Month: October 2018

Hello again everyone!  We have been in Santa Fe for a little over a week now.  Today is a rainy, cold, windy day and we’re sitting by the fire (love it), having a cup of Peppermint Tea (are we the most exciting people ever!! 🙂 ) so I thought I would catch you  up with our visit in Santa Fe.

We’ve enjoyed our time in Santa Fe.  We’ve only done one hike here so far, we’re hoping to get one in tomorrow if the rain stops.  We leave here in two days to head north to Taos and Angel Fire.  It’s snowing there today!  We loved the hike we did, Nambe Lake.  It started at about 10,100 feet and went up to about 11,300 feet.  Beautiful trail, in the mountains, up to a beautiful frozen lake.  There was about 4 inches of fresh snow on the ground.  It was about 7.5 miles round trip and we loved it.  That’s the good news.  The bad news:  a) somehow our pictures on our phones at the frozen lake all turned out in black and white.  On both our phones.  Don’t know what happened.  We were so excited to get back and look at our pictures and found that when we got to the lake, they all are black and white or some monochrome color setting.  The were in color up until then….I don’t think we are meant to be picture taking people!!!  The bad news:  b)  there was this beautiful stream, clear water babbling over stones for much of our hike.  Couldn’t resist drinking the water.  We did this often in Alaska with no problem.  Well, by that evening, Steve was sick, and has had a fever and tummy trouble for 3 days now.  I didn’t get sick, but I only drank a small amount of the water, Steve drank a lot.  Note to self:  do not drink the water no matter how clean and beautiful it looks!  We have since learned livestock live on that mountain in the summer.  🙁  Hard to tell what was in that water!  Lots of pictures of our hike in the link below.

We also have caught up with a high school friend of Steve’s, Chris, who lives in Santa Fe with her husband.  They were friends all through high school, college and early adult life, but lost track of each other after Chris moved to San Francisco then Santa Fe.  She is head of retail operations for several museums in Santa Fe.  We had lunch with her one day, and just as we were sitting down, I got a phone call from doggy daycare.  It was Gerry’s first visit to the local doggy daycare, and since it was a rainy day, they were playing inside.  He caught his dew claw on the indoor turf, and tore it off.  So after lunch we were off to the vet.  He tore it clean off, so it just needed a bandage and he also got a cute little bootie that kept it dry and clean outside.  He’s feeling just fine, got the bandage off the other day and got to go back to daycare for the fun he missed the first time!

We had dinner with Chris and her husband also, at a great local restaurant that has been here for many years.  They are both so nice and it was fun to get to know them.  Catching up with friends and family as we travel is one of the benefits of this RV lifestyle.

We’ve been tourists here too.  They have a great Farmer’s Market here, twice a week, and we’ve been both days.  I can report the local vendors revenue has increased significantly due to our visit!  It’s one of the best farmer’s markets we’ve been too, and we took full advantage and stocked up on lots of great things.  We’ve visited a couple of museums, walked around the historical plaza, and visited San Miguel Chapel, the oldest church in America.  It was built in the early 1600’s.  Santa Fe is an “artsy” kind of town.  Lots of public art along the streets and in the parks, galleries everywhere and vendors selling jewelry, art, pottery and all kinds of crafts everywhere.  We’ve enjoyed browsing and buying a few gifts.

Chili peppers – they are a big deal here!  And it’s harvest season so they are everywhere!  We’ve sampled many – they roast them in these big roasters everywhere.  They are good, and I’ve been adding them to my cooking too.

No, we did not make it to the Balloon Fiesta in Albuquerque.  We had planned to, and even had a reservation at an RV park outside Albuquerque that we cancelled.  We just weren’t sure it was going to be worth all the trouble…big crowds, have to be there at sunrise, weather not great.  In fact, our RV neighbors here in Santa Fe made the drive (over an hour each way) twice to see the balloons take off only to have it cancelled each day due to weather…maybe we’ll make it another time when we’re out this way again.

So that’s what we’ve been up to here in Santa Fe.  We’re off to Taos and Angel Fire in a couple of days, and Samantha will visit us in Angel Fire for a few days.  Then, our friends Shawn and Julie are coming to visit.  Can’t wait to see them all and I’m sure we’ll have lots to share from their visits.  In the meantime, it’s still raining here and I’m going to get another cup of tea.  Hope you enjoy the pictures!

Gerry resting in his favorite chair after the vet:

Steve and Chris:

Santa Fe: https://photos.app.goo.gl/LBwvNJvkLH8YA2ts9

Nambe Lake Hike:  https://photos.app.goo.gl/pbmvLbBDjjMnEMQcA

 

Howdy folks!

 

We hit the jackpot with our stay in Chama, New Mexico…we hit perfect weather, and full fall color.  We drove to Chama from Sedona (took us 2 days of driving).  What a total different setting.  That’s one of the really fun things about this RV living…one day you are in the red rocks hiking in 100 degree temperatures and then 2 days later you are in full fall color in the mountains and building a campfire!  Switching from air conditioning to furnace and digging through all your shorts and t-shirts for the long johns!

We had never heard of Chama and had not planned to go there, but one day in Arizona we were watching a PBS show (after Bill installed our new TV!) that highlighted Chama and the surrounding area.  We knew it was our kind of place and changed our plans to spend a week there.  So glad we did.  Chama is in the northwest corner of New Mexico, about 10 miles south of the Colorado boarder and the San Juan mountains.  You may remember we stayed in the San Juan mountains in Colorado earlier in our trip.  That was on the west/southwest side of the San Juans.  Now we were on the south side of the mountains.  I think it is fair to say we love the San Juan mountains.  🙂

Chama was a cute little town, and the RV park we stayed at was great.  The RV park was at 7,800 feet elevation.  Lots of trees and big sites and campfires were allowed!  Almost everywhere we’ve been has had fire bans, so we were excited to have a campfire again.  We did tons of hiking and exploring the area.  You’ll see in the pictures we were totally enamored with the Aspen trees, they are so beautiful.  You may also notice Gerry is sporting a colorful outfit in many pictures too.  Elk hunting season opened while we were there and we wanted to be sure Gerry (and us too) was very visible while we were out hiking.  We also put his bear bell from Alaska on him to help be sure we didn’t surprise anyone.

One of our hikes – Red Mountain Lake – was at a pretty high elevation – we started at 10,500 and went to 12,300.  It is one of our favorite hikes yet.  It was cloudy, foggy, cold and windy at the top, with a beautiful mountain lake.  We also hiked a section of the Continental Divide trail.  The Continental Divide trail is 3,100 and runs from Canada to Mexico.  This was also one of our very favorite hikes and ranks in the top 5 of all time.

Hope you enjoy the pictures and happy fall!

https://photos.app.goo.gl/5vsGFwz5BFzDfmoy7

Hi everyone!

I’m seriously trying to get caught up on my blog posts.  I have spent my “computer time” trying, unsuccessfully, to figure out my storage issue and also transfer pictures from the computer to the external hard drive I purchased.  All attempts have failed.  I have officially given up trying to figure it out until we get back home and I’m going to get help.  Cell phone pictures will have to do.   Hey!  I hear those snickers out there!  I admit, computer storage and computers in general are not my strong suit!  Somehow I manage to keep our banking and mail handled online, but this whole picture storage thing has me beat.  Anyhow, onto much more interesting topics like my sister’s visit while we were in Sedona!!

After I got back from St. Paul, Steve and I did a quick, above the rim only (no hiking) trip to the Grand Canyon with Gerry.  A few pictures are included in the below links.  It was okay, but crowded and, I guess, we are not that “wowed” by the Grand Canyon.  Did I just say that out loud?  I guess I did!  We kept waiting for that “wow” moment, when we went to the north rim, and again when we went to the south rim.  Didn’t happen.  And Steve said the same, even when he and Bill hiked the Bright Angel trail a bit.  And when Laura, my sister, came to visit, she and I drove up to the south rim and hiked a bit of the Bright Angel trail (pictures below).  Still no “wow” there.  Glad we saw it, but I don’t expect we’ll ever go again.  I guess it’s just not our thing.

We did, however, have a fantastic visit to Sedona.  Love it there.  We stayed for a total of 2 weeks, however only one week was actually in an RV park right in Sedona.  For the week before Laura came, we were just outside Sedona in Camp Verde.  It was a very nice campground, and only about 20 minutes to Sedona.  BUT, the campground we stayed at in Sedona was fantastic.  Rancho Sedona, right in the middle of town, right on Oak Creek.  I had tried a few times to get a reservation there with no luck, so had given up.  But our new friends Jeff and Lori, that we met back in Colorado and hiked with for a few days, insisted we keep trying, that a trip to Sedona without staying at Rancho Sedona was not the same.  So I tried one last time and they had just had a cancellation!  We got a prime spot right on the creek.  Cool evenings and mornings, sound of the running creek in our windows, beautiful trees everywhere.  A great home base for Laura’s visit.  Thanks Jeff and Lori!

I had heard Sedona was beautiful (it is); I had heard it was new age-y (it is); I had heard there were energy vortexes (vortices? not sure how to spell plural… and there are).  Even though we had heard these things, experiencing them was even better than I had expected.  We did tons of hiking.  It was hot, but beautiful.  We found several vortex spots while hiking.  We all (Steve, Laura and I) experienced the energy at the vortexes.  Sometimes the energy was moving in counter-clockwise circles, sometimes in clockwise circles, sometimes it felt like it was moving both ways and pulling in both directions.  A very cool experience each time.

One hike, at Boynton Canyon, was really great.  At the beginning of the hike, there was an old guy with white hair, way up high on a rock point playing a flute.  We sat with several other people and listened to the flute echoing off the rock walls.  Amazing and moving.  As we were leaving to continue our hike, he came down off the rock point he was on and stopped to talk to us.  He gave us each a heart he had carved out of the red rocks, and gave us each a blessing.  Amazing.  We then did the hike and found several vortex spots that were very strong for us all.  Quite an experience.

On Laura’s first day in Sedona, we hiked Bell Rock.  More of a climb than a hike, you pretty much rock climb to the top.  Beautiful, and we also found a vortex spot there.  As we were climbing up, there was a young lady with beautiful blue hair, with her boyfriend and her mom in front of us most of the way.  When we all got to the top, I noticed she was setting out stones and crystals on the ledge and doing some type of ceremony with them.  We got to talking, and she had just the stone I was looking for – a Rose Quartz.  I bought (very inexpensive) it from her on the spot!  She sells stones and crystals online, and was infusing them with the good energy at Bell Rock before she sold them.  Sedona Magic!

We also got to visit with some family we had not seen for years and years.  Our cousin, Gina, lives in Phoenix and came up to Sedona for a day to visit.  It was great to see her again and to reconnect.  We also had dinner in Phoenix the night before Laura flew back home with Gina, a couple of aunts, and assorted cousins we had not seen for years.  Some we had never met before!  It was great to reconnect with family again.  One of the benefits of this RV lifestyle is that we get to visit with friends and family we may not have had the chance to see otherwise.

It was fantastic having Laura visit.  As much as we love our RV life, we do miss home and family and friends too.  Having visitors means so much, and sharing our adventure is so much fun too!  Pictures below, hope the links work.  Enjoy!

Lots of pictures in this link:  https://photos.app.goo.gl/nJXXzDxtrQfUS5WE7

Howdy all!

Wow, September flew by and here it is early October already!  We are loving our Southwest adventure…let’s get caught up!

In my last post I mentioned I was flying to St. Paul to help Guy furnish the sober house we are launching.  It was a great trip, wonderful to spend time with Guy, see Katelyn again, and to help get the house ready for residents.  Aspire Sober Living is officially open for business now and several residents have already moved in.  Could not be happier or more proud of Guy and the work he is doing.  🙂

Our friend Bill came to visit Steve while I was gone.  They visited the Grand Canyon for a hike and Bill installed a new TV and wall bracket for us (you will recall in my last post how the other one fell off the wall and shattered).  All of you know we are completely un-handy and it was so nice of Bill to get that job done for us.

It’s great having visitors to share our adventure, and to have a touch of “home”.  A few pictures from Bill’s visit are below.  I promise to get more updates out soon!!

 

 

Bill’s Visit:  https://photos.app.goo.gl/GHq9KTpuaXx8RRXk8