6/29/17 Flagstaff is our first serious look at a new place to call home. We drove around to check out some of our desirements and were pleased with what we saw.
With my Mom's advice we attempted to locate and Exclusive Buyer Agent in the are but alas no luck. Instead I contact dear friend Tommie who put me in touch with a local agent. She supplied us with lists of home and land. She's not available to help us until Saturday so tomorrow we'll go on our own treasure hunt. Sedona was next on our list and we decided to take a drive to check it out. TOURIST CITY. This one is not for us. Although the hills surrounding the town are magnificent, it is true dessert. There we misters outside of the restaurants to try to fight the over 100 degree heat of the day. Cross this one off our list!!!
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June 28, 2017 A cliff rim drive today in Canyons de Chelly NM showcased the White House – a home built into a cliff. We had a few stops and then decided to drive on to Flagstaff by way the the Petrified Forrest National Monument. Glorious! It was hard to decide which was more delightful—the painted cliffs that showed layer upon layer of colored earth ranging from black to red to blue to white – or the petrified wood that was evident along the route revealing minerals that had preserved the wood’s form. How can there possibly be so many different and unique things in one day? We made it to Flagstaff today, camping about 20 miles south of the city while we take time to explore this community. Baby Beluga continues to serve us well. We've driven
June 27, 2017 There are so many wonderful things to see when traveling across our country. The really special days contain conversations with interesting people. Tonight’s discussion started about how we had outfitted our van. Gwen and Anderson, from Oregon, are on their way to move back east and get closer to family. They packed all of their belongings into a pod, shipped their two dogs to “Grandma” and were traveling across the country in an air-cooled-engine Vanagon. The discussion morphed into life style and what is important and the funny turns life takes. It was a thoroughly delightful discussion and evidence of the people that are good in the USA. We took a walk through the ruins in Bandelier National Monument. We particularly enjoyed the ingenuity involved in placing buildings against cliffs and using the existent caves for storage. These Pueblo people, likely descents from the people in Mesa Verde, showed great skill in constructing places to live and store several years of food for the bad times. Coupled with the need for survival was a desire to fee the soul as evidenced by wall art and petroglyphs . Perhaps not so different from our new friends from Oregon, these indigenous people moved on as needs arose.
June 26, 2017 Another trip down memory lane for Mark as we visited the VLA (Very Large Array) facility. The array contains 27 radio telescopes that can be moved along rail road tracks to form an array that is 30 miles across.
June 25, 2017 It may be late in the season for desert wildflowers, but this morning’s display was beautiful – purple, yellow and white dotted the path as we took a quick hike on the El Capitain Trail in the Guadalupe NP. The cactus seem to be out of place next to these flowers and yet are equally commanding. couldn’t help but smile at seeing the wayward plant right next to our campsite Hours of driving through the desert took us to White Sands National Monument that is shared with the testing station. No tests today so we did the park loop and enjoyed the Jersey Shore like gypsum white sand. The winds blow the sand across the road and thus it looks much like a snow plowed New England street in winter complete with the washboard ruts from packed down “snow.”
June 21, 2017 It's summer solstice but we saw not a hint of the sun today as tropical storm Cindy followed us on our journey through Alabama, Mississippi and into Texas. Always a thrill to cross the Mis-sis-sippi River. We've stopped at Davy Crockett National Forrest to camp for the night at Ratcliff Lake. We nabbed another beautiful lakefront property by bending the rules i.e. rservations were supposed to be made on line but there is NO ONE in this part of the park. Across the lake we were watching some kids swimming when on girl shouted “there's an alligator in the lake.” Then they kept right on swimming,
Beautiful skies tonight as the storm pauses at sunset . Stopped tonight at Guadalupe National Forrest. We’ve been spoiled by state parks. Back to no showers and trails that ban dogs. We in a wide open space – a parking lot really – for vans and RV weathering a thunderstorm with gusts up to 40 mph
June 17-19, 2017Our Summer 2017 Adventure began with a 14 hour drive to visit Grandma in North Carolina. Our progress was slowed by torrential rains and so we landed on Mom's front door step at 10:00pm. |
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