of the historical buildings like the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi with the El Santuario de Guadalupe which is the oldest extant shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe in the United States:

 

 

 

 

 

And the The Loretto Chapel, a former Roman Catholic church that

is now used as a museum and wedding chapel. It is known for its unusual helix shaped spiral staircase (the "Miraculous Stair"), that may have been created by French carpenter Francois-Jean "Frenchy" Rochas, although the Sisters of Loretto and many other people credit St. Joseph with its construction.

 

 

          

 

We walked the historical downtown area and took a look at the colorful souvenirs and some of the beautiful art galleries:

 

 

 

 

The Palace of the Governors (1610) is an adobe structure located on Palace Avenue on the Plaza. It  served as the seat of government for the state of New Mexico for centuries and is the oldest continuously occupied public building in the United States.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Native American artists sit under the long, shady portal of the and sell their handmade jewelry, pottery and other works of art. All items sold by the Indians under the portal are made by either the vendor you’re talking to, or a member of his or her family.

 

 

 

 

From here we finally made the short drive to Albuquerque to attend their annual Balloon Festival, that we have looked forward to since we went south!!!
I've decided to dedicate a whole blog to this incredible event so let's get over to a new one!

 

 

 

Wow, I promised I'd be 'back' in about 10 days at the end of my last blog but I just noticed it has been a whopping 24!!
Time really flies when you're having fun!

We've arrived safe and sound in Texas after a beautiful 10 day ride on the I-25 south through Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico.
Although we're to big of a combination to take the smaller and often more scenic country roads we were able to enjoy lots of beautiful and variegated landscapes that we could see right from the Highway.
I made a gazillion pictures, too many to show them all without boring the heck out of you so I've made a small selection. Enjoy!

We had a little bit of a slow start out of West Yellowstone since James still had some cleaning up to do and than when we finally brought the slides in, the bedroom one was stuck. Fortunately we can hand crank it and after a few inches of that we were able to bring it in normally. We think it might have been frozen since it was only 20F!




The weather was gorgeous otherwise and the snowfall of the last few days had turned the Gallatin Natinal Forest we first had to drive through into a beautiful winter wonderland!

After turning onto the I-90 East at Bozeman we encountered this small mountain pass.

 

On the other site we slowly came into some lower elevations where we got rid of most of the snow.  

After arriving in Billings we stocked up on groceries at Walmart and got new batteries at Sears. We spent the night at the KOA where we had a free stay (compliments from our manager in West Yellowstone who's brother is running this one!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next morning James changed the batteries. We had a little problem with the old ones on our drive up in the spring where they wouldn't charge enough to get us through the night (to run the heater and bring in the slides the next day) so we needed some new ones.

 

                     

 

 

We had only 170 miles to go that day so we could take it easy.

The weather was great again (48F is a lot better than 20F!)and we followed the Yellowstone River for a little while until we turned onto the I-25 South.

 

 

On our schedule for today was a visit to the Little Bighorn Battlefield Monument, but we had overlooked the little word that said 'National' in front of  'Monument', so guess what? Yep! It was closed!

@#$%^&#!

At least the rustic Trading Post was open, and the Indian Taco's we'd read about to be very good here were indeed on the menu, although they were just OK in our opinion. The Fried Bread with honey we'd also ordered was much better but I have a sweet tooth so that was an easy one.

 

                                  

 

 

I guess there was nothing else to do than drive on so that's what we did and it wasn't long before we entered Wyoming.

 

 

 

 

Just before Buffalo we turned off the Highway and drove to the

Lake Desmet campground on, you guessed it, Lake Desmet.

 

 

 

 

We were the only ones at this beautiful lake so we picked a prime spot, right on the water's edge and enjoyed a peaceful and quiet happy hour and the beautiful sunset.

 

 

Well, I guess we were not completely alone:

 

 

 

 

The next day we drove all the way through the Great Plains, and towards the south, through the High Plains, of Wyoming.

The region is known for the steady, and sometimes intense, winds that prevail from the west and that's what we got! Besides that we still saw a lot of snow here from the storm that passed through a couple of days before but fortunately we had nothing but sunshine and clear roads ourselves!

 

 

 

 

 

 

We camped at a truck stop in Cheyenne and left early the next morning to drive into the next state, Colorado.

 

 

 

Although we kept the Rocky Mountains on our right hand side all the way through we didn't get close enough to get better pictures than this.

As we knew beforehand, we couldn't drive the Peak to Peak Byway west of Denver, due to the flooding of lately and although we'd hoped the National Parks might have reopened when we arrived here, they didn't, so we kept driving south on the I-25 instead of detouring through Utah .
We're no 'city-people' so we also quickly drove around Denver.




It was another windy day and it's also getting warmer now we are a little more south!
I think these are the rocky hills and interesting formations of the Rampart Range:

                               

                                

A little snow on them again when we got to the area around Colorado Springs:

 

        

 

 

We kept seeing big herds of Pronghorn Antilopes. They were like cows! Grazing totally at ease right next to the Freeway despite all the traffic whizzing by at close range!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We overnighted at the Walmart in Pueblo where we picked up some more 'stuff', a couple of jeans and a screen room we had on our list 'to get' already for a while.

 

The next day we crossed the border into New Mexico via the 7834' Raton Pass:

 

 

And after a little drive we left the I-25 for our little detour through the Sangre De Christo Mountains and a visit of Taos.

 

 

 

 

 

OK, phew, that's long enough for this post. I 'll continue in the next one!

(take a bathroom brake, walk the dog and grab a cup of coffee) ;-)

 

 

 

 

 Sunrise out of my bedroom window (which actually also means, out of my bed ;-).

 

Just before sunrise

 

Well, as I said on the Book-of-Faces : "I won't go into politics but I just want to say: %$#@&^%$ !!"
All National Parks closed! So we didn't see the fall colors in the Tetons this last week and on our way south we'll not be able to see the Arches, Canyonlands or Natural Bridges in Utah as we had planned!
Add to that that the Beartooth Highway in Montana is closed due to heavy snow and the Peak to Peak Hwy in Colorado due to flooding!
I'm gonna say it again: %^$#&@(# !!! 

 

 

So I tried to find some of those fall colors around here but the thing is we're surrounded mainly by evergreens.
I did find this pretty little crystal clear creek that flows along the campground, just on the other side of the Hwy.

 

It'll have to do.

I also came across these tiny little mushrooms on the camp grounds. I guess if you look close enough, you'll always find something beautiful. Very often it's in the small things, isn't it?

 

 

      

 

These horses are still in the meadows across the road. Last couple of nights it was around 25F. They must be cold!

Those trees are about the only deciduous out here.

 

Merlin is inside a lot on these cool fall days. Warm and cozy and dreaming the day away:

 

 

When he's really 'gone' he sleeps with his mouth open. 

Very charming Merl' :-)

 

                                                              

       

His blood sugars are all over the map lately. The problem is he eats very little to nothing during the day and pigs out at night. It's hard to anticipate what he'll do which make it hard to estimate how much insulin to give.

But he's down to about 2x 0.3/0.4 a day which is better than the 2x 1.0 he started out with!

 

And than yesterday, just after everything had melted, it started to snow again!

 

 

 

 

 

It stopped for a little while around noon ... 

  

 

 ..... but soon it started up again and it just kept on going.
It was pretty cold too, I don't think it ever came above 35F.

Today the storm has finally passed us and the clouds are breaking up but it's noon at the moment and the temperature is still only a freezing 33F!

The roads are looking clear though and (they say) the weekend is going to be beautiful.

 

 

James is finishing up 'his' bathrooms today and tomorrow we're out of here!

Steve, the owner of this KOA, who also owns the one in Billings, has given us 2 nights to stay for free at Billings so that's where we're heading first.

We ordered some new truck batteries that are waiting for us at Sears and we're gonna stuck up on groceries at Walmart.

 

I'll try to post our progress on Facebook but the blog will probably have to wait until Texas.

See you in about 10 days!