Tower Station and U-Drop Inn

We took two stops on the way to Oklahoma City. The first was an art-deco gas station and cafe in Shamrock TX, called the Tower Station and U-Drop Inn Cafe. It was built in the 30s. Today it’s a curio shop and small museum. We didn’t get to go inside, because it’s closed on the weekends in the winter.

1929 Caterpiller Tractor

Our other stop was the National Route 66 Museum in Elk City, OK. This cute little tractor caught my eye. For the second half of the drive, winds picked up to about 30 MPH. We were happy to get to our hotel. When we got here, the clerk upgraded us from a room to a suite, which was very nice. The wind died down this evening. We had a Tucker Onion Burger for dinner.

Tomorrow we have a short 3-hour drive to Fort Smith.

Fantasy Edsel

We planned 3 stops on our drive to Amarillo. The first stop was the Route 66 Auto Museum in Santa Rosa. This turned out to be a dealership that tried to rebuild and sell cars from the 30s to the 70s, who lets people walk through his show room for $5 a head. He’s developed a good business of selling cars from the 50s that run well but are somewhat rusted. He says the car “has patina”. It works because in the desert, the cars can develop a “coating” of rust without having the body rusting out. It was way too much money to view the cars, but it was fun and it gave us a good stretch at the 1/3 mark of our drive today.

1935 Airstream Torpedo

Our second stop was a total bust. We got off the interstate to drive through Tucumcari, NM; which was supposed to be trying to make a living on Route 66 era businesses. It turned out that almost all of the Route 66 businesses had gone bust. In all, over 2/3 of the businesses in town had gone belly-up. We visited the Tee Pee Curio shop, which was as bad as it sounds.

55 Airstream

Our last stop was the free RV museum at Jack Sisemore Traveland. This was a gem. Danita and I had a blast looking at camp trailers, camp buses, and more. Above is the oldest Airstream in existance. It was built from plans sold through Popular Science. The ’55 Airstream shown here is less interesting historically, but it’s a beautiful trailer and much more typical of what I think of when I think of an Airstream trailer. Note the way cool bike that matches the Airstream beautifully.

Woodstock or Bust

For the hippies in the crowd, here’s a VW minibus. It’s the perfect vehicle for visiting Woodstock. After viewing the museum, we went to the indoor showroom and walked through several new RVs. We had no sales pressure. We were amazed at what the inside of those huge mobile campers look like. By the time we were done, it was almost 3 and we hadn’t had lunch yet. So we went to a diner and had “lupper”. We have plenty of left overs for an evening snack this evening.

Tomorrow’s goal is Oklahoma City.

El Morro

The drive from Gallup to Albuquerque is short, so we had plenty of time. We goofed off in the hotel room to let the sun get up, and to let the temperature warm up. (The low was 14 degrees.) We stopped at two small parks. The first was El Morro. Sandstone rocks are common in AZ, but rare in NM. This was one that stood alone.

Pen Long of Baltimore

El Morro was important because it had a pool of water in a desert area. Several people carved their names in this rock. Those who did it early enough were recording history. Those who did so later were creating graffiti. Those who do so today are breaking a federal law and can be fined. Among those who recorded history was Pen Long of Baltimore.

El Malpais Sink Hole

Our next stop was at another lava flow, El Malpais. We were on the back road, which had the El Malpais information center, which was closed for the winter. But they had a brochure with a map in a box on the gate. (The visitor center is 20 miles away right off I-40. We stopped there later on to use their bathrooms.) We decided to walk part of the El Calderon trail. The scenery wasn’t up to the trail name. Neither stop was awesome, but it was lunch time, the wind was down, and the sun felt good; so we ate lunch on the El Calderon trail.

It’s all downhill, from here to the Mississippi River

We were surprised to cross the continental divide (I thought it was further west). Our last stop of the day was the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center. This brand new museum was across the street from our hotel. It was heavily biased. I think we can allow the Pueblo Indians a little leeway. However, they seemed to say that they deserved their lands more than the other North American Indians because they were civilized. Nevertheless, it was a good museum. We went back there to eat dinner at their restaurant, the Pueblo Harvest Cafe. The food was excellent.

I guess we’ve been spoiled living on the Arizona Strip. When we arrived in Albuquerque, we both noticed the air was quite hazy. I asked several locals. None of them had noticed the haze. Tomorrow we’re off to Amarillo, TX.

We had fun driving from Page to Gallup. We took highway 89 from Page to Flagstaff, which had been closed due to a rock slide. But it was repaired. I’m glad we took it. The scenery was spectacular. At one point, the road was cut into a hill. The road had no shoulders; the walls of the hill seemed to go straight up and almost touch the sides of the road. The San Francisco Peaks were fantastic. We made an impromptu stop at Sunset Crater — a volcano flow site, which was quite interesting.

Flagstaff is where we picked up I-40. We got off the interstate to drive through Wislow, where we stopped to visit La Pasada. This used to be a luxury hotel in the 30s, owned by the rail road company. It’s been restored and looks great. You can still get the Amtrak train from the hotel. We also got off at Holbrook to drive through the Wigwam Motel, originally constructed because of the popularity of Route 66. It’s still there and it looks to be in great shape. They park historic cars in the lot. Some of the cars look like they’re in bad shape, but it’s great fun none the less. Our last stop was at the Painted Desert, where we ate lunch.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any pics. The battery in my camera was completely dead. Fortunately, it seems to be charging up nicely. I should have pics of the better places from now on. In the mean time, all the places I mentioned are famous. I’m sure it’s very easy to find pics on the web.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

This is our last day at Pipe Spring. We will spend much of the day packing for our return journey. Our checkout starts at 1:30. Then we’re off to our first hotel in Page, AZ. We’ll stop in Kanab to return our modem. Page is a logical stop considering the route and time available during the day. But it’s not as nice a city as Kanab. Here are a few pics one of the supervisors took to record our presence at Pipe Spring.

American Gothic

I suggested a bare-chested “Putin” pose. The boss told me if I wanted to do the Putin pose, I would have to look more macho by posing next to the longhorn steer inside the corral. That got him what he wanted. This is supposed to be American Gothic.

Arizona Strip

This is my favorite view from the fort. Pipe Spring is in the “Arizona Strip”. This is a 60-mile wide East-West strip of land between two impenetrable barriers — the Grand Canyon and the Vermilion Cliffs. Anybody traveling in the area is going East-West, and they are easily detected from the fort. That, plus the water, makes this a very strong position for a fort. You can see the North Rim of the Grand Canyon on the horizon, behind my left shoulder.

Courtyard

This is from inside the fort in the courtyard. You can see some of the Christmas decorations. You can’t tell from the picture, but the wreath in the background has a uniquely Paiute touch. It contains “Devil’s Claw”. This plant was grown in their “Three Sisters” gardens (beans, squash, corn). The seeds are edible. The exterior covering is black; long and curled like talons on a claw. The black exterior was soaked until it became flexible and used to provide the black fibers for their amazing baskets.

Baby Diapers

We had a nice weekend. Monday we had a little snow. Roads were OK, but we decided we didn’t want to go to Yoga, because we would be driving back too late. I called the Red Pueblo Museum to see if they would be open any time during the weekend. They said they would start a private tour in a few minutes. We were welcome to join in. So we did. Having a tour made all the difference. There is no signage. If we had just walked in and looked around, we would not have known what we were looking at. This museum has privately collected Indian artifacts. They have a lot of things one just doesn’t see in a more formal museum. Here is a picture of baby diapers. The one in the upper right is “fully loaded”.

Fancy Moccasin

The other picture is of a moccasin. The picture shows the bottom of the moccasin. The heel on the left is worn through. It’s hard to see in this picture, but the bottom has several fancy patterns — triangles, rectangles, and diagonals. It would make a distinctive footprint in the sand. It’s just like owning handmade Italian shoes today.

Since we were close to Kanab with no hard deadlines for going home, we went to a Mexican restaurant for dinner. Its reputation is excellent. We found it to be good, but not excellent. Tuesday we did our communion service and breakfast in Kanab. Then we did our online Christmas shopping. Wednesday we did chores and goofed off. I wanted to take a bike ride, but it was too close to freezing. I decided to stay home.

Today we rode west to Hurricane. I got my last Arizona haircut. (I never found a good barber in AZ.) We visited a silver mine ghost town. There were a lot of boom mine towns in UT in the late 1800s. This site was overlooked because everybody “knew” it wasn’t possible to find precious metals in sandstone. A story is told of an assayer who had a reputation for always finding precious metals in anything that was brought to him. A sandstone grinding stone was made in this area, fell off the wagon, and broke. The men decided to submit pieces of the grinding stone to this assayer as a joke. He said there was silver in the sandstone. They ran the man out of town, and he was never heard of again. Many years later, they found out the assayer was right. We enjoyed listening to this and other stories the docent told us.

We go back to work tomorrow. Danita and I will swap off manning the visitor center desk and offering fort tours. Realistically, that means we will spend out time sitting in the visitor center, because there are very few visitors this time of year. We check out Tuesday. We’ll drive to Paige, AZ Tuesday afternoon. Wednesday we travel through Fredonia, AZ and on to Gallup, NM. Fredonia is an important point of our travels, because that’s where we got off the 2-lane roads and pick up I-40. I-40 is reputed to follow the route old US Highway Route 66. We’ll even have the opportunity to see some of the old 66 roadside Americana.

I hope this finds everybody doing well.

Danita feeding the horses

We’re beginning to look forward to coming home. Our route is drafted, and an alternate is also drafted. We have our normal 3-day weekend, but of course not much of anything will be open tomorrow. We did chores yesterday. I did a bike ride and Danita visited Best Friends, a huge animal sanctuary that is located near Kanab. Today we went to communion service and had breakfast out. Tomorrow one of the people we work with invited us to Thanksgiving dinner.

Mormon Fort. The first caretaker was Mr. Winsor. It became known as “Winsor’s Castle”.

Since we’re being so lazy, here’s a few pics of Pipe Spring.

One can see the entire width of he Arizona strip from our property (about 60 miles). It’s not hard to see if somebody is coming. The North Rim of the Grand Canyon is on the horizon.

Our Longhorn Cattle

This shot of the fort shows the spring-fed pond

After visiting Valley of Fire, we drove to our hotel in Mesquite. Winds were quite high. After dinner winds were still bad. I ran over a tumbleweed. I decided it wasn’t wise to try to avoid hitting it when driving 70 MPH. Self-driving cars are in the news these days. I wonder what a self-driving car would have done? Yesterday we drove back from our hotel in Mesquite, NM. We stopped at a couple of Mormon sites in St. George, and we watched the movie “Arrived”. (Highly recommended.) Our car looks awful from the wind, sand, and overnight moisture. Today is Friday, which is our Monday.

I wasn’t motivated to take any pics, so here’s a sunset sequence. We certainly don’t get to see this stuff at home.

White Dome area – slot canyon

Our work schedule was modified to help cover for departing rangers. We are working Friday to Monday. That starts our “weekend” a day earlier. (I am having a little trouble thinking of Monday as my Friday. The combination explodes in my brain.) We are on our last planned large trip this week. We drove to Nevada to visit the Valley of Fire state park. It’s a beautiful park with several trails. We walked two of them. The first was the White Dome Area. The trail goes down into a canyon, which gets narrow and becomes a way cool slot canyon. Coming out of the canyon, we climb a hill to get an overview of part of the park. The colors are stunning – reds, pinks, yellows, whites, and even some purples. We hadn’t seen all of these colors in one spot before today.

Rainbow Colors

The next trail was the petroglyph trail. The colors weren’t as stunning, but the petroglyphs were. This was awesome enough that it warranted eating lunch there. Unfortunately, it wasn’t anywhere near lunch time, so I had a snack instead.

After the second hike, we did a brief tour of the visitor center movie and displays. I was pretty tired, and the weather was threatening high winds, so we left to go to our next stop, the Lost City Museum.

Petroglyphs

I had high hopes for this museum, but I was pretty disappointed. The concept is cool. They built a museum on top of an Anasazi Village archaeological site. (Anasazi is Navajo for Enemy, so the PC term these days is “The Ancient Ones”. But that is vague and nobody knows what it refers to.) The museum divided the dig into three sections – one to show what it looked like before the dig, one for what it looked like after the dig, and an “interpretation” of what was there. That was OK. But the rest of the exhibits were a mash-up of ancient artifacts, reconstructions of those artifacts, and modern Indian art. They weren’t clearly delineated and nothing was dated, They had some panels referring to what was present at different geological times, but they seemed to be randomly thrown in where they had empty space.

Lost City Museum

Nevertheless, the museum was on the way to hour hotel, it didn’t cost much, and it provided a nice view of the Anasazi. Some of the reproduction baskets were stunning. The CCC built a fake village outside the museum. The picture shows Danita playing around the fake village. There’s no way either of us could have squeezed ourselves inside any of the Anasazi rooms.

Star Trek Enterprise

Here’s a bonus pic. I took it on the petroglyph trail. It looks to me like the Star Trek Enterprise emerging from the rock. (Stark Trek Generations was filmed at the park.)

Pioneer Names

After last weekend’s extravagant outing, we are enjoying an easy weekend this week. We took a half-day trip to Snow Canyon. (Some of the sandstone is white — like snow.) We saw a cliff where pioneers wrote their names in axle grease in the 1890s. At the bottom of the cliff, other people had written their names, much more recently. The names at the bottom of the cliff are graffiti. The names from the 1890s are a feature.

Snow Canyon

We also took a pleasant walk into a slot canyon. We walked all the way to the end. There was a low lookout nearby. It was quite nice, but it wasn’t quite awesome. I didn’t eat any meals in Snow Canyon.

There was unhappiness in Pipe Spring this week. Running a park is labor intensive. To keep costs down, the parks use a mixture of volunteers, seasonal workers, interns, and temporary contract workers. This keeps the number of permanent employees down. (You know, the kind of employees that get benefits like medical insurance.) The folks at Pipe Spring were bending the rules and hiring people for more months than they are allowed to work by reassigning the people to different jobs at different pay grades. This week, the results of an audit came back. They got wrapped on the knuckles rather hard. Several seasonal employees will be leaving earlier than they planned.

That’s about all the news this week. I hope this finds everybody doing well.