Welcome to Arizona, such a pretty drive.

Here is the snow that all of a sudden appeared. Notice how it is sticking on the windshield

Someplace out there is Williams.

We saved this turtle. He was on the Needles Highway, so we moved him back out into the desert.

One small portion of the Many petroglyphs

Bets n Dude enjoying the great weather

Quite unique trailers. One is a casket and the other an old refrigerator. The refrigerator housed their 2 dogs as they traveled.

Spring has really started to bloom in the desert.

We left New Mexico on Thursday with hints of bad weather coming. We were headed to AZ and weren't too worried about bad weather following us there. After all, it's April and Springtime. The days should be getting warmer by now!
We were going to stop in Williams, AZ for a couple of nights and walk around the town to visit its quaint little shops. In all the times that we've been to Williams, we have never actually walked to see the town. Well, that was not to be! Passing by Flagstaff we noticed snow on the ground around us but weren't too worried as Williams is at a lower altitude and we figured it wouldn't be too cold there. The weather was cloudy but not too serious-looking. Within 15 minutes of passing Flagstaff we saw ominous road signs talking about "ice on the road" and "winter conditions". Immediately we found ourselves driving our truck and 5th wheel thru driving snow and icy conditions. Scary! Ed's an amazing driver tho' and got us thru it safe and sound (with a few hysterics from me!) but it lasted nearly an hour and those big trucks barely slow down even for snow. We didn't even see the town of Williams as we passed, it was too snowy and visibility was low. We made an instant decision to drive thru to Laughlin, NV. We had never heard of snow in Laughlin before so figured we were safe to park it there. We actually hit snow again just outside of Kingman, AZ and Laughlin was cloudy, windy with rain in the forecast. The next day dawned beautiful, bright and sunny with not a cloud in the sky. The only fly in the ointment in Laughlin was that it was River Run Week and there were thousands of bikers gathered to party! We stayed at Avi which is a little way out of the town of Laughlin and visited our favorite petroglyph spot at Christmas Tree Pass so we were happy for a couple of nights.
We're "home" now...sort of. We've parked the 5th wheel at Wilderness Lakes in Menifee and will stay there until May 4 when we'll move the 5th wheel into storage at our mobilehome park in San Jacinto and be done with another successful trip. I'm sort of sad and glad at the same time. I want to still be on the road going towards the next adventure. Don't feel too sorry for us tho', our next adventure is just around the corner. On July 5, we'll pack up again and head up north with one of our granddaughters, Jessie, onboard. We'll stop first in Yosemite for 4 nights where Jessie's parents will join us and then leave the parents behind as the two of us and Jessie (Dude too!) travel up to Spokane Valley, WA for a visit with Jessie's 3 cousins.
The blog postings will be a little further apart now as we'll just be doing some mundane chores like yardwork, etc. There will be some fun stuff in the next two months that I'll want to "post" about so, if you're interested, check on the blog every week or so. Hey, while we're here, we'd love to see you, so call and tell us to meet you for lunch or dinner....or whatever! And...if you don't call us....we'll probably call you! We've missed all of you!!

This is El Calderon where we stopped and stretched. The lava tubes were quite impressive.

1) This was along the trail to the Banderas Volcano. This is called Spatter Cone.

2) This shows some of the spectacular desolate landscape that we saw.

3) There is Ed going into a cave along the trail to the Banderas Volcano.

4) Here is the Banderas Volcano

1) This was along the trail going to the Ice Caves. To rough to walk on as the rocks were quite sharp!

2) This is what is left of a wall that the Apache Indians had built 100's of years ago.
3) This is the ladder that leads to the Ice Caves. Was interesting as the steps were not evenly spaced, so had to really watch our step.

4) Here is a view of the ice in the cave which is about 25' thick.

5) And here is the icicles that were hanging from the roof of the cave.

Here is Dude doing some exploring. OOPS, where is his leash? This is back at El Calderon where we had a windy lunch.

Our problems with connectivity continued and we finally gave it up until we returned home. We are now actually parked at Wilderness Lakes in Menifee but tonight we are staying at our mobilehome in San Jacinto where we have FIOS and it works like a charm!
Last Wednesday we were climbing around on ancient lava beds that were created when the Bandera Volcano in what is now New Mexico erupted around 10,000 years ago. It's in El Malpais National Monument, we just went a little further this day then we had the first day we visited. We drove on past the Zuni-Acoma Trail about 15 miles and came to a place called El Calderon. We stopped to look and stretch our legs. It was quite an impressive hole in the ground, again created by a lava tube that had collapsed. The three of us climbed down in and pondered the wisdom of trying to crawl thru the lava tube (and sharp rock) to the other side where we saw light coming in. Our better sense won out and we left the tube-crawling to a younger and fitter couple. Hope they made it! We didn't stick around to find out.
Our next stop was the Bandera Volcano and Ice Cave. The crater left by the eruption of the volcano is approx. 1200 ft across and 800 ft deep. It's one of the best examples of an erupted volcano in the country and one of the most accessible. We paid our fees and started our climb behind several groups of elementary students. It was good exercise, not too difficult, a gentle incline all the way up and very different scenery with the lava rock all around. Once up there, with a few pictures taken, we left the students behind and headed down. The best part of our visit here was the ice cave. Once we had climbed to the crater and back down, we were directed to another trail that would take us down to the ice cave. The scenery on both sides of this trail was very forbidding-looking. Lots of lava rock twisted around Ponderosa pine, cypress and juniper made it look like a dangerous place to explore. A place where it would be easy to break a bone or a head for that matter. The steps down to the Ice Cave were the worst part of the trail. They were almost straight down and built so long ago that they were uneven and treacherous. As we approached the bottom, it became colder and colder until....there it was!....a layer of ice on the floor of the cave that was 25 ft thick. It was green from algae and smooth so that I wanted to ice skate on it. Ice skating not allowed!! Some icicles were hanging from the ceiling of the cave and there were black charcoal marks on the celing indicating that fires had been burnt in the cave at one time. In the 1800s there was an outpost here and they used to keep their perishables in the cave. In the 1950s, a nearby hunting lodge kept their beer on ice in the cave. Pretty handy place!! We got our best exercise of the day just climbing back up those wretched stairs out of the Ice Cave.
We ended out outing for the day by having a picnic lunch at El Calderon in strong winds that wanted to blow our lunches away. We persevered though, ate, talked with the sheriffs who had just driven up to make sure that we weren't going to get lost in the wilderness and fall in a lava tube and then headed back to the 5th wheel.

This is a view of Acoma Mesa where the Haaku-ma people have lived for many generations.

This here is the Acoma Mission that the natives built for the Spanish Missionaries. The cemetery was in front of the mission.

This is the oldest part of the Acoma Village. All the do is apply an additional layer of adobe to protect the original walls.

This is the ladders that the men used to access the kivas. The middle ladder had arrows pointing both ways to protect the areas.

Here is Gary showing us the ovens that they used. A loaf of bread took about 45 minutes.

This is a view of the First Mesa, Enchanted Mesa, from the Acoma Mesa that they now live on.

Here is Ed at the top of the mesa gettting readyto head down





















This is the only access that the Acoma Indians had to the mesa village until the early 1950's. The road was put in so that several movies could be made there. One was a John Wayne movie.

This is Betsy at the bottom of the stairs down the side of the cliff

We've had a few days of rough weather and limited connectivity so now we'll try to catch up on our last few days:
Last Tuesday Ed and I were all into Indian civilizations again. The area around Grants, NM is sorta in the middle of Indian reservations. We went to the Acoma (Sky City) Pueblo where the Haaku-ma (Acoma) people settled around 1150 ad. They came south from the Mesa Verde area in what is now southern Colorado down thru Chaco Canyon (NM) in search of a home that would be revealed to them. The story was that if they found a place and called "Haaku!" into the distance, it would be home if they heard an answering "Haaku!". In otherwords, their search was based on hearing an echo of their calls. Acoma also has the distinction of being the oldest continuously inhabited community in North America. About 10% of the approx. 3600 Acoma people living in the area still reside on top of the mesa in Sky City (360 ft above the desert floor). Many of the rest live in nearby villages and travel to the mesa top for important ceremonies and cultural celebrations.

We traveled south from Grants on a desolate highway and dropped down into the valley that is part of the Acoma reservation. We checked in first at the Sky City Cultural Center to arrange for our tour of the mesa pueblo. With about a half hour before our tour began, we ventured outside to the vendor tables of handmade pottery, jewelry and other items. There we learned that there is pottery still made using the clay that the potters mine nearby from the ground themselves and there is pottery made from commercial clay but handpainted. There is a significant price difference between the two! We purchased two beautiful pieces of absolutely unique pottery (I couldn't resist!) and a couple pieces of the commercial grade clay pottery (still beautiful but you can feel the difference). The designs all have meaning which was explained to us by the craftswomen themselves. They told us that the craft was handed down generation by generation and one potter said that she could count 7 generations of potters in her family. They are also a maternal society and so this talent passes from mother to daughter and on. There were also craftsmen who made silver jewelry. One man made pendants based on shards of old pottery that has been unearthed on the mesa top and then the old piece of pottery was included with the pendant purchase. We really wanted one of these too but they were out of our price range!!

We rode in a small van up a road to the top of the mesa to begin our tour. Gary (his native name I could not pronounce and cannot reproduce in writing) was our tour guide and started at the Santa Esteban del Rey Mission and Convento. This building was began in 1629 and completed in 1640. All materials and labor were basically supplied by the native peoples under slave labor (of course) to the Spaniards and resident Franciscan friar. Trees were carried from mountains about 30 miles away and basketfuls of clay were brought up to the mesa top by foot hole paths (no roads for vans in those days!). It has been refurbished a few times since its creation but the dry heat of the desert environment aids in preservation. The tour wound thru the village from the new part around to the old part and on all sides we could see the desert vista stretch into the distance. It was very strange to see this ancient pueblo with no electricity or running water with vehicles parked in front of some of the homes and porta-potties lined up here and there. One of the mesas we saw in the distance was called Enchanted Mesa. This story goes that Enchanted Mesa was the first home of the Haaku-ma in this area but a violent storm destroyed the access path to the top of the mesa. An old grandmother and her young granddaughter were the only people left stranded on top. Instead of slowly starving to death from hunger and thirst, they chose to jump off the top of the mesa to their deaths. They were buried at the base of Enchanted Mesa as were other ancestors over the years. Enchanted Mesa is off limits to all non-native people and even the Acoma seldom go over there.

At the end of the tour we were offered a ride back in the van or we could choose to go down the old access that was basically steps and handholds carved out of the rock. Being the adventurous old fogies that we are, we chose the old access route and started down at the end of the group. I wanted no audience for this particular folly. We have pictures that will show what we went thru but suffice it to say, it was not easy. I'm glad we did it, I'd do it again but I was awfully glad that we made it down safe with no broken bones. A broken bone at this age would be an adventure-stopper! We had about a 1/2 mile walk from the bottom of the old access back to the museum and my legs shook the whole way! Whoo-Hoo!

Here is the trail that follows a small portion of the Continental Divide. Dude is charging on. This trail is 7.5 miles long. And the Continental Divide is over 3,100 miles.

Here is Betsy standing on a lava tube. this was the start of the trail head of the Zuni-Acoma trail.

Here is a couple pictures of collapsed lava tubes.

Such a beautiful day and the clouds were rolling by. So far it did not look like rain.

This is looking towards the north west from the Trail head of the Zuni-Acoma Trail. The grass was growing in patches and helped to really dress it up the lava beds.

This is the Mission San Rafael. That cross was right next to the road. It was built in the late 1800's and still serves the township of San Rafael

These were the clouds that we started seeing. They brought us some rain.

We arrived in Grants, NM on Monday, April 19, in early afternoon and after setting up we hopped in the truck to see what we could see in the few daylight hours left. We headed off for an area south of Grants called El Malpais. Mal meaning "bad" in Spanish and Pais "country or lands" so essentially the area was the "badlands". It's called this because of the harsh terrain caused by the eruption of Bandera Volcano about 10,000 years ago, lots of big piles of black volcanic (very sharp!) rock.
This first day we didn't have enough time to explore it very thoroughly so we settled for stopping at one of the trailheads for the Zuni-Acoma Trail. The trail is named after two local Indian tribes as it follows the route that they had marked with rock cairns (piles) over 1000 yrs ago between their two pueblos (villages) and has become a part of the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail (a 3000 mile trail from Canada to Mexico). We were only going to hike a small part of it today (maybe a 1/2 mile or so) just enough to give Dude a good workout. Poor dog has been such a good traveler but we've spent too much time in the truck lately and he's needing some fresh air (us too!). After the initial concrete path to the info board we had to cross a rather treacherous area covered with lava flow and it was not easy. No broken bones tho' as we hit the open prairie. As we walked along we noticed many things like a pile of elk scat (love that poop!) and big ant hills. Dude was having a great time, sniffing here and sniffing there. We had gone perhaps a quarter mile when I noticed one other thing that had me concerned.....big black thunderclouds building in the not too far distance that might drop a bucketful of rain on our heads. We turned around immediately and headed back to Bruzer. As we walked we saw lightning in the clouds and knew it was going to be a good storm. We made it back to the truck without getting wet luckily but when we returned to camp, the downpour started before we could get inside. Just a little damp, that's all, before we were cozy and warm and listening to the rain drum down on the 5th wheel along with the boom of the thunder.

This is the Syllabary that was developed by Sequoyah.

This was the first book written using the Cherokee Syllabary. It was titled "Poor Sarah" and written by Elias Boudinot.

This is the front of the Cherokee National Museum.

Here is the ancient village that we did a tour of

Here is our tour guide Feather (here real name) showing us the baskets that were made the same way as her ancestors.

Here is Feather showing us a blow dart gun.

Here is Betsy inside the 7 Tribes Council building.

Picture of Sequoyah.

Here is one of the many roads that we were on, as our GPS had a mind of her own. Beautiful country though.

Dude had a choice!