Cruising the back Roads

Doggie Time !

Doogie Bowser loves cuddling with Chuck!

All the dogs love cuddling with Chuck!

At home in T or C NM!

                                                Radar strikes a pose!

Back roads from Chloride!

Chuck and I went back to Chloride for our annual Halloween visit!  After all... what better place to spend Halloween than in a genuine western ghost town ??

This time, Chuck followed me into the Apache Kid Campground in Chloride and we got the MotherShip all set up. I drove my 4x4 Chevy TrailBlazer so that we could explore the back roads around Chloride! We

knew from the locals that to do some of the roads, a 4x4 would be needed!

Road to Beaverhead

Because I was driving... I didn't get as many photos as I usually do. The road to Beaverhead was take highway 52 from Winston north a few miles then turn west on highway 59.  Highway 59 was all paved and easily traveled! It is very twisty and turny in some places, but nothing that made me nervous. It was a decent road.

The scenery was beautiful, mountains all around us. We went through a small town called Poverty Valley... or maybe Poverty Gulch. We can't agree on what the name was! HaHa! I was hoping to shoot some images of old buildings but nothing in Poverty but very nice summer homes and scenic log cabins. Nothing old and quaint.  

 The sky had incredible buttermilk clouds floating through an impossible blue sky all day!

My TrailBlazer is getting used to all these new mountain roads. If you can see the lettering just above the bumper, Chuck gave me a sticker that says

"My Escape Pod" ! Gotta love it! We decided to turn around before getting to Beaverhead, because we also wanted to check out a town named "Dusty"!

 I mean if you see a name like Dusty on your New Mexico map, you expect old, weathered, falling down western buildings right? Well, I was hoping... but

all we found were dusty dirt roads! Ha!

We found an old cemetery up on a hill..

 it was really old and in a nice location with a view!

Dusty seemed to be a town with only one or two ranches, and lots of beautiful mountains in the distance. The dirt roads were in very good shape, just very dusty!

Chuck and I want to come back and explore that small canyon between those rocky hills. Might be an interesting hike!

        Beautiful skies, gentle hills, the road was fun!

Pronghorn Antelope!

 Then suddenly up on the hill, we saw two pronghorn antelope! It is always a treat to see any kind of wildlife along the road, but pronghorn antelope are just so beautiful! You can click onto the image to get a better view!

Just before we got back to the road to Chloride

we saw this old adobe building! Chuck took the photo for me out the passenger window!  All day I had been hoping for an old building just like this!

The next day, we got up early and headed up 
Chloride Canyon! What a ride! That will be my next blog! 
I hope you enjoyed the journey on the the two back roads we visited on this blog. New Mexico is really very beautiful! Right now all the grasses have turned brown because of the drought, but it is still beautiful in our eyes! We really feel right at home here!


Happy Trails until the next adventure!
Geri, Chuck,  and our hound herd Scotty, DoogieBowser and Radar !!! Always ready for an adventure!

Hello Emily!  Emily is our friend from Kansas! She also blogs under the url:http://followingthewinds.blogspot.com/

Emily solos in her 16' Casita! We met her at Birdwatchers Campground in San Antonio NM. After setting up campers, we headed out to Socorro to eat pizza. Stuffed and sleepy, we went to bed early with the anticipation of visiting Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge in the morning! Vee's of Sand Hill cranes were in the air, flying to the refuge and we were excited!

Here is Em standing next to 2 bronze sandhill cranes.

Below is the link to Bosque del Apache.

http://www.friendsofthebosque.org/

Nov 17th and 18th, Chuck and I will be going back for the Festival of the Cranes!  Thousands of Sand Hill Cranes come to the refuge every year! It is quite breath taking!

                   Chuck and I strike a pose!

Snow Geese against an Autumn landscape!

The Autumn colors are amazing! Cottonwoods are turning gold while various reds and bronzes add to the overall beauty!

At dusk, just as we are about to leave, we see our first cranes! Chuck and I are going back for more hopefully before the festival!

This is why we are called The MotherShip! Many of our friends have smaller Casita or Oliver travel trailers! They are like the satellites to our MotherShip! This is Emily's Casita she calls "Eggie" parked next to us!

Emily, Chuck and Sue in front of the old saloon in Chloride NM, our favorite ghost town!

http://www.pioneerstoremuseum.com/

http://www.ghosttowns.com/states/nm/chloride.html

Sue also travels solo in her Casita! That is Sue with her "crew" of rat terriers Spike and Bridget. This is the first time Emily and Sue have met in person! They have been reading each other's blog for some time. Sue's blog is here:

http://rvsueandcrew.wordpress.com/2011/10/27/keeping-it-real-along-the-rio-grande/#comments

Emily and Sue photographing the Doodle Dum house in Chloride NM!

Ok, I had to get a picture of it too! This is where Cassie Hobbs made her furniture and all of her wonderful crafts! Cassie is gone, but her art lives on in the general store!

Below is Donna Edmund. She and her husband, Don, have lived in Chloride 32 years, slowly restoring some of the buildings there. This is the old style cash register found in the "general store" now a museum.

The store once belonged to a mining company, when the price of silver declined, the mining company boarded up the store and moved on.

When Donna and Don purchased the store some 33 years ago, they found a perfectly intact general store from 1922! Everything was covered in bat guano and rat droppings. It took 3 years to clean the shelves,

to clean everything on the shelves

and re-open the general store as a museum! It is full of everything from chewing tobacco, baby shoes, mining equipment, well pulleys, saddles, and a post office!

Chuck, Donna and Sue stand next to a table full of chemists tools needed for the mine!

Even the hoop for the old hoop skirts the women wore in those days!

Donna demonstrates how the old post office typewriter still works!

Next to the campground, behind the museum, sits Harry Pye's cabin! Don, Donna and their daughter Linda totally renovated the interior of the old cabin, leaving the outside as original ad possible! I love this bathroom sink!

The outside of the Harry Pye cabin!

Emily, Sue and crew and Donna outside!

The outhouse even comes complete 

with a satellite dish!

Chuck and I love Chloride, we go every Halloween! What better place to spend Halloween than in a ghost town? We would love to have you come join us sometime!

While shopping in downtown Truth or Consequences NM, believe it or not... Chuck found a beer called..

MotherShip Beer! Can you believe it??? An organic beer brewed in Colorado! I just had to take a photo of it to show ya'll because I knew you wouldn't believe it either!

Happy Trails to you from Geri, Chuck and our hound herd, Scotty, DoogieBowser and Radar!

Maho and Yuti come to visit!

 I am very behind on the blog! I will try to get caught up! The MotherShip landed Chuck, Geri and the Hound Herd at their home in Truth or Consequences NM mid-August. We will be staying here this winter, leaving mid-March for our workamping job in Virgin Utah at The Zion River Resort. http://www.zionriverresort.co

This will be the longest amount of time we have been off the road and out of The MotherShip! September 7th-10th, Maho and her friend Yuta, visited us from Tokyo Japan!  Maho workamped with us 2 summers ago at Riverbend Hot Springs! http://www.riverbendhotsprings.com/
We had a great time at Riverbend and Chuck and I adopted Maho! It was good to see her again and meet her friend Yuta!

Maho and Yuta with the miners at our favorite Mexican restaurant La Cocina, in T or C!

 Maho still takes pictures of her food before eating it!

 Yuta finishes his plate, but Maho still has some to go!

Yuta, Chuck and the Hound Herd in Chloride NM!

 Maho relaxes while Chuck and Yuta drink beer and work the BBQ grill loaded down with huge porterhouse steaks! Yummy dinner!

Maho, Yuta and Chuck soaking in the beautiful hot mineral springs of Riverbend Hot Springs!

http://www.riverbendhotsprings.com/

They were only here 2 full days, but we had a great visit! We hope they will come back and visit again!

Oct 6th and 7th, Paul and Diane Thibodeaux visited is! They are fulltimers... meaning they live in their 5th wheel full time going from workamp job to workamp job, exploring America as they go!  I guess I must have been brain dead, I carried my camera but took no photos! We did a tour of our favorite ghost town of Chloride and ate dinner at our favorite local restaurant, Groovy Gritz!  Good meal! Good Time!

We hope that Paul and Diane come back for a visit too and we wish them safe travels wherever their Gypsy Feet lead them!

That's all for now... will work harder to keep ya'll in the loop with us! We are enjoying our "vacation" at home and we are praying for a mild, snow free winter!

Mother Nature gave us an amazing sunset our first week home! This was taken from our front yard looking at the Turtle Mountain as the sun painted it red and even reflected the red off the storm cloud above the mountain!

Happy Trails to You!

Geri, Chuck, Scotty, Doogie Bowser and Radar!

Lake Powell at Wahweap Campground

This is our favorite campground for just kicking back and relaxing!  Beautiful, big, concrete level sites with excellent fire pits, charcoal grills and picnic tables! The lake is the result of the Colorado River being dammed up and providing power for as far away as Las Vegas, Phoenix and Tucson. The waters that formed Lake Powell  covered up the beautiful area known as Glen Canyon. If you haven't yet read "Monkey Wrench Gang" by Edward Abbey, I suggest you do so! Great book about this area.

The entrance to the campground!

 We had a trio of ravens that visited our camp site daily, this is one of them. They "talked" constantly! :-)

This was our camp site at Lake Powell this year. That white unit at the back of The MotherShip is the new "swamp cooler" we had installed. Out west there is little to no humidity and air conditioners need humidty to work properly. Swamp coolers work out west because they are water cooled, they work where air conditioners won't! Our swamp cooler will drop the temperature 20 degrees.

The colors here are the muted pinks of the sandstone formations, the brilliant turquoise of the water and skies. The colors change constantly, shifting with the clouds and the rotation of the Earthmother.

There was rain predicted and we got some, but generally the skies were amazingly blue and decorated with a few clouds.

Seems there are several companies catering to European teens, touring them around the southwest in vans pulling trailers loaded with tents and supplies. We have seen them in almost every campground we visited! What a wonderful experience for them!

Lake Powell is always full of boats!

With more arriving daily! This is a huge houseboat!

This is the dam that creates Lake Powell.

Remember, you can click on to any photo to bring it to full size for better viewing!

House boat docked on the lake.

The colors and textures here are amazing!

This is only one area of the marina!

There are also other marinas around the lake.

At the north end of Wahweap are the Bluffs.

There are about 6 of these little shelters.

Great place to come meditate, read a book or

just sit back and enjoy the view!

This is the "swimming beach" across from the campground.

This was a visitor one night when it was almost too 

dark to get a good crisp image. But I was amazed

at how the dusky light picked up the pink and blue hues.

We were here during the full moon!

This is the orchid like flower of the mesquite tree. The flower is about as big as your thumb nail!




When we were here last year, we also visited Lee's Ferry!  This is about 45 minutes from Lake Powell and worth the visit! Here is a link to that blog in case you missed it! 
http://phunnyfarm.blogspot.com/2010_10_01_archive.html

Another really good book about Lake Powell is "Wet Desert" by Gary Hanson.  Both books I have suggested are fiction novels, but fun to read as well as informative!

I am behind with the blog again, we have visited Zion National Park last week and this week we are in Panguitch Utah. We leave here today to go back to Lake Powell for one last night then on down to Camp Verde AZ to visit our friend John from our Riverbend Hot Springs days!  We get to see John about once a year! Slowly we are heading back home to Truth or Consequences NM.
We hope you enjoyed this visit to Lake Powell and keep in touch, we love hearing from you!


Happy Trails to you from The MotherShip gang, Geri, Chuck and our furkids, Scotty, DoogieBowser and Radar!