New Mexico - Land of Enchantment

Leaving Colorado and our friends, Buck and I knew we would have to re-adjust to our two-night travel-schedule to meet all expectations to return home by August 1.  

These tin Mexican hombres welcomed us to the KOA

True to form, we stayed two nights at Raton, NM, just over the state line from Colorado.  Turns out that our son, Jason Walker, had camped at the Raton KOA, back in the 1990s on his way to work for the summer at the Boy Scout Ranch in Cimarron, New Mexico.  He told us about visiting the Capulin Volcano and recommended that we go there.  Guess what!  It’s a national monument! So here we go. 

The Capulin volcano erupted into existence 60,000 years ago.  Firework-like flames of superheated lava spewed high in the sky, solidified, and dropped back to Earth.  The falling debris accumulated around the vent, forming a cinder cone volcano.  We visited the visitor center, cancelled the stamp, and drove up as far as possible at the volcano.  Some people continued to climb the volcano using steps built along the sides.  Buck and I parked, watched,and returned to the bottom of the volcano.  Beautiful views were available as we left.  We noticed cracks and crevasses as we descended.  The volcano is not finished yet, we determined.  But no one knows when more eruptions will occur.  Maybe 60,000 years from now, it will.

By July 17 we were headed to Albuquerque where we stayed for three nights, July 17 – 19.  There we chased a stamp to Bandelier National Monument in Alamos, NM, where we learned that it is best known for mesas, sheer-walled canyons, and several thousand ancestral Pueblo dwellings.  Bandelier also includes more than 23,000 acres of designated wilderness.  The best-known archeological sites in Frijoles Canyon were inhabited from the 1100s into the mid – 1500s.  

Bandelier National Monument in Alamos, NM

The Manhattan Project National Historic Park in Los Alamos tells the story of the people, events, science, and engineering that led to the creation of the atomic bomb, which helped end World war II.  Over 6,000 scientists and support personnel worked at this location in on a remote mesa to design and build the atomic bombs.

The Manhattan Project National Historical Park is one of the nation’s newest national parks.  Established in November 2015, the park preserves portions of the World War II-era sites where the United States developed the world’s first atomic weapons. 

Three locations are shown on the exhibit map of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park:  Hanford, Washington; Alamos, New Mexico, and Oak Ridge, Tennessee.  

Fort Union National Monument, at Watrous, NM is located along the Mountain Branch of the Santa Fe Trail.  This military post and quartermaster depot operated from 1851 to 1891, serving as the largest military installation on the Southwestern frontier.  Today, Fort Union NM continues to inspire the imagination about the American frontier. 

New Mexico is filled with national parks and national monuments.  We enjoyed our stay in this state.

Mandalay

Mostly, on our trip to the south-west states, Buck and I have stayed in a camp ground only two nights.  That arrangement would give us a half day of travel; and the other half resting, washing laundry, buying groceries, and/or planning our next day’s trips to chase stamps around the area.  Occasionally, we’ve moved on after staying only one night, which of course means we would chase stamps on the same day we arrived at a campground.  That’s hard on the ole body, so we don’t do that often.  And occasionally, we stay three nights at a stop.  That normally means that Buck has researched the area for many national parks to visit.

On the Road Again

Neither of these arrangements were true for our next stop – Garden of the Gods Camp ground in Colorado Springs, CO.  We had reservations to stay the entire week from Sunday, July 8 to Sunday, July 15, and we would be with people we know. Buck and I both looked forward to this week with our Mandalay Rally friends.  We had met the friends years ago at large Mandalay rallies, mostly in Goshen, Indiana.  Smaller regional rallies were fun too, mostly in the Michigan area and especially, at beautiful Petoskey, MI. We always enjoy being with these folks.  Everyone was from a different state at the Garden of the Gods rally except for two coaches; they were both from Michigan.  Others were from Oklahoma, Colorado, Georgia, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and of course we were from NC.  Nine coaches in all.  Some left early and some arrived late.  That’s normal for travelers. 

Our first gathering was Sunday evening at three picnic tables set up between two of the RVs.  Everyone was asked to bring heavy hors d’oeuvres.  We took a fruit tray. (No cooking if I can avoid it.)  As we all gathered to enjoy the great meal, rain drops started falling on our heads. The food had been spread on tables under the awning, so it stayed dry.  Some of the friends stood under the awning, too.  I was in my power chair and couldn’t get under the awning, so people gave me an umbrella, a hat, and a rain coat.  I tried to tell everyone that I don't melt anymore, but they insisted.  Buck put his army hat over the controls of my chair, so they were protected.   About the time we all were situated to be dry, the rain stopped and the storm passed, and we resumed our wonderful meal.  Afterwards, people hung around and enjoyed catching up with everyone.  Just like a big family reunion. 

Bud and Cyndi Wheatley from Colorado 
served as rally hosts.  

Ron and Sandy Horn, from Michigan, 

served as host helpers for the rally.

Garden of the Gods, Colorado Springs, CO

The Garden of the Gods was dedicated on 1909 as a free city park.  An abundance of plant and animal life can be found throughout its 1,350 acres, as well as the magnificent red sandstone rock formations.  Many of these are over 300 million years old and were sculpted through time by erosion.  In 1879, Charles Perkins, president of the Chicago Burlington Quincy Railroad, purchased much of the land now known as the Garden of the Gods.  After his death, at his request, his family gave the land to the City of Colorado Springs to be used as a park.  The stipulations included that it be known as Garden of the Gods and it would remain free to all visitors. 

Many opportunities for outdoor activities exist at the Garden of the Gods.  Guided nature walks and presentations, summer Segway guided tours, jeep tours, technical rock climbing, hiking and guided biking tours are all available daily.  Oh, to be young again!

From the visitor center observation deck, Pike’s Peak loomed in front of us. When our young family had visited this area years ago, we drove to the top of Pike’s Peak. But not this time. Buck and I are both short winded and didn’t want to risk the high elevation. We were already high enough on the observation deck.

When our family was there years ago, snow was on Pike's Peak.

Throughout the week our rally hosts continued to provide opportunities for us to learn about the area, shop, rest, and visit with our rally members. One activity that I didn’t particularly want to do was to visit the Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument. (It’s not a national park, but it counts – National Monuments are in Buck’s Passport, so here we go – chasing stamps.) I’m so glad I went. A forest ranger provided our group with an interpretive session that was extremely interesting.

As the brochure states, “We get all tangled up with the present, but the present is just a little flick in time between the past and the future. Things keep going on and on… We are just in this particular little time interval, and it seems so important to us,” says Harry D. MacGinite in 1979. In other words, objects that are considered fossils in the present could be more than 33 million years old. Likewise, insects, plants, organisms that we currently have in the present, may become fossils 33 million years from now. Thus, things keep going on and on.

Saturday night our Colorado hosts invited us all to their home about 45 minutes from the camp ground. We had another thunder storm, but this time we had a beautiful home to go into. I didn't get pictures of this event, but we had a great time. One of my favorite experiences was to pet two "rescued" African Hounds owned by some of our Mandalay friends. One dog was young and friendly; the other was older and was known to be unfriendly. He liked me too, just as the younger one did. Made my day!

Sunday morning, we all said our good byes and started on our separate ways. 

Mandalay Rallies are the best!

See ya!

Rocky Mountain National Park

At the stop in Fairplay, our national park to visit was the one and only Rocky Mountain National Park. We had been there in 2015, but we didn’t have the Passport book.  So here we go the next day up the mountain as did about 5,000 other people.

The Rocky Mountains form one of the world’s longest ranges, stretching almost unbroken from Alaska to below the nation’s southern border.  Native Americans preceded all others in this wild place. Tools, pottery, and rock piles whisper of a human presence over 10,000 years ago, when Paleo-Indians seasonally hunted and possibly traded there.  Later, Ute, Cheyenne, and Arapaho bands came to these mountains.  They probably wore down the path now known as Trail Ridge Road.  They left few other traces.  

Native Americans lived on and cared for this land for centuries.  As human numbers and uses grew, people recognized that preservation was needed.  Many passionate advocates for a park emerged, including naturalist and guide Enos Mills.  He led the push for a wilderness park.  Mining, grazing, and logging interests lobbied for a national forest where commercial activities could continue.  In 1915 Congress dedicated Rocky Mountain National Park; thus, protecting all its natural resources.   

Elk roam and graze freely in the Rocky Mountain National Park.  The park is home to over 350 bighorn sheep, which graze freely in the summer but migrate in the fall to lower elevations.  Other animals do not migrate but hibernate during the winter in the higher levels.

A male elk is feeding in the meadow. 

Over one million people now pour into the park in a six-week period each summer.  For years fires were suppressed which created dense undergrowth; thus, increasing the fire threat to surrounding communities and changes in the forest composition.  To better understand these and other challenges, the park has set aside areas for science and research.  It also is home to the Continental Divide Learning Center, where education and research programs focus on park resources.  

As the Rocky Mountain National Park moves into its second century it will continue to preserve natural systems and cultural stories for future generations. 

Two Breathtaking National Parks in Colorado

Colorado was our next state to visit.  We had previously camped in Colorado on our way to meet the Alaska Caravan in 2015.  But, of course, we needed to chase some stamps in Colorado for Buck’s Passport book. 

Our first stop was in Cortex, where we visited the Mesa Verde National Park.  There we learned about the ancestral pueblo people and their world.  About AD 550, long before Europeans explored North America, some of the people living in the Four Corners region decided to move onto the Mesa Verde, which is a Spanish term for “green table.”  The “Four Corners region” refers to the shared borders of 4 states:  Utah, Nevada, Colorado, and New Mexico.  For over 700 years these people and their descendants lived and flourished here, eventually building elaborate stone communities in the sheltered alcoves of canyon walls.  In the late 1200s in the span of a generation or two, they left their homes and moved away. 

Mesa Verde National Park preserves a spectacular reminder of this ancient culture.  Archeologists have called these people Anasazi, from a Navajo word sometimes translated as “the ancient foreigners.”  We now call them “Ancestral Pueblo people,” reflecting their modern descendants. 

This group of people lived in cliff dwellings. They built their villages beneath the overhanging cliffs.  Their basic construction material was sandstone that they shaped into rectangular blocks about the size of a loaf of bread.  The mortar between the blocks was a mix of dirt and water.  Living rooms averaged about six feet by eight feet, space enough for two or three people.  Isolated rooms in the rear and on the upper levels were generally used for storing crops.  The construction proved that they were experienced builders.    

Verde, or green areas of farm lands, provided opportunities for the people to grow crops.  Corn, beans, and squash were farmed.  The people hunted wild animals and gathered a wide variety of edible and useful plants.

They used their skills to make tools from stone, wood, and bone and built pit houses for homes that were often clustered as small villages on mesa tops and in cliff alcoves.  These people became expert potters and acquired the bow and arrow, a very efficient hunting tool.   

Mesa Verde’s economy was more complex than you might think.  Even in a small farming community, some people would have more skills than others at weaving, working leather, or making pottery, arrow-points, jewelry, baskets, sandals, or other specialized articles.  A surplus would be shared or bartered with neighbors.  Exchanges also took place between communities.  Seashells from the Pacific Coast and turquoise, pottery, and cotton from the south came to Mesa Verde, passed from village to village or carried by traders on foot over a far-reaching network of trails. 

When the cliff dwellers of Mesa Verde left, they joined thousands of other Ancestral Pueblo people who were moving south into today’s New Mexico and Arizona, settling among their kin or establishing new communities.  Today, many pueblos trace their ancestry to the Ancestral Pueblo people of this area.  Some are descendants of the ancient builders of Mesa Verde. 

In the first picture below, note the guided tour provided by a ranger at the Mesa Verde National Park.  

Cliff Palaces at Mesa Verde

Our next stop for camping was near the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park.  Congress has protected over 17,000 acres of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park as wilderness under the 1964 Wilderness Act.

Cutting through Rock with Water…Weather…and Time 

When explorer and engineer John Gunnison, seeking a Pacific railroad passage in the 1850s, judged Black Canyon impenetrable, he referred to the difficulty of getting from one side to the other.  He could not have known that the river had hewn the canyon walls from a dome of extremely resistant crystalline rock.  A geological event now known as the Gunnison Uplift had raised the canyon’s rock from deep in Earth’s basement.  Two million years ago, its course determined by the location of high mountain ranges, the river began cutting through the uplift’s core with rocks, gravel, and sediment.  When further empowered by floodwaters, it gained speed through a steep descent from the surrounding mountains.  It wields huge boulders that scour trees and chisel the canyon bottom—which has not yet been reached.  Time is the Gunnison River’s unseen but equal partner. 

The Black Canyon of the Gunnison, in my opinion, is second only to the Grand Canyon in Arizona.  The massive wall of rock speaks for itself.  Please enjoy the pictures we made at this canyon. 

Note the hair-pin turn up ahead for us.

We were traveling in our truck at this point.

The Gunnison River flows 1800 feet in the canyon.

Painted Wall at Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park

 After two nights in each of the two previous locations in Colorado, we traveled to the town of Fairplay, a place we won’t ever forget.  We had been warned by friends about this little town/campground just south of the very popular ski resort in Breckenridge, CO.  Between Breckenridge and Fairplay our ten-year old Mandalay chugged up the steep mountain pass.  Huffing and puffing, we pulled over at the top and let about 25 cars go by.  As we neared Fairplay, we noticed the very small houses along the side of the road; some were pink, others, purple, and turquois was a very popular color, also.  We missed the road to get to the campground, so I called the office with my cell phone and found that we had passed it by.  Buck U-turned our 60 ft. rig in the middle of a two-lane highway and we backtracked. We turned left into a shopping center, turned right to go behind the shopping center, saw some RVs and continued down a narrow driveway with a tight left turn into the campground.  There we received our site number.  We were one of only three motor homes in the RV park, which, by the way, provided power only.  No water or sewage was available.  We had been fore-warned by a good friend about the lack of provisions, so we went into the campground with a tank full of fresh water and an empty sewage tank.  And we survived just fine. 

Beauty of Utah's National Parks

From California we crossed Northern Nevada and stopped for a stamp cancellation at Great Basin National Park.  The Great Basin stretches from California’s Sierra Nevada to Utah’s Wasatch Mountains. Congress created Great Basin National Park in 1986, including much of the South Snake Range which is a great example of a desert mountain island.   The Great Basin is named for its lack of drainage.  The streams and rivers mostly find no outlet to the sea, and water collects in shallow salt lakes and marshes to evaporate in dry desert air.  It’s not just one basin, but many that are separated by mountain ranges.

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Entering Utah, I became excited because we had already witnessed in 2015 the beauty of the national parks in that state. 

Our first stop was Zion National Park, one that we had not seen in 2015. And it was magnificent.  Located in Southwestern Utah, a prominent feature of the 229 sq. mile park is Zion Canyon, which stretches 15 miles long and spans up to half a mile deep.  It cuts through the reddish and tan-colored Navajo Sandstone by the North Fork of the Virgin River.  The lowest point in the park is 3,555 ft. at Coalpits Wash and the highest peak is 8,726 ft. at Horse Ranch Mountain. The park was established in 1919.  

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Bryce National Park was next.  This was one of my favorites because of the colors in the limestone formations.  We did not see this park in 2015.  We traveled north to Idaho instead.   Established in 1928, Bryce Canyon National Park is in southwestern Utah.  Bryce Canyon, despite its name, is not a canyon, but a collection of giant natural amphitheaters along the eastern side of the Paunsaugunt Plateau.  It is distinctive due to geological structures called hoodoos, formed by frost weathering and stream erosion of the river and lake bed sedimentary rocks. 

Before this area was full of hoodoos it was full of water.  Between 55 and 40 million years ago today’s Utah was a mountain encircled basin.  For millions of years, rivers deposited sediments – mostly dissolved limestone—into a system of large lakes.  Twenty million years ago, as the Colorado Plateau began to rise, the lakes dried up and their mixtures of sediments became the muddy limestone called the Claron Formation. 

Bryce Canyon is called, “Poetry in Stone.”  (as borrowed from the brochure. Take your time reading this in a relaxing place.) Bryce Canyon’s serene vistas are deceptive; the landscape is never static.  Stand at the rim in early morning and experience the chilly dawn, crystalline blue sky, and rocks ablaze with the ruddy light of sunrise.  After breakfast, walk the rim and your shifting perspective dramatically recomposes the scene below.  The Sun arcing across the sky casts a kaleidoscope of slowly altered hues and shifting shadows over the land.  You peel off layers of clothing as the air rapidly warms—as much as 40 degrees F from dawn to late afternoon.  Thin air can leave you short of breath.  The high elevation that causes these effects also creates the climate that weathers the cliffs and hoodoos.  After sunset, as the chill returns, listen through the advancing twilight for the faint clatter or murmur of the stones tumbling in the distance.  At Bryce Canyon the forces of weathering and erosion never rest, not even for a day.  This dynamic, mesmerizing place is like no other.

                       

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Capital Reef we had seen before, but only quickly. I gained a new appreciation of this park.  A giant buckle in Earth’s crust stretches across south-central Utah.  This vast warping of rock, created 65 million years ago by the same great forces later uplifting the Colorado Plateau, is called the Waterpocket Fold.  Capitol Reef National Park preserves the Fold and its eroded jumble of colorful cliffs, massive domes, soaring spires, stark monoliths, twisting canyons, and graceful arches.  It is a place that humans used for thousands of years, from early indigenous peoples to Mormon pioneers. The village within the park was named Fruita since fruit trees grew naturally in the area.  This national park inspires poets, artists, photographers, and seekers of solitude.  The world of the Waterpocket Fold stretches 100 miles – and beyond.  Capital Reef National Park was established in 1971. 

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Canyonlands National Park was not my favorite. Canyonlands preserves a wilderness of rock at the heart of the Colorado Plateau.  Water and gravity, this land’s prime architects, cut flat layers of sedimentary rock into hundreds of canyons, mesas, buttes, fin, arches, and spires.  At center stage are two canyons carved by the Green and Colorado rivers.  Surrounding the rivers are vast, very different regions:  Island in the Sky on the north, The Maze on the west, and The Needles on the east.  They share a common primitive spirit and Wild West atmosphere.  Few people knew these remote lands and rivers well when the national park was established in 1964.  Only Native Americans, cowboys, river explorers, and uranium prospectors had dared enter this rugged corner of southeastern Utah.  Canyonlands remains largely untamed—its roads mostly unpaved, trails primitive, and rivers free-flowing.  Bighorn sheep, coyotes, and other native animals roam its 537 square miles.  Canyonlands is wild America. 

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Arches was the last national park that we saw in Utah on this trip.  It was the first one in 2015. 

 Established in 1971, the park lies on top of an underground salt bed that is responsible for the arches, spires, balanced rocks, sandstone fins, and eroded monoliths of this mecca for sightseers.  Thousands of feet thick in places, this salt bed was deposited across the Colorado Plateau 300 million years ago when a sea flowed into the region and eventually evaporated.  Over millions of years, residue from floods, winds, and the oceans that came and went covered the salt bed.  The debris was compressed as rock, at one time possibly a mile thick.  Salt under pressure is unstable, and the salt bed lying below arches was no match for the weight of this thick cover of rock.  The salt layers shifted, buckled, liquefied, and repositioned itself, thrusting the rock layers upward as domes, and whole sections fell into the cavities.   Faults deep in the Earth made the surface even more unstable.  Fault-caused vertical cracks later contributed to the development of arches. More than 2,000 natural sandstone arches are in the park.  The park contains the highest density of natural arches in the world.  Located in the Colorado Plateau in south east Utah, the park consists of 76,679 acres of high desert. 

Native Americans used this area for thousands of years.  The Archaic peoples, and later ancestral Puebloan, Fremont, and Ute peoples, searched the arid desert for food animals, wild plant foods, and stone for tools and weapons.  The first non-native explorers came looking for wealth in mineral forms.  Ranchers found abundant grasses for cattle and sheep.  Free roaming cattle abound.

Arches National Park is a very popular park because of its ever-changing characteristics.  Today new features are being formed as old ones are destroyed.  Erosion and weathering work slowly but relentlessly, creating dynamic landforms that gradually change through time.  Change sometimes occurs more dramatically.  In 1991 a rock slab 60 feet long, 11 feet wide, and 4 feet thick fell from the underside of Landscape Arch, leaving behind an even thinner ribbon of rock. 

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The national parks in Utah were truly amazing.  If you’re a geologist, science teacher, history teacher, rock climber, adventure seeker, off-road adventurist, or hiker you will benefit more than Buck and I did while visiting these five super terrific national parks.  I would like to encourage you to come while you are still physically able.  In Moab, where we camped while visiting Arches National Park, we saw a TV commercial for the adventures the national parks provide.  A guy from North Carolina was interviewed.  He goes every year to Utah with his off-road team to explore the wonders of these parks.  He’s young enough and physically able to really enjoy the national parks in Utah.

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As a retired educator I can't help but think of different ways to teach a lesson on the national parks in Utah.

We could begin with a lower level thinking skill:

1. List the 5 national parks in Utah and the date each was established.  
2. List the 5 national parks in Utah and their location in the state. 

Then we could move to middle level thinking skills:

1. Compare and contract the differences and similarities of the 5 national parks in Utah. You may use a graphic organizer or simply list them separately. 
2. Considering the location of each national park in Utah, determine from the article the cause for the creation of each park. 

Upper level assignments:

1. Research the national park of your choice and state the reasons for your decision.  Write a commercial for the public to learn about your chosen park. 
2. Based on the history of each national park, what would you predict to be the future of each park?

Sorry, I couldn't help myself. 

California Here We Come!

We camped at three locations in California to chase stamps.  On June 16, Bakersfield was our first stop.  The Cesar Chavez Memorial Monument was our first stamp chasing effort. The monument is located on the property known as La Paz; it is the symbol and focal point of the farm worker movement and served as the national headquarters of the United Farm Workers of America.  It is where Cesar Chavez lived and worked and is the place where he and others met to strategize.   Thousands of farm workers joined him to work for social justice. The area around Bakersfield as well as other small towns going north in the western section of California is heavily farm land with groves and front yards full of orange trees.  Thus, the need for migrant farm workers. 

Cesar Chavez

The next day, we left Bakersfield for Three Rivers, a small town near the Sequoia National Park.  John Muir, a conservationist, named this park after the earth’s largest living tree, the sequoia.  In all the world, sequoias grow naturally only on the west slope of the Sierra Nevada, usually between 5,000 and 7,000 feet of elevation.  John Muir stated that while some trees in the Sierra Nevada die of disease or fungi, nothing hurts the sequoia tree.  Baring accidents, the sequoia tree seems to be immortal.  During the 1880s logging companies wanted to cut down the sequoia trees. Muir’s response to this suggestion was

(We might) “as well sell the rain clouds and the snow and the rivers to be cut up and carried away, if that were possible.”

As a result of the loggers' interest in cutting the Sequoia trees, John Muir used his influence with the national government, and  Sequoia National Park was created on Sept. 25, 1890.  
This declaration protected all aspects of the park from poachers, loggers, and miners.

               
Laundry and resting were on the agenda for the next day in Three Rivers.  

June 19, we traveled to Angels’ Camp RV and Camping Resort in Angel’s Camp.  We had hoped to stay at the KOA in Yosemite National Park, but it was closed due to a recent forest fire.  The route to the Angel's Campground was hilly, curvy, and unbalanced, just as I was when I completed the drive.  Seems that every time I drive I end up on that type of road.  But Buck complimented me on my driving!  (Shock--he must have been unbalanced, too!)

John Muir made the following statement about the Yosemite National Park: 

“Everybody needs BEAUTY as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where NATURE may heal and give strength to body and SOUL alike.” 

He loved the four geographic areas—High Sierra, Granite Cliffs, Sequoia Groves, and the Valley, which provided varied conditions for the inhabitants of Yosemite National Park. A grand collection of waterfalls, meadows, and forests that include groves of giant sequoias, the world’s largest living things.   Yosemite National Park is a natural wonderland and encompasses 761,170 acres.  The park was established on October 11, 1890 and includes the nation’s tallest waterfall. 

Another quote by John Muir sums it all up, 

“It is by far the grandest of all the special temples of Nature I was ever permitted to enter.”