Painted Desert & Petrified Forest

The Painted Desert is really pretty with changing colors of grays, pinks and reds! At one point you can see 120 miles across the desert to the San Francisco Mountains north of Flagstaff. That distance doesn't show on a photograph, so I didn't even try!

This is Pilot Peak, also in the Painted Desert. This park is worth the trip. We are loving National Parks/ Monuments since we got our Senior Pass. The pass cost $10 and we get into all parks and monuments for $0.00, we just show the pass!!!! We recommend it to anyone over 62.

The Petrified Forest was really cool! I've wanted to go for a long time, ever since I collected rocks as a little girl (that's a long time!) There were full logs and lots of pieces. This picture is of a log bridge. The log is suspended over a small gully and is about 15 feet long! It's a bit hard to see the log in the picture, because it's the same color as the rock around it, but it was impressive.

This picture shows the wood grain in one of the logs. The petrified rocks in Arizona have lots of red in them. They're really pretty. We went to a film at the visitor's center before we started our tour. We learned that the trees started out in a huge swamp and were submerged in water and eventually covered with silt (and then dirt, rocks, etc. when the swamp dried up). All the debris covering them preserved them for us to see now!

This is a log field! Lots of really big logs that we got to walk through. It was really neat to walk through so many rock logs! This was a neat place to visit.

I

New Mexico

It has been way too long since I updated this blog! After Durango, CO we drove to Santa Fe, NM. It was a beautiful drive through high desert valleys and some really pretty valleys. Santa Fe is an artist community, listed only behind New York and San Francisco in number of Art Galleries! It isn't a really big town and the building codes say everything must be built according to a specific southwest architectural code. Lots of buildings are the pueblo style. It makes for a really neat community. While in Santa Fe, we also drove on the Turquoise Trail. It is quite a drive going all the way from Santa Fe to I-40 east of Albuquerque. There are lots of galleries along this
drive also and it is really pretty just east of the Sandia Mountains. After leaving Santa Fe we drove to Roswell, NM. That's where Howard went to school and where Loriann was born. The area had really changed since Howard was there, but we were able to go out to Eastern New Mexico University-Roswell campus where we got a really good tour of the department by the head of the department. She was so enthusiastic about the program and the students it was really cool to visit with her. We also went to the UFO Museum while we were in Roswell -- that was interesting! We learned lots of new things! From Roswell we drove to Carlsbad where we went through the
Caverns. That was REALLY cool. The big room took well over an hour to walk around (over 6000 square feet big!) After touring the big room, we stayed and watched the bats come out at dusk -- we watched for about 35 minutes as they swarmed out of the natural entrance to the cave. They were still coming by the droves with seemingly no end in sight, so we left! That was really something worth seeing!!!!!!!! From Carlsbad we drove to Alamogordo, NM so I could get my new military ID card. Mine expires this birthday so we drove to the White Sands Missile Range and got me legal. We toured the museum while there and learned a lot of the history of the Missile Range. Then on the way we went to the White Sands National Monument and drove through the park. Lots of white sand!!!! They actually plow it like snow where it has drifted across the roads. Pretty cool! We are now in Albuquerque for about a week. We were here two years ago and we really like the area.

More Colorado

Howard and I have enjoyed listening to "Wolf Creek Pass" for quite some time (it's a fun, silly song.) It talks about two idiots with a load of chickens going really fast down Wolf Creek Pass, through the tunnel (which takes off the top layer of chickens) and around the switch backs. The refrain goes:
Wolf Crick Pass way up on the great divide
Truckin' on down, the other side




We felt a little like the song going down the pass with a 15,000 fifth wheel behind us! Well, not really. It was a beautiful drive though and it did have a tunnel and two switch backs at the bottom of the hill. We also noticed that as we got closer to the bottom, there were not one or two, but several run-a-way spots for trucks! The first picture is of course construction at the bottom of the hill. The second is from the top of Wolf Creek Pass at 10, 850 feet. That was beautiful! The third picture is coming down into the valley where Pagosa Springs is located. (Right about the center of the picture is the road after the first switch back.) The fourth picture is mostly off the hill going into the valley. Colorado is a beautiful state!

We camped in Durango and while we were there, we went to Mesa Verde National Park and went down into the biggest cliff dwelling, the Cliff House.

On our drive to the Cliff House I took a picture of

Montezuma Valley from the highest point on the Mesa. I don't know if you can actually see Utah and Arizona, but they are in this direction.

This is a shot of the Cliff House or Cliff Palace from the View Point on top. We hiked down rock stairs and wooden ladders to get into the village. AND to leave we went straight up through a crevasse on rock stairs and a ladder to the rock above the village on the other side! It was quite a trip and really an awesome area!

Our main reason for going to Durango was to go on the Durango to Silverton Railway. The trip is 3 1/2 hours ONE WAY! We went over the highway and under the highway.

We went by beautiful lakes and followed the Animas River all the way to Silverton.

We went through a very narrow gorge with the rock cliffs REALLY close to the train sometimes and

sometimes just space on our side of the train with the river WA A A AY down there! It was fun to go around the curves so we could see the engine and the steam and smoke from the engine.

This is the gorge and the Animus River way down there.

At this point we crossed the Animus River at 7200 feet.

We asked for a vintage car. This car was actually built in the 1880s and the ride was really relatively smooth! It really rode a lot smoother than the open car in front of us.

These are called the Needles or San Juan Mountains. There are 14 peaks over 14,000 feet in San Juan County, the highest county in the United States. The only city, Silverton, is the county seat. The year-round population of Silverton is 350, but in the summer it swells to 800 people!

This was just a pretty shot of the train by the Animus River. We had a lot of this on our ride to Silverton.

We also had a lot of this as we got close to Silverton. It's Fall at that elevation. Silverton sits at an elevation of 9, 318 feet so it gets pretty cold. The driver said they have a 14 day growing season in the Silverton valley!!!

This is the Silverton valley with the town of Silverton in the background. This was a trip of a lifetime and well worth the time and effort! Would we do it again? IN A HEARTBEAT!

Colorado

Our next stop in Colorado was Colorado Springs. Our primary reason for stopping in Colorado Springs was to ride to the top of Pike's Peak on the Cog Railway. We really enjoyed our week long stay in Colorado Springs. It's a beautiful area with lots to do and see. This picture of Pike's Peak was taken while driving through the Garden of the Gods. That's a beautiful area too.

This view of the Garden of the Gods with Pike's Peak in the background was taken from the visitor's center for the Garden of the Gods. On Sunday they had the Breast Cancer Run for Life through the park. Last count, 7000 people ran through the park Sunday morning. That would have been a beautiful run (pant, pant!!!!!)

We did get to take the Cog Train to the top of Pike's Peak. This is Howard going "WOW!" It really was beautiful. The driver pointed out where we could see Oklahoma!

This is the view at the end of the Cog line. (We didn't go this far!)

This is the Cog Train. It takes about one hour and fifteen minutes to get to the top riding the Cog Train. It's really a beautiful ride!

Our shot at the top! Yes, it was cold! It's usually 30 degrees colder at the top than at the base of the mountain.

The Air Force Academy Chapel was really beautiful. Lots bigger than I had expected.

After spending a week in Colorado Springs, we drove to Alamosa, Colorado today. My Dad had an older sister who only lived for about 8 days and died in October 1913 here in Alamosa. We went to the Cemetery to see if we could find her grave and found where she is buried although there is no marker at this time. One of my sisters has the same name as my aunt who is buried here.

This was taken from the back of our 5th wheel. The light area at the base of the San Juan Mountains is the Great Sand Dunes. Talk about an awesome view! Tomorrow we will drive to Durango where we hope to go on the narrow gage train.

On The Road Again

We had a good visit with Jenn & Jason and their family for about a week. We left Burley on 31 August. After leaving town, we decided to detour our trip to Colorado and go through Pocatello and along US 30 over into Wyoming. We stopped at the Oregon/California Trail Center in Montpelier. That was definitely worth the visit! We drove all the way to Fort Bridger and camped next to the fort. We had a good visit to the Fort and we took a day trip the next day and drove over to Flaming Gorge. We drove along the western side of the reservoir. It was a pretty drive and we saw several herds of
pronghorns (one had at least 50 in the herd!) After driving all morning, we ended up in Green River for lunch. This hill sits above Green River and really dominates the Green River valley. Its a pretty area of Wyoming, both Ft Bridger Valley and Green River Valley are green with trees (not usual for southern Wyoming.) When we left Fort Bridger on Wednesday, we drove I-80 to US 191 and drove along the eastern side of Flaming Gorge reservoir. Driving this way we even got to drive across the dam. The road wasn't as good, but there was a lot more color in the rock along the
road. When we got to Vernal, we decided to go to the Utah Museum of Natural History so we could see all the disasour statues and rocks with leaves and insects imprinted in the rock. It was a good visit and a beautiful drive into Vernal. The drive from Vernal into Price was really pretty too (the last time we went on this drive we not only had Jenn and Loriann with us we had snow on the road! No snow this time, but the leaves were beginning to turn already! Price to Fruita, Colorado was not really what we would

call pretty, very remote and not a lot of change in scenery. We
didn't know when we made reservations that we would be so close to a national monument, but found out fast! We got to drive through the Colorado Mesa National Monument and it was really beautiful. This shot is an aerial shot of part of the mesa (if you look really close you can see the road, it runs right along the edge of the mesa!) It was only 23 miles, but a very slow drive with lots of stops. Yes, we'd do it again.

This is an artsy shot of the Mesa.

Howard won't pose, so I take candid shots!

After driving the Mesa we drove over to Paonia. That's where my Grandmother Horton's family was from. It's a very pretty valley and a beautiful drive.

On Monday we left for Colorado Springs on I-70. These are pictures of the stacked freeway along the Colorado River. Beautiful!

Our first glimps of the Colorado Rockies. We drove up to the summit at 11,992, through the really long Eisenhower tunnel and down the eastern side of the Rockies to Colorado Springs. We'll be here for about a week. Hoping to visit lots of stuff while we're here. There's lots to see!

Jodi's and Jenn's children playing together in the playroom. They have lots of fun playing together.

Zane and Karson jammin' in Karson's room. They are so-o-o-o boy!

These two make up for their brothers -- they are so-o-o-o girl. They are so cute together and they love to play in Kate's walk-in closet!

Zoey and Kate "posing" for a candid shot!! Aren't they cute? They remind me a bit of their mothers, cute and fun!

These two really didn't want to pose, they were too busy crawling all over the floor! Zenna decided she liked what Claire had so she was sharing!?

Okay, I have two posts today. That's because I've been so busy that I haven't had time to post my blog in a few weeks. We also spent a week in Boise with my Mom and two sisters and our daughter, Loriann, but I didn't get my camera out -- too busy talking and shopping with Loriann (that was really fun!!)

Dorothy's Birthday

We invited the Lewiston Gossages to a birthday party for Dorothy at our house. We had 21 guests and had a great time! It was Dorothy's 85th birthday.

Dorothy with her three boys: Howard, Jerry, and Clyde. It was fun to get them all together during our visit to Lewiston.

We got a cake for her birthday and we almost ate the whole thing! Gossages are good eaters!

The family. Even with some family members missing, we had a great time and had a lot of good visits! Isn't family great!!!!!!