Day 30

Erick, Oklahoma to Tulsa, Oklahoma

288 miles, 6 hours

Wow…30 days! I can’t believe that we have been gone an entire month-it certainly does not feel like it has been that long. So many of our days have been jam packed from sunup to sundown that the time has flown by.

This morning we rose early-about 6:30 am-at the rest area. Last night was a little difficult to get to sleep, there was lots of truck noise. Dennis put earplugs in and didn’t hear a thing, so he slept pretty well. We got the car brake system turned on and pulled out. Bay and Leah have been so funny on this trip on the “travel days” as we call them. As soon as the RV engine was started, they climbed out of their bunks and curled up with their blankets on the couch, ready to go in “travel mode”. We don’t even half to tell them to get up-they are ready to get going. It is very cute to see them snuggled up like little bugs before the sun is even up, ready to move on to the next location.

We drove towards Oklahoma City, and then took about a 30 minute detour south to go to a BBQ place called “Rudy’s” for breakfast. Dennis had happened upon a Rudy’s when he was in Austin, TX on business, and when we realized there was one nearby, we decided it would be worth it to stop. They serve regular bbq for lunch and dinner, but for breakfast, they have build your own tacos-lots of choices, the regular egg, cheese, meats, and also bbq to go on your taco as well if you like. Then you cover it all with their own bbq sauce. We had a 30 minute wait for our food (they were very busy), but it was very good. We also got some bbq to go to have for lunch or dinner over the next couple of days.

After breakfast, we headed on to Tulsa, where two of our good friends from when we lived in Greenville, NC  now live. We drove first to Russ’ house, and got the RV set up on his cul-de-sac. He works nights, so was still asleep when we arrived, but we dragged him out of bed eventually. We took some time to catch up, visit and have some coffee together. Then we headed over to our friends’ Chris and Jennifer’s house to have dinner with them and their two kids. We have not seen them since Eric was very little, and so it was great to catch up with them and their family. Their two kids, Mason and Abigail, are very close in age to Bay and Leah, and so they warmed up quickly to each other and had a great time playing together.

After dinner, Russ and some friends came over to take us to the Tulsa State Fair. By then it was almost 8:00, and we were tired, but decided we’d like to take the kids to do something a little fun since the past 2 days have been pretty boring! It was typical State Fair atmosphere, but we enjoyed walking around and looking at everything. We got funnel cakes, cotton candy, saw the horses and chickens, did the petting zoo, and walked through the commercial building. They had a really nice commercial building-we especially enjoyed the displays by the police, fire and resuce. The kids were able to get in the ambulance and the police cruiser. They also had a really great display of all of the cakes entered in the cake decorating section. Most of the cakes were super professional and many looked like stuff they make on those tv shows like “Ace of Cakes” and such.

We got back to Russ’ and are off to bed tonight rather late-about midnight, so it will be sleep in tomorrow morning!

 parked in front of Russ' house

 message board for Day 30-

 Dennis and Russ

The MacQ's and the Chow's

Day 29

Albuquerque, New Mexico to Erick, Oklahoma

8 hours,   411 miles

Weather: 72 day, 56 night

While in Albuquerque, one of our goals was to try some New Mexican food. Evidently, Albuquerque is the only city in the U.S. with an official question, “Red or Green?” This refers to your choice of chilies-red chilies or green chilies for the sauce on your food. We went to a restaurant near downtown called Garcia’s Kitchen, where they serve breakfast anytime, as well as lunch and dinner. The décor was clearly New Mexican-flags, murals, reds greens and white, paper decorations-and the stacks of plates in the kitchen were so colorful. The waitresses wore Spanish looking blouses-bright colors with black lace trim-it was a fun place to be in just from the looks of it. Dennis, Eric and I all ordered their breakfast burrito-the boys with green chili sauce, and myself with the red, and a side of sliced avocado. Bay and Leah both ordered the hotcakes. The food was good-not the best ever-but certainly worth it, and for $5 a plate we got out of there pretty cheap for a family of five!

After breakfast, we headed south of the city to a suburb named Los Lunes, where my dad has a piece of property he bought many years ago. It is just a plot in a planned subdivision out in the desert, but since no one in the family has ever actually seen it, and we were relatively close, we took the drive out there. It was about an hour drive-not so many miles, but once we got off the main road, we had about 10 miles of gravel to go down through the desert to get to his plot. The property backs right up to the foot of the Manzano Mountains, and a National Forest, which was a very nice view anyways! We took some pictures of the surrounding land, some with the kids, and then drove back towards town.

Our next plan was to take the Rail Runner, Albuquerque’s rapid transit train on its route north to Santa Fe, just to see the scenery along the way and to possibly explore Santa Fe a little. When we got to the train station at noon and looked at the schedule we saw that the train is solely a commuter train-it only runs first thing in the morning, and then the early evening. We would have had to wait 4 hours for the next train-so we ditched that plan! Nearby was a disc golf course we had looked up, so we drove over to it to see about playing a round of golf. When we got there, the course was certainly interesting-completely in the desert. We might have considered playing if we all had been wearing long jeans and boots-it was most definitely rattlesnake territory!

Since all of our plans were not panning out, we decide to go back to the RV, close it all up and get on the road heading toward our next destination, Tulsa. We originally planned on doing it all in one day (Saturday)-lots of miles, but figured we’d break it up into two days and it wouldn’t be so much.

We packed up in 30 minutes, fed the kids lunch, and were on our way by 2:00 pm! We had already paid for 2 nights, and there are no refunds, but losing the $25 in camping fees was not too big of a deal since we knew we would camp for free tonight by just stopping at a rest area.

The drive out of Albuquerque was fairly uneventful. There were a  few pretty heavy rain showers we drove through-the first time on our trip driving in the rain-but none lasted more than a few minutes.  We stopped around dinner time for gas, and pulled into a parking spot to make a quick dinner of sloppy joes and sweet potato fries. Every time we stop like this to eat, I am reminded how nice it has been to have the RV to travel in. Meals are so easy-we can cook, eat and clean up and get moving on the road again in such a short period of time! Besides the obvious fact of saving money, there is such a satisfaction in eating a home-cooked meal while on the road. I am continually thankful!

Eventually the land flattened out as we headed east toward Texas.

When we entered Texas we set our clocks ahead one hour to Central time-it was still a bit light out at almost 9 pm! The majority of the drive across Texas (through Amarillo) was in the dark. We got into Oklahoma and stopped at a rest stop in the town of Erick! Eric thought that was pretty cool. This rest area is very crowded tonight-we got the LAST parking spot-there are probably 30 semi’s here! God provides continually on our trip for us.

 Breakfast at Garcia's in Albuquerque

 The kids on Gramps' piece of desert property!

 view of the Manzano Mountains from Gramps' property

 more of the desert property-it was a long gravel drive out here!

 This is National Forest on the mountains

 Haven't yet identified this snake, but it was not a rattler-the eyes are perfectly round, so we assume it was not poisonous either

 This picture is for my brother, Andy! Don't think he's visited this one yet!

The desert frisbee golf course

Day 28

Flagstaff, Arizona to Albuquerque, New Mexico

Petrified Forest National Park & Painted Desert, Arizona

342 miles, 7 ¾ hours

This morning we got on the road to head for Albuquerque, New Mexico. Today officially began our trek back eastward towards home. We have about 9 more days till we plan to arrive home, but it is still a little bit sad to be heading east! About 100 miles east of Flagstaff is the Petrified Forest National Park. We took 180 south to head to the southern entrance of the park, and then drove through the park northwards, till crossing I-40 and then looping up and around through the Painted Desert and getting back on the highway.

The Petrified Forest is not really much of a forest at all, in fact, there are no trees to be found. I think we were actually expecting to find some petrified trees still standing, but that is not the case! Instead, the trees (now actually stone) are scattered sparsely throughout sections of the park, and are broken up into several pieces except for just a few that are long logs still intact. We drove through the park, stopping at a few overlooks to see the petrified logs. Although I am glad we went, it was hardly the exciting location! Towards the northern end of the park there is a pull-out where you can view “Newspaper Rock” which is a site where lots of petroglyphs are carved into some rocks down below a shallow canyon. You can view the petroglyphs through binoculars that are provided, and they were pretty cool to see. Drawings of people, animals, the sun, and swirly shapes dominated the carvings. Further on, after crossing Rt. 40, into the Painted Desert, we stopped at a nice overlook and had lunch. You could see very far in many directions-in fact you could see the peaks overlooking Flagstaff back to the west. The placard said that the air right at that location in the Painted Desert was some of the cleanest air in the United States. I found that interesting, as we read a placard back at the Grand Canyon that said the air there was very hazy from pollution that settles over the canyon! Interesting contrast!

We continued on through the desert, Indian Reservations, and road-side tourist traps until finally reaching Albuquerque.

Our campsite is called Enchanted Trails-it is on Historic Rt. 66 (also right close to the highway), but we are set pretty far to the back of the campground. The prices for camping in New Mexico are super-cheap! Of course, the campgrounds in New Mexico are also pretty much dirt/gravel parking lots. There are a couple of trees, but not enough to do anything. It’s pretty sparse, but it fits with the landscape. Our campground has several older restored trailers up front for viewing and also for renting out for a night-as well as lots of Rt. 66 memorabilia in their office/store.

After getting set up, the kids took a swim in the pool and hot tub, and then we came back to have dinner-beef stew and biscuits for me and Dennis, and ravioli for the kids.

 at the Petrified Forest, several logs lying around like this, except they are stone. most are broken up as this one is. also, most are not this big

 Eric sitting on a piece of petrified wood

 the colors are what are pretty. as the silica and other minerals seeped into the wood from the ash and mud, they crystallized and formed the pretty patterns and colors

 The kids enjoyed working on a map that our friend, Genia, gave us to go along with the drive through the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert-so glad I didn't forget about it!

 The petroglyphs at Newspaper rock. You should be able to click on the picture and zoom in-you can see some of them pretty well!

 overlook for the painted desert-I have always wondered about this place since I used to listen to the 10,000 Maniacs song with the same title. Now I know-it just looks like God took a paintbrush to the sand dunes and made stripes of color across the landscape

 Leah at our lunch stop at the Painted Desert-she's usually always happy to pose for  a picture!

 And Leah is getting pretty good at taking pictures of mom and dad too!

our campsite at Enchanted Trails Campground-nothing but dirt. 

Day 27

Flagstaff, Arizona

Walnut Canyon National Monument

Lowell Observatory

Thorpe Park

Weather: low 80’s day; 40’s night

Because we entered into Pacific Time Zone last night, our bodies are still on the Mountain Time Zone, and so we were early to bed last night and relatively early to rise, which was a good thing for getting moving! We had an elaborate breakfast with pancakes, fresh cantaloupe, strawberries and raspberries (thanks to our recent trip to the grocery store!). After cleaning up and making lunches, we were on our way.

Our first stop was Walnut Canyon- about 7 miles east of Flagstaff. It was kind of nice to be camped close to the attractions-driving where we needed to go today only took minutes instead of a half hour or more. Walnut Canyon is a site where they have preserved or restored the cliff dwellings of the Anasazi or Sinagua Pueblo peoples of the early 2^nd century. There is pretty much only one thing to do at the park, but that was fine-we wanted low-key today! We walked down the 240 steps about 600 feet into the canyon that circled the “island” of the cliff dwellers. We walked along a trail that passed about 25 different cliff dwellings. The dwellings were in the area of the layers of rock just below the limestone layer, where weathering naturally eroded the softer soils and sandstone to create overhangs. The people of that time created an entire community of dwellings in these cliffs (as I’m sure they did elsewhere in different parts of the country). Although looters and tourists of the early 1800’s destroyed much of the dwellings in search of artifacts, much of it has been restored to its supposed original condition. What was interesting to see, and what was certainly original, was the creosote and black marks on the inside ceilings of the rooms where obviously fires were built. We explored the dwellings and then walked the 240 steps back up to the top of the cliff.

After leaving the cliffs, we headed into the downtown historic Rt. 66 district of Flagstaff. The boys needed to pick up a part for their mountain bikes at a bike shop, so we did that and then looked in a couple of shops before heading over to the Lowell Observatory to catch the noon sun-viewing.

A little history on the Lowell observatory: the Lowell Observatory is where Percival Lowell, an astronomer in the late 1800’s, discovered the 9^th planet, Pluto. Today the original telescope used by Lowell, as well as other telescopes at the observatory are used for educational purposes as well as ongoing research. We were able to make it in time for the viewing of the sun shortly after noon, where they had a special “shielded” telescope set up. Not knowing exactly what to expect when we looked through, we saw the red orb of the sun of course! On the sun’s surface we could see a couple of dark spots-these are areas where we can see through the sun’s atmosphere to its surface. We also saw a solar flare-evidently the sun has been very active lately as far as solar flares. We learned that the sun is not actually a burning ball of fire-fire cannot exist in space because there is no oxygen. Instead, it is a ball of plasma-burning hydrogen and helium mostly. We left the observatory, with the intent to come back close to dark to participate in some of the nighttime viewing opportunities.

Just down the hill from the observatory was a park (Thorpe Park) that Dennis looked up and found had a Frisbee golf course. We considered checking here because Flagstaff is a college town-Northern Arizona University Lumberjacks-and like all good college towns, they play disc golf! Indeed, when we got to the tee off for the first hole, we met a college student who was there as part of a college class-Frisbee Golf 101! We played most of the course-Dennis, Eric and I (and Leah for part of the time). Bay just walked along with us. The course was okay-it wandered through tall ponderosa pines, but the ground was all volcanic rock, littered with broken glass bottles the entire time. After the course, we gave Bay and Leah some time to play at the playground.

We came back to the RV to make an early dinner so we could get over to the Lowell Observatory around 6:30-it gets dark here about 7:00! We have been so many places that do not permit campfires-I’ve talked about that before, but most allow cooking over a charcoal grill. However, most do not provide a grill; so we picked up a tabletop charcoal grill at Wal-mart the other night (we have seen LOTS of people using them) so that we could do some cooking out! Many of my meals planned for this trip involved cooking out, and it has been very hard to not be able to do that. Tonight we cooked steaks and had a great salad to go with them. Mmmmmm, the flavor imparted by a charcoal grill can’t be beat! The little grill we got only used a very small bit of charcoal, so it will be much more efficient than those normal ones you see at picnic areas-for just our family, it is perfect! Wish we had gotten it sooner, but I’m sure it will get plenty of use in the future!

After dinner, we headed up to the observatory. They have a path lined out which is called the “Pluto Walk” where they have sign-posts for each planet in our solar system, showing the relative distance between the planets. The scale was 1 inch=1 million miles. Quite the visual-it was very helpful to understand the proximity of the planets to each other as well as the sun. Once it got dark, they had telescopes set up outside through which we could view the moon, and also certain stars. We looked first at Polaris (the North Star) and then they had  a computer screen hooked up to a telescope that was looking at the Barbell Nebula-you could actually see a star that was expanding and the colors coming off of it. Very cool. Lastly, we were able to go up to the Clark Telescope, the original one that Percival Lowell had built for him there on Mars Hill, and look through it. It is one of those huge telescopes, where they open the doors of the observatory for the telescope to protrude through. We looked at a system of stars-called M16-a globular cluster of stars in the Pegasus constellation. You actually cannot see the cluster of stars with the naked eye-but we could see it-thousands of stars all clumped together-through the telescope. All of the people who worked there were so informative and answered so many of our questions! One of the men had a model of our galaxy-the Milky Way-a giant foam spiral. He showed us where we are in the galaxy (on the outside edge of a spiral) and that when we look up at the stars at night and see the milky band of stars across the sky, in the summer, we are looking into the center of the galaxy, but in the winter, we are looking outward to the edge. Again-super interesting.  Also, to illustrate how wide and far-reaching the size of our galaxy is, he told Bay that if someone were to stand on one edge of the galaxy and shine a light, it would take 1,000 years for another person standing on the other edge of the galaxy to see that light. Additionally, we looked at a computer model of a series of pictures taken over the past 10 years of the path a group of stars had been traveling in the center of the Milky Way. The model showed that the stars are all revolving around something (kind of like our planets revolve around the sun) but that something is not able to be seen because it is a black hole, at the center of our galaxy.

It was a different kind of day today than we have been having the past couple of weeks-kind of toned down and much more relaxing, but it was nice to do some different types of activities. 

 Walnut Canyon-cliff dwellings across from us-they were everywhere in the canyon-only a small portion were open for our viewing!

 Eric inside one of the rooms-most of the mortar between the rocks is restoration work after the looters of the 1800's, but the ceilings are 100% authentic!

 Dennis and the little ones at the Cliff Dwellings

 some of the steps leading down into the canyon. we walked down from the rim, only about 1/4 of the way to the bottom of the canyon. the cliff dwellings were built in a layer of limestone. at the bottom of the canyon used to be a river, but since the Colorado was dammed up, that river dried up

 Heather and Leah at Walnut Canyon

 the meteorite from Meteor Crater, also near Flagtaff, is on display at Lowell Observatory, it is almost 100% lead, and weighs over 500 pounds!

 Dennis firing up the new tabletop charcoal grill!

 looking at the moon in the early evening at Lowell Observatory. they had to constantly reposition this telescope as the moon moved across the sky. this is a 16" lens-the detail was amazing. Dennis was able to capture a bit of it on his phone camera below

Bay looking at the original images that helped Percival Lowell discover Pluto

Day 26

Zion Ponderosa Ranch, Utah to Flagstaff, Arizona

253 miles, 6 hours

Weather: Day 76, Night 38

At the table this morning at breakfast, looking out the window, Leah says, “Daddy! I see a kangaroo!” Well, it wasn’t quite a kangaroo, but it was a huge jackrabbit-and since Leah had never seen one of those before, it sure looked like a kangaroo to her! It was the event of the morning-we all agreed that if we were going to have rabbit stew, we’d have jackrabbit stew!

We packed up and got on the road about 10 am. Our route this morning took us first east through the south end of Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. We did nothing more than drive by and see the plateaus and sandstone, but there was lots to see! Continuing east towards Page, Arizona we came to Lake Powell. It was a good time to stop for lunch, so we pulled into the Glen Canyon Recreation Area (our $80 National Parks pass has more than paid for itself by now-we have used it so many places!) and parked overlooking the lake at the Waheep area to have lunch. We walked down to the boat pier, took a look at the water-crystal clear and green-and continued on to the Glen Canyon Dam. We took some pictures, browsed the visitor center to show the kids about the Colorado River being dammed up, and then crossed the huge arched bridge and continued south. We stopped for about an hour at Lake Powell total. While we would have loved to been able to rent a boat or spend more time on the lake, that will have to wait for another trip.

The drive south on Rt. 89 took us through a large section of the Navajo Nation. It is very sad to drive through the Native American reservations out here-they are always so depressed, run down and very junky. Many of the houses or trailers had tires all over the roofs to keep the roofs from flying off. All along the highway were little stands set up where Indian women were selling their handmade goods-blankets, rugs, pottery, jewelry. Most of the shacks looked like they would blow over with the next gust of wind. Even the highway for 24 miles was completely shot-extremely bumpy, uneven and gravely in spots. I am sure that I do not understand all of the reasons that explain the way things are in the reservations, but it saddens me to see what has happened to the Native peoples of our country.

We arrived in Flagstaff about 3:00 Pacific Time (Arizona is on Pacific time!) and pulled into our campsite at Woody Mountain Campground. It is certainly not the best place we’ve stayed, but it will do, as we will only be here 2 nights. There were actually not many campgrounds in the Flagstaff area that had good reviews. We get most of our campground information from a website called rvparkreviews.com-people rate campgrounds all over the US and they have been super informative and helpful, and for the most part, completely accurate. There is wi-fi at this campground, but we have to drive up to the camp office to connect there, so hopefully we’ll get pictures and everything updated while we are in Flagstaff!

We ate dinner (BLT’s) and then took a drive into town. We stopped at a Goodwill (per Bay’s request!) and also a Wal-mart to get a few things they did not have in the tiny town of Springdale back at Zion Park.

 The kangaroo---I mean jackrabbit!

 Bay in his new cowboy hat and his belt. He keeps saying that's all he's gonna need, and then he realizes he's gonna need something else to be a cowboy!

 Stopped for lunch at Lake Powell at the Waheep Marina

 Glen Canyon Dam-Lake Powell formed when the Colorado River was dammed up

 All tuckered out on the drive

Our campsite at Woody Mountain Campground in Flagstaff

Day 25

The Narrows, Zion National Park, Utah

Weather: High 85, Low 50

Today we were able to hike into the Narrows of Zion Canyon. It was all we hoped it would be, and we were so sad to have to turn around and come back! We were praying for no rain in the forecast, so that there would be little to no chance of flash floods in the canyons. We checked at the ranger station to be sure, and indeed, there was a low chance of flash floods, even with a 10-20% chance of thunderstorms later in the day.

After a hearty breakfast (eggs, sausage and English muffins) we donned our new water shoes, shorts and a some layers of shirts, since it was a bit chilly first thing this morning. We took the shuttle up to the Temple of Sinawava stop, hiked the 1 mile up the Riverwalk, and then entered into the Narrows at 11:00 am. We hiked for one hour and made it further than we had 2 days ago, after hiking an hour and a half! We stopped for a quick lunch, and the continued on up the canyon, wading in and out of the water, crossing rapids and calm areas, and traversing a couple of small waterfalls. Everyone did a great job-Leah was a good sport, and even gained enough confidence to do some water crossings on her own! The water was initially VERY cold to our feet and legs, but we quickly numbed up or got used to it, and very soon the water temperature felt good and no one was cold at all. We continued up the canyon, as it narrowed and there was less dry land and more and more of the Virgin River. Eventually, we came to a fork-the Virgin River continued straight, and another, narrower canyon veered off to the right. We went up this canyon a ways, as the river flowing down it was a bit more shallow, and the canyon was temptingly narrow! We continued on until about 2:00 and then decided to turn around and start our hike back.

The hike back was just as nice as on the way up-of course today there were only a fraction of the people that there were this past weekend, which was nice. We talked to a few people along the way who were coming down from the top of the canyon and had overnighted along the way. To do the whole Narrows hike, you must get a backcountry permit and arrange a shuttle to take you up to a private ranch at the beginning of the Narrows canyon. From there, you hike 28 miles down canyon to where we started our day-hikes. There are 12 camping spots about half way down, and hikers must pack in and pack out everything they need for the trip. It is a 2-day trip, and the people we talked to completed it in about 16 hours over 2 days. This is something that I would love to come back out here and do one day-especially once I found out from a park ranger that we only hiked about 7/10 of a mile up the canyon! Of course we were going “little-kid” pace, but the solitude of the hike is so peaceful and calming. I could have continued on for many more hours without stopping easily. We noticed several times as we were hiking that even though there were a good amount of people, the noise of the river, the height of the canyon and the filtering light over the canyon walls was such a soothing, quiet and peaceful environment. Despite the fact that we were walking for about 5 hours, it was very restful. So sad to have to leave.

Another thing about the parks out here-the animals are so tame! The chipmunks, the mule deer, the squirrels, even the flies are tame! So many people, I guess, feed the animals and they get so used to people that they just stand right there as you walk by, and some even come up to people, looking for food. It is actually very dangerous-even for the small animals. You can imagine why it  is dangerous for bears and other large, vicious animals to be unafraid of people, and approach them for food; it is the same for the smaller animals and rodents. Evidently, many people are bitten each year or kicked by deer who are trying to get food from people because they have been fed in the past. Here in Zion, it is sad to see so many obese red squirrels-fattened and unafraid of the people hiking by them. In fact, we were very cautious around them as we did not want one to bite us because we did not feed it.

After our hike, we headed into town. We have not been grocery shopping in a while and needed to stock up on several items to get us through meals for the next 5 or 6 days. Before going grocery shopping, we stopped in at a restaurant to get burgers for dinner-we have been craving a good burger for some time now, and tonight seemed like the perfect night to have one. We were at Wild Willy’s, and the burgers were excellent. Attached to the restaurant is the store where we bought our shoes, and also a local pie place called Bumbleberry’s. This is their own invention, and they have created a silly story to go along with it. We got a pie to take back to the RV, and basically, the bumbleberry pie is just a conglomeration of several different berries-huckleberry, raspberry, and who knows what else.

Tonight we have had some high winds and pretty strong thunderstorms-the first rain or anything like it since we left Kentucky! We spent some time on the computer planning out our next few stops and will be leaving here in the morning. We have been at Zion Ponderosa Ranch the longest of any stay so far on this trip-5 nights! It’s beginning to feel too much like home-we must be moving on J