Fall Travels: Part One

 We've been back in southern New Mexico for about a month, enjoying the beautiful weather and uncrowded campgrounds at Elephant Butte Lake State Park and Caballo Lake State Park. We plan to spend most of the winter here again, depending on the weather. The pictures today are from our Fall travels in northwestern New Mexico and Colorado. We revisited some areas from earlier this year like Abiquiu Lake, Tetilla Peak Rec Area and Storrie Lake and explored some new areas like Taos, Questa, N.M. and Antonito, Colorado.

Festival at Santo Domingo Pueblo

Old trading post being restored by the National Park Service

Taos

Taos

Cattle crossing and alien abduction sign.

Rio Grande Gorge

Rio Grande Gorge Bridge

 

Larry

Lazy L Ranch

Questa, N.M.

Eagle Rock Lake near Questa

Conejos River in Antonito, Co

 Our time in Colorado was short because it was starting to get cold so we headed back to Questa for a few days before heading south. While we were in Questa we drove the Enchanted Circle scenic byway. I took so many pictures that day that I decided to save them for another blog post so be sure to stay tuned for Part 2.

Thanks for visiting!

Summer Travels: Part 2

We left Gallup and headed west on Route 40 into Arizona. It was early June and unseasonably hot but luckily this section of 40 parallels some of the best old Route 66 stops. If you like trading posts and dinosaurs and tee pees there are a lot of fun photo ops, just perfect for travel days when it's 100 degrees out and you want a quick stop.

Yellowhorse Trading Post is on the border of Arizona and New Mexico with buildings in both states.  On the New Mexico side there are even ancient ruins in the cliffs behind the trading post.

Yellowhorse Trading Post

Fake Animals

Ancient Ruins

My big ($5) purchase

We made it as far as Williams, Arizona where we finally decided it wasn't going to get any cooler along our planned route and decided to turn back and head towards Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado. We did have a few more fun Route 66 stops on our way back. 

Jackrabbit Trading Post

Standin' On A Corner in Winslow, Az...

We had flights scheduled for late July and late August out of Albuquerque and needed to stay relatively close, so our time in Colorado was brief. It was great to finally escape the heat though. We stayed at Navajo Dam State Park in Northern New Mexico over the 4th and then spent time in Durango and Pagosa Springs before heading back towards Albuquerque. Here are a couple of photos from Pagosa Springs...

We're back in New Mexico after two great trips by plane to visit family in California and Maryland. (We miss you all so much!) We're probably going to head back up towards Colorado before it starts getting cold. We want to see the Aspens in their Fall glory and maybe pick some raspberries at Salmon Ranch on the way up. Stay tuned and thanks for visiting!

Summer Travels: Part 1

When I last posted, we were at Tetilla Peak Recreation Area, a really nice, quiet, Corps of Engineer park on Cochiti Lake near Santa Fe.

Cochiti Lake

Nice, big spaces

New Mexico sunset

We left Tetilla Peak and headed west with plans to stop at Bluewater State Park in western New Mexico. Bluewater was full so we ended up staying at Red Rocks park near Gallup. That ended up being a great find. It's a beautiful park on Indian reservation land near Church Rock. Lots of prairie dogs.

Prairie dogs

Storm coming at Red Rock Park

Church Rock

The park has a natural amphitheater, a convention center and a really nice Indian Museum. They hold a lot of events there like rodeos, the Inter-tribal Ceremonial and a balloon rally. We made reservations for the balloon rally this December.

Navajo rugs at the Indian Museum

The park is not far from Gallup and there is a lot to see and do in town. In the summer they have Native American dancers and musicians every evening downtown. We went one evening and it was really great-probably one of my favorite things we did all summer. We also stopped at the El Rancho hotel on Route 66 and checked out all the autographed photos of the stars that have stayed there over the years. The El Rancho use to be a Hollywood get-away in its heyday plus a lot of movies were filmed in the area so it is where the stars stayed during filming. We couldn't believe all the stars in the portrait gallery-Howard Hughes, Errol Flynn, Mae West, Henry Fonda, Humphry Bogart and many more. 

Welcome to Gallup!

Well, that's it for part one of our summer. Stay tuned for part 2: Arizona and Colorado. I'll end with one last picture from outside of Gallup. This is Pyramid Rock which can be seen in Grapes of Wrath. Thanks for visiting!