Another windy day in the west

I’m beginning to wonder if this wind will ever stop.  Yesterday we had gusts between 40-45mph and today they say we could reach between 60-70mph……and I believe them.  This trailer is a “rockin’ and rollin’”.

Yesterday we spent the day with Bobbie and Jim Chapman playing dominos and drinking a few beverages (check out Bobbie’s blog). It is so good to be able to spend a few more days with them before they have to head back to Colorado and we start to head home. We have to leave this Corp of Engineer park tomorrow (our 14 days are up) and will be heading down to the Hollywood casino with Bobbie and Jim until Sunday.  At that time, they have to head to Colorado and we have an appointment with Camping World in Albuquerque on Monday morning to get the hot water heater fixed.  For the past few months it will only work on propane, not electric.  Hopefully, that will only take a day…..although if they have to order parts, it could take longer…..and then we will start heading home for the summer.  We are meeting up with our friends LeRoy and Rose in Tunica, Mississippi on the 14th of May and then will leave there on the 19th-20th for Tom and Peg’s (Jim’s brother) in South Bend, Indiana.  Plans are to stay there until the 31st and then to Jeff and Lorie’s in Illinois.  We will be bouncing back and forth between the two places all summer.

Bobbie and Jim work for Amazon.com during the holiday season (October thru December 23rd) and had been trying to talk us into doing the same.  Well, they finally succeeded and Jim and I sent in our applications to work at the Campbellsville, Kentucky facility and will start to work on October 18th thru December 23rd. We choose to work part-time, 11 a.m to 3 p.m. Monday thru Friday. I believe the pay is $9.90 per hour with a $250.00 per person stay bonus and Amazon pays for all of our camping (including electric).  Not a bad deal!!!!!  The money we make should pay for our trip to Disney (scheduled for October 3rd-10, 2010 with Jeff, Lorie, Jamie and Jordan) and cover any taxes we will owe to good old Uncle Sam next year.

The wind is still howlin’ and we are still “a rockin’ and rollin’…………”

 

Take care………

Electrical update

We stopped at the rv repair this morning and the repair guy thinks that the battery charger on the inverter is shorted out. That would explain why we were able to run off of the inverter when using the batteries. We disconnected it and went back to the original wiring. The 12 volt still works off of the batteries and they get charged from the solar panels and the auxilary charger/generator if we need it.

We have an appointment with Camping World on Monday to have the hot water heater looked at as it is only working on propane, not 120v.

Jim and Bobbie will be here tomorrow and stay with us until Sunday.

We will move from the COE park Friday back to the casino down the road where we stayed at before coming here for Friday and Saturday. Sunday we will go to a campground next door to the Camping World store.

If the repair does not take all day we will start heading east on Monday, if not than Tuesday.

Jim

Electrical mystery

Friday we had to move to another site as someone had reserved the site we were on for the weekend. Everything had been working just fine until we moved. When we plugged in the electric it tripped the breaker on the park power pedestal. We thought it may be a bad breaker, so we moved to another site…same thing…moved to a third site and same thing. I spent the next two hours checking everything I could think of to solve the problem. It appears to be a problem, I think, with the plug on the rv. We can run everything off of the inverter and have been able to run the generator and watch tv. Made an appointment for Monday with a repair place to have it looked at.

I have mapped out or route for the trip to Tunica, MS. We did not want to drive across I-40 which would have been easier, but since we have two weeks to get there, we can take the red roads and see some country we have not seen before. If you click this map, it should get bigger.

Click in this link and it should bring up the full size map. The cities marked are there only to get the roads down and are not necessarily stops.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=Cochiti+Lake,+NM&daddr=Albuquerque,+NM+to:Clovis,+NM+to:Lubbock,+TX+to:Wichita+Falls,+TX+to:Sherman,+TX+to:Paris,+TX+to:Texarkana,+TX+to:Greenville,+MS+to:Tunica,+MS&hl=en&geocode=FTzyHwIdVG2p-SnVqs1QUGUYhzGiL1Aw1RBWSA%3BFctYFwId_6Gk-Sl7gwnT3QoihzH99tm4zvjTwA%3BFb_5DAIdlTbZ-SkREA1zft4ChzE_W9Gwojt3Ng%3BFYdbAAIdQtDt-Sk53X3TrRL-hjGHQugiKQTwGg%3BFWx7BQIdNRwh-in12mJwkiBThjEAUurvy_oGHQ%3BFU49AQIdkN09-im3Bj9QzHlMhjFRheHKCJKejw%3BFQugAQIdR_BN-imbKycWBlhKhjFJ89MvZgm5yQ%3BFeUG_gEdOPJk-ilXZKDCMkE0hjFwW9thkjxYnQ%3BFUTM_QEd8oGS-in7ya63ze8rhjERUfSsgeToBQ%3BFYI-EQId492c-imXepT7BjrVhzFlXF_cbJupLQ&mra=ls&vps=1&sll=34.307144,-118.125&sspn=45.755266,43.59375&ie=UTF8

This is pretty much how we will come across. With maybe a side trip here and there. We will be in Tunica from May 14-18th, heading towards South Bend on the 19th and getting there on the 20th.

Will let you know how the repair goes.

have a good week

love to all of you

Jim and Linda

The High Road to Taos Scenic Byway

Our “drive” today was one of our longer trips.  We left this morning at 9 a.m. and returned at 4:30 p.m. traveling 250 miles.

 

In order to get to the “scenic” part of our drive, we had to go north on I-25, past Camel Back Rock and the Buffalo Thunder Casino.

 

The scenic part of our drive began in Espanola; driving through many villages (pueblos) with names of Picuris, Penasco, Talpa and Rancho de Taos.

In the distance, we could see the Taos Mountain Range.  The highest peak in the Range is Wheeler Peak at 13,161 ft.

This drive also took us through the Carson National Forest.  As we continued to the higher elevations, we noticed the dark clouds forming……and thought….”Oh no, not again!!!”  But, we were lucky this time……only a few drops of rain……no sleet.

 

We arrived in Taos around noon and, of course, needed to find a place for lunch.  We found a restaurant in the historic district of Taos called Doc Martins, found a parking place and deposited the last of our change in the parking meter.  As we were walking through the courtyard of the restaurant, we noticed that they has posted a copy of the menu.  THANK GOD!  Now, you all now that I am what some of you refer to as a “picky” eater but, when I looked at this menu and saw that one of their dishes contained rattlesnake, we were out of there in a flash!!!!!!  We ate at Applebees.

After our enjoyable lunch at Applebees, we started home, again driving through many villages (pueblos) with the mountain range in the distance.

Our final stop for the day was at a little pueblo called Chimayo.  This community is known for its famous church.  Santuario de Chimayo is especially known for El Posito, a hole in the floot of a side chapel filled with healing earth. We were not allowed to take photos of the inside of the church, but here are a few of the outside.

here is a link to the chappel

http://www.archdiocesesantafe.org/AboutASF/Chimayo.html

Well, that’s the end of our “day trip”…..hope you enjoyed the ride.

written by Linda

Love to all of you…….

Linda and Jim

Ominous sky

Yesterday afternoon the wind picked up a little and the sky to the north was getting really dark and ominous looking.

Picasa Content

After an hour or two the wind picked up some more and it started to rain……but alas, only very lightly, and only for about ten minutes.

 

But…..after the rain a double rainbow….how neat. It is hard to see the second one in these pictures, but it is there

We could see the main rainbow from end to end

Have a great day

Jim and Linda

Jemez Mountain Trail National Scenic Byway

Hi

Sunday we did one of our scenic drives.

As is usual the “scenic” part of the drive was less than half of the actual drive. Today’s drive was about 186 miles.

A very pretty drive meandering thru a valley

 

and thru this area of red rock

There was a mountain stream which the road followed and we came across this area where the water was coming out of the rock!!!

We finally left the valley floor and started up into the hills. Once we got up into the pine trees, it was like driving just about anywhere in the mountains.

We were moving along and the road was getting to be kind of twisty turny and still going up hill. We were up about 8500 ft. when it started to sleet !!!!

now that’s a new one. Not the place we wanted to be in a sleet storm…..

We finally drove thru it, after going up to 9000 ft. and back down to about 7000 ft and around lots of sharp curves…yikes!!

Here are more pictures of the drive for you to look thru:

http://picasaweb.google.com/rufnitII/20100418JemezMountailTrailScenicByway#

 

 

Hope you have a nice week at work. We will be here checking out this beautiful country of ours for you.  It’s a tough job, but we are up for it…..

love all of you

Jim and Linda

Corps of Engineers park, Cochita Lake

Yesterday we moved to a COE park, "Tetilla Peak recreation area" in Pena Blanca, NM
N35 38.756
W106 18.546
5556 ft ASL

It is 13 miles west off of I-25, Very pretty park with lots of mountain views and the lake from our site. There is another COE park across the lake, about 1-1 1/2 miles away as the crow fly's, but 25 miles away by road!

.Check out the co-ordinates on Google maps, satellite view, to see how rugged this area is. If you zoom out you will see hwy.4 to the northwest of us. That is one of the drives we will be taking with a side trip to Los Alamos (WW2 atom bomb)

Yesterday I had a real hard time with the internet connection, the signal kept going from 0-3 bars and I kept dropping out. While watching it, it looked like the signal was moving between two different towers, so I tried changing the settings. That has seemed to help and this morning I have not had any problems, other than a not real fast connection. Will see what the signal is like later this afternoon.

We will be here a week and take a few day trips from here. The weather does not look real great over the next several days, but we hope to get in at least two drives.

Hope you are having a great day.
love to ya
Jim and Linda

Day trip to Santa Fe

Windy as all get out again today!!! Will it never go away??

Drove to Santa Fe to check things out. We wanted to see “Loretto Chapel” which is famous for a circular stairway that was built in the late 1870’s. Here is an excerpt from the web  site:

Two mysteries surround the spiral staircase in the Loretto Chapel: the identity of its builder and the physics of its construction.
When the Loretto Chapel was completed in 1878, there was no way to access the choir loft twenty-two feet above. Carpenters were called in to address the problem, but they all concluded access to the loft would have to be via ladder as a staircase would interfere with the interior space of the small Chapel.
Legend says that to find a solution to the seating problem, the Sisters of the Chapel made a novena to St. Joseph, the patron saint of carpenters. On the ninth and final day of prayer, a man appeared at the Chapel with a donkey and a toolbox looking for work. Months later, the elegant circular staircase was completed, and the carpenter disappeared without pay or thanks. After searching for the man (an ad even ran in the local newspaper) and finding no trace of him, some concluded that he was St. Joseph himself, having come in answer to the sisters' prayers.
The stairway's carpenter, whoever he was, built a magnificent structure. The design was innovative for the time and some of the design considerations still perplex experts today.
The staircase has two 360 degree turns and no visible means of support. Also, it is said that the staircase was built without nails—only wooden pegs. Questions also surround the number of stair risers relative to the height of the choir loft and about the types of wood and other materials used in the stairway's construction.

 

Many experts have examined it over the years and no one (including me, not that I am an expert) can give an explanation as to why it is standing. It has been in daily use for about 130 years. It is amazing to see.

Here are more pictures…  http://picasaweb.google.com/rufnitII/20100413SantaFeNewMexico41310#

We also took a side trip to look at the Corp of Engineer (COE) parks. The one we originally were going to stay at is pretty full and not very pretty. The other one is still closed, and will open on the 15th. We will stay here one more night(oh darn, more gambling) than move on to the COE park.

Tomorrow to Albuquerque to see sights there

 

See ya

Jim and Linda

Deming to Albuquerque

Yesterday we drove up to Albuquerque. About 230 miles, well actually about 15 miles north of Albuquerque where we are spending two nights at a casino campground.

Are you surprised?? har har

It was a pretty boring trip scenery wise.

 

We stopped in Truth or Consequences NM for fuel and lunch and a guy at the gas station told me that in the entire county there are less than 10,000 people…holy cow!

The only good thing was the tail wind, for once.

I went into the casino to pay and check out the games and they have .25 roulette, $2 minimum bet…my kind of game. I went back later and played and lost $20. Went back after supper and won my $20 back, plus $60 at a .25 slot. Your favorite Leroy, triple cherries.

 

Today we will drive into Santa Fe. We have heard lots of good things about Santa Fe and will do some exploring. I was surfing this morning for scenic drives near Santa Fe and found several that we could do. Wednesday we will move to a Corp of Engineers park, about 30 miles from here and stay there about a week and do the drives.

Have a wonderful day.

love to all of ya

Jim and Linda

36th anniversary

Today we went back down to Palomas, Mexico. We were going to go to Red Lobster, but after having such a wonderful meal yesterday we went back today. I got my teeth cleaned ($40) and was happy that he did not find any other problems.  Than we went back to the “Casa de Pancho Villa restaurant and bar” for lunch and more shopping.

The food, again, was among the best Mexican food we have ever had. The chips and salsa that are served in most Mexican restaurants was just superb here. Yesterday we bought a quart of the sauce to bring back($3.50)

Here are a few shots of the restaurant and shop, lots of thing to look at and/or buy, and we did buy some. I bought two new drink glasses that are made from glass with impurities so they have bubbles and other things in the glass. Today Linda bought a table piece out of hand decorated, double fired porcelain. The store is huge and full from floor to ceiling with “stuff”, some of it very nice. The glass and porcelain work is in most cases extremely well done.

 

This picture is of bathroom sinks

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Columbus, NM is across the border from Palomas and is famous for a raid that Pancho Villa made on the USA around 1911

http://www.southernnewmexico.com/Articles/Southwest/Luna/Columbus/ColumbusNewMexico-PanchoV.html

read about it if you are interested.

On the way back,the wind was blowing again, stronger than normal. We were about 15 miles south of Deming and saw the dust across the road and an emergency vehicle was on the side of the road with its lights flashing. We did slow down and put our headlights on before entering the dust. it was a little bit eerie, but only lasted for about a mile

hope  you are enjoying the new blog format. It is better that sending out an email, we think.

What about you??????

love to all of you

and happy 36th anniversary to us

Jim and Linda