Adventures in the Villa

2018-09-07 – WBCCI 2018 Southwest Adventure Caravan – Day 20 – A Jeep ride and Arches National Park

This morning we went for a little ride in a Jeep. Not just any Jeep…

This Jeep Wrangler Rubicon has about $200,000 worth of aftermarket parts and other enhancements. While a standard Jeep can handle inclines of 35 degrees, this one can handle 70 degrees! (This is another one of our caravaners who took the Jeep ride…)

We headed up the adjacent hills to the east…

It was a beautiful day…

We were on “slickrocks”, which are really slippery when wet, but actually slightly sticky when dry. We did what they called “crawling” – engage the extreme low four wheel drive gear and let the Jeep “crawl” over these rocks. With the extreme independent suspension and shocks with the anti-tipping mechanism we crawled up the mountainside over rocks that would tip over an ordinary Jeep…

Up the steep rocks and down the other side…

Pictures don’t do it justice… But it really steep. We went up and down over 4′ rock ledges…

(This is another of our caravaners who took the Jeep ride…)

None of this was really dangerous because, while the rocks were steep, they weren’t really tall… The extreme Jeep maneuvers go up rocks 200 and 300 feet high… We didn’t do any of that. We did go fast, after the boulders were past… It was riding on a roller coaster going around the curves in the path…

So we survived and returned to the RV Park. The rest of the day we spent in Arches National Park…

I know… More rocks… These are really fun rocks. The arches are a short walk from the road. Lynda climbed up into one and appears to be having an enjoyable time…

These narrow rocks are called fins – fins are what will eventually form arches if the conditions are right… We walked among the fins on the softest, finest, powdery sand I had ever seen…

We spent all day in Arches NP, but we did have to return to Moab to go to dinner. The Sunset Grill is in the former house of a uranium miner who got fabulously rich in the rush to find and extract uranium in the 1950s. The house has a commanding view of the Moab valley, including our RV Park…

And an enjoyable time was had by all…

September 10, 2018 1

2018-09-06 – WBCCI 2018 Southwest Adventure Caravan – Day 19 – Traveling from Bluff to Moab…

We packed up and pulled out of the campground in Bluff; we are heading north to Moab, Utah. Along the way we see typical Utah sights…

We stopped at Wilson’s Arch… Wilson’s Arch was named after Joe Wilson, a local pioneer who had a cabin nearby in Dry Valley. This formation is known as Entrada Sandstone. Over time superficial cracks, joints, and folds of these layers were saturated with water. Ice formed in the fissures, melted under extreme desert heat, and winds cleaned out the loose particles. A series of free-standing fins remained. Wind and water attacked these fins until, in some, cementing material gave way and chunks of rock tumbled out.

We pulled into The RV Park in Moab behind a few other Airstreams…

…and ahead of a few others…

The Portal RV park is quite nice; they even have RV sites that they have sold to seasonal residents, and some of them have vacation homes built on them… We parked in the “low rent” area…

The offfice even has fake vigas… ’nuff said…

The view across the highway is great… I guess every town in Utah looks like this…

We’re all checked in…

This evening we have a dinner together about 15 miles up a canyon bisected by the Colorado River…

We saw rafters enjoying the late afternoon sun…

We saw amazing sights along the river…

The Resort and Winery where we were to have dinner is a very nice modern place…

We did a little wine tasting, and bought a nice Utah Syrah to have with dinner… Dinner was in a pavilion facing the river; we had our choice of burgers, hot dogs, or chicken… It was a lovely setting…

We returned to The Villa in time to catch the reflection of the setting sun…

And an enjoyable time was had by all…

September 10, 2018 0

2018-09-05 – WBCCI 2018 Southwest Adventure Caravan – Day 18 – Monument Valley

Monument Valley (Navajo: Tsé Biiʼ Ndzisgaii, meaning valley of the rocks) is a region of the Colorado Plateau characterized by a cluster of vast sandstone buttes, the largest reaching 1,000 ft above the valley floor. It is located on the Arizona–Utah border , near the Four Corners area. The valley lies within the territory of the Navajo Nation Reservation.

We traveled today with Jay and Elna, Caravan Leaders, to Gouldings, in Monument Valley. Harry Goulding established a trading post here in the 1920s, which has grown to include a Lodge, Restaurant, RV Park, and of course, a Gift Shop…

In the 1930s, in an effort to generate income for the Indians, Harry contacted Hollywood movie folk and arranged for the studios to shoot movies in Monument Valley. There is a stage set of a cabin supposedly used by John Wayne in John Ford’s production of “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon”…

Even this fake cabin had authentic construction…

Other buildings at Gouldings are not so lovely…

Monument Valley has been featured in many movies and TV shows since the 1930s. In the words of media critic Keith Phipps, “its five square miles have defined what decades of moviegoers think of when they imagine the American West.”

And it is stunning…

We saw the right mitten (above) and the left mitten (below)

We saw the castle…

And we saw some arches… (Arches differ from Bridges in that arches are formed by erosion by wind and the freeze-thaw cycle, while bridges have (or have had) flowing water beneath them, and the primary method of erosion was from this water…)

We were all herded into three touring trucks to see the sights…

After some driving along rutted, gravel roads, and seeing marvelous sites, we arrived at John Ford’s Point. John Ford like to ride his horse around here while shooting movies… (This is not John Ford…)

At one of our stops we saw authentic hogans, homes of the Navajo. About 30 families live in these traditional homes deep in the valley, using traditional methods of living, with no running water or electricity. They don’t even have cable TV! These hogans that we saw were for display purposes and for demonstrations…

This is a sweat lodge…

These hogans had beautifully constructed wood roofs to support the earthen exterior covering…

We saw more impressive structures…

Then we reached the arches…

This place is very awe-inspiring. Everywhere you look you see these marvelous structures…

We returned to Gouldings, had a nice lunch in the restaurant there, and then headed back to The Villa… We had a Drivers Meeting to discuss the route of our travels tomorrow, then we had dinner and a quiet evening in The Villa…

And an enjoyable time was had by all…

September 9, 2018 2

2018-09-04 – WBCCI 2018 Southwest Adventure Caravan – Day 17 – Goosenecks State Park, Muley Point, Moki Dugway, and Natural Bridges National Park

An exciting day exploring Southern Utah in a pickup caravan… We carpooled, but there were still 15 trucks in a row…

Our first stop was Goosenecks State Park, overlooking a deep meander of the San Juan River. The park is located near the southern border of the state, a short distance from Mexican Hat, Utah.

A “meander” or restrained meander, is a river that cuts its way through the many layers of various types of stone to form features such as this…

What is fascinating to me is how this happened… This river wasn’t just flowing along the top of a mesa and over time carved its way down. No, the water was always flowing at this level, meandering along a wide, flat plain. It was the plain that was pushed up by volcanic pressures, and the river and gravity fought back, carving the many layers of stone.

The river is about 1,000 feet below the mesa at this point…

From here, we headed to the Moki Dugway, which is the access road to Muley Point. In contrast to Goosenecks, where the river was 1,000 feet below us, Muley Point is 1,000 feet above us, and the Moki Dugway is the way to get up the “mountain”. (Many of the caravaners are from places like Florida or Texas, so they are not familiar with real mountains…) Along the way we saw more impressive sights…

This is Muley Point, at the end of the mesa on the left…

The Muki Dugway was the access road carved into the side of the plateau to be used for access to uranium mines many years ago. Some found it frightening (there are no guardrails, it is very narrow and steep, and it is a gravel road…).

I thought that car down this steep embankment might have been one of the caravaners from last year, but I was informed that it was not…

As we arrived at the top we were treated to more fabulous views…

I even took a picture!

And a selfie…

Our next stop today was at Natural Bridges National Park… where we saw natural bridges…

Bridges have (or have had) flowing water beneath them, and the primary method of erosion was from this water… On the other hand, arches differ from bridges in that arches are formed by erosion by wind and the freeze-thaw cycle. We’ll see arches tomorrow…

After a long day touring, we returned to The Villa. We went to the Steakhouse adjacent to the campground and had steak for dinner (Porterhouse for 2…). The restaurant was 90% caravaners – I’m sure the proprietor was happy we were staying next door…

We returned once again to The Villa to relax with a little TV. I sat in my Eames chair as I usually do. But what the chair did was not usual…

Yes, the entire back collapsed off the base… I’ll have to stand up the rest of the trip… We loaded the pieces into the truck; we’ll have to take it to be repaired when we return.

So this evening an enjoyable time was not had by me…

September 9, 2018 0

2018-09-03 – WBCCI 2018 Southwest Adventure Caravan – Day 16 – Traveling from Mesa Verde to Utah…

Travel Day. The Villa is on the move…!

Early mornings, the deer come to visit…

This is the hill we hiked to yesterday… The photos we took were from the top of the rock…

The switchback roads we saw from the top are here – we drove down the road this morning on our way out of the park…

We stopped at the Four Corners Monument: Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado…

A few other members of the caravan were there, too…

We continued on, driving through New Mexico and Colorado, until we finally found Utah…

We saw more buttes and mesas and bluffs…

Our campground is in the small town of Bluff. Pretty non-descript, but we had water and power. It will be our jumping off point for Goosenecks Park, Muley Point, the Moki Dugway, Natural Bridges, Valley of the Gods, and Monument Valley.

We also were able to add the 30th State sticker to our maps…

We had a quiet evening in…

And no Travel Day would be complete without pictures of the grandchildren…

George on the right, Ian next to him; the others are their 3rd cousins…

The family out for a walk…

Ian, George and Roisin (L-R)

And an enjoyable time was had by all…

September 9, 2018 0

2018-09-02 – WBCCI 2018 Southwest Adventure Caravan – Day 15 – Mesa Verde National Park

The gray skies blew away so we decided to go on another hike. This time we started out just adjacent to the campground. The route was called Point Lookout Trail, and it is 2.0 miles round trip, and we will climb up, then down, 400 vertical feet…

This is the entrance road we drove to get to the campground yesteday…

It was fun to watch the Airstreams getting small and smaller… But we were finally done and back to The Villa.

This evening we had a joint dinner at a nearby pavilion.

And an enjoyable time was had by all…

September 9, 2018 2

2018-09-01 – WBCCI 2018 Southwest Adventure Caravan – Day 14 – Mesa Verde National Park

Today we spent more time exploring Mesa Verde… We started at the Chapin Mesa Museum, adjacent to the park headquarters. The museum had the usual exhibits about the flora and fauna of the park, plus some history and archaeological data. And a Gift Shop… Most interesting were miniature dioramas, or models, of the typical pueblo life during the various periods of occupancy, from 650 to 1300. These beautiful models were built by the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) during the 1930s…

What interested me more were the buildings at the museum and the park headquarters. The scale and massing was lovely, and the buildings were clustered as if they composed a small village… They were built with volcanic stone blocks, left un-plastered…

Did you notice the vigas? They are done very well. And they are real!

They are not simply stuck onto the exterior as decoration. They form the structure for the floor or roof above, and they extend through the wall as part of the structural connection. Another thing: they are Juniper. Juniper is naturally rot and disease-resistant. While the vigas in the park buildings are 85-90 years old, the vigas in the Pueblo are 500 years old, and very few of them show any evidence of rot…

Except for these…

Still, not bad for 85-90 years. Today’s tract houses in Santa Fe use Douglas Fir or Southern Pine for their fake vigas, and they show rot beginning in year one…!

After the museum we set out on a “hike” We are not generally hikers – we are walkers. This was a well-marked trail. It descends into Spruce Canyon, and goes down, and down, and down… About 586 vertical feet. The loop is almost 3 miles. But we were up to it. Being in the canyon is a little surreal, seeing the bushes, trees, rocks, and other feats of nature…

We did discover this gruesome evidence of wildlife…

Of course, after we walked down we had to walk up again. While the descent was gradual, the ascent was very short and steep… And we made it!

Walking back to the truck we heard thunder all the way. But there was no rain…

We again admired some of the park buildings… This is the original 1930s restroom building:

Nice proportions, authentic wood lintel, posts, and capitals, excellent stonework…

Next door they built a new restroom building containing facilities accessible to the disabled…

Nice proportions, excellent stonework… Nicely proportioned lintels, posts and capitals, but note: They are steel! Clearly, this building pays homage to the historical architecture, but it uses modern materials when duplicating the historic materials would compromise the integrity of a modern building. Well done, Architect, whoever you are…!

As we approached our next destination in the truck it started to rain… We stopped at Park Point, the highest point in the park, at 8,572 feet elevation. This is about 700 feet above the campground…

It was lightly raining, but we couldn’t help but notice this white gravel on the ground. Upon closer inspection, we discovered it was hail!

Views are amazing, in all directions…

We could see all the way to Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico, plus, of course, Colorado…

This is “The Sleeping Ute”, a mountaintop in Utah that is supposed to resemble a sleeping Indian…

This is “Knife Edge mountain, which is our next stop…

Our next view overlook is called “Knife Edge”…

So we then headed back to The Villa… And we were in for a surprise: It had hailed at the campground, too!

The hail was small – no damage to The Villa. It lasted about an hour on the ground… Later that evening we had another “Fandango” to meet other caravaners. We were hosts, so we had 8 people inside the Villa…

And an enjoyable time was had by all…

September 8, 2018 0

2018-08-31 – WBCCI 2018 Southwest Adventure Caravan – Day 13 – Traveling to Mesa Verde National Park

We pulled out of Durango and drove to Mesa Verde National Park, so designated in 1906, one of the very first fourteen National Parks, back before Park Service was created in 1917; Mesa Verde was designated to “preserve the works of man,” the first national park of its kind. The other first National Parks were all created to preserve natural wonders…

It was a short drive – only 35 miles – but that is the horizontal distance. We also climbed up over 1,000 feet vertically, as the campground was at the top of this mesa…! (Not the top of the rock, just to the mesa behind it…

We are “dry camping” here – no water, sewer, or electrical hook-ups. Thus, there was a plethora of solar panels and generators present around all the Airstreams…

We had little set-up to do, and we soon set out for a 5 hour bus tour of the Mesa Verde Park.

We saw some splendid scenery – the bus tour drove us around the mesa-top and we saw many archaeological remains. Native peoples – the Ancients, or Indians, or Puebloans (pick your terms – I’ll call them Indians, as the locals prefer to be called…) – settled in this area about AD650 and continued to live here until the early 1300s, when they all moved, over about a 20 year period, to Taos, Sante Fe, and the other 17 Pueblos in New Mexico along the Rio Grande River. No one knows for sure why they left, but the obvious reason was to find more fertile land with a reliable water source.

We saw several various structures used by the Indians across the centuries… And I have thousands of photos to prove it…

We saw some cliff dwellings from a distance. But the pay-off for the day was seeing the Cliff Palace, the largest, and best preserved, of the cliff dwellings.

On December 18th, 1888, two cowboys, Richard Wetherill and his brother-in-law Charlie Mason, were riding across the mesa top looking for stray cattle. At the edge of the pinyon and juniper forest they came upon a vast canyon. It looked like this…

Today, it has been restored and reassembled where possible. Basically, they put back up the blocks that had fallen, and they stabilized the ruins.

We assembled for the tour at a platform that offered a closer view…

We were able to get even closer by descending from the mesa about 150 vertical feet into the canyon, climbing down stone steps built by the National Park Service. (Indians used ladders and hand- and foot-holds and climbed up the face of the canyon…)

Once we were at the level of the pueblo, we heard a ranger talk about the history and give us archaeological information. There are 150 rooms, including 19 kivas, or subterranean dwellings with religious significance. The 150 rooms extend back into the cliff over 90 feet…

We proceeded to walk along the base and see the pueblo up close…

Yes – even here there are vigas… more on the vigas tomorrow…

After our final ranger talk, we had to get back up to the mesa again, up 150 feet! We started out on steps, then had to climb three ladders…

Finally we reached the top…

Back at the Villa, we had some visitors…

We returned to the campground, had dinner, and went to bed before it got dark, so we didn’t have to use out batteries… (This dry camping is relatively new to us…)

And an enjoyable time was had by all…

September 7, 2018 0

2018-08-30 – WBCCI 2018 Southwest Adventure Caravan – Day 12 – Durango, CO

Quiet day in Durango… Blogging, laundry, walking around the RV Park… This is about as exciting as it gets…

We rode into town in the late afternoon with another caravan couple. They wanted to walk the town a bit and we wanted to try out an olde timey saloon.

We went to the Strater Hotel, founded 1887. We were told that in the early days one of their draws was their fresh food – rare in mining communities. This was accomplished by raising cows and chickens in the lot behind the hotel…

The saloon was great – all ugly Victorian decor (I know – that’s redundant…). But the waitress was great and the drinks were good. We even tried an appetizer of smoked dates wrapped in bacon with a drizzle of honey… Marvelous! Just what we wanted.

At the appointed hour we joined the other caravaners for dinner in the hotel – this was the real reason we chose this place.

The food was good, the wine was acceptable and the service was great… This hotel has been in the same family for over four generations. However, the fifth generation has decided they no longer want to be in the hotel business, so the hotel is for sale… It will be the end of an era…

So, as is my tradition on short days, I will include some pictures of our perfect and great Grandchildren…

This is Evelyn, 6 1/2 months old…

This is Roisin – what you can see of her, learning to hang around…

And this is Roisin again, 5 1/2 years old, reading to Evelyn whilst Mom puts the boys to bed…

And the boys:

George is almost 3 and Ian is 4 1/2… First day at the new preschool…!

And an enjoyable time was had by all…

September 7, 2018 1

Adventures in the Villa

2018-09-07 – WBCCI 2018 Southwest Adventure Caravan – Day 20 – A Jeep ride and Arches National Park

2018-09-06 – WBCCI 2018 Southwest Adventure Caravan – Day 19 – Traveling from Bluff to Moab…

2018-09-05 – WBCCI 2018 Southwest Adventure Caravan – Day 18 – Monument Valley

2018-09-04 – WBCCI 2018 Southwest Adventure Caravan – Day 17 – Goosenecks State Park, Muley Point, Moki Dugway, and Natural Bridges National Park

2018-09-03 – WBCCI 2018 Southwest Adventure Caravan – Day 16 – Traveling from Mesa Verde to Utah…

2018-09-02 – WBCCI 2018 Southwest Adventure Caravan – Day 15 – Mesa Verde National Park

2018-09-01 – WBCCI 2018 Southwest Adventure Caravan – Day 14 – Mesa Verde National Park

2018-08-31 – WBCCI 2018 Southwest Adventure Caravan – Day 13 – Traveling to Mesa Verde National Park

2018-08-30 – WBCCI 2018 Southwest Adventure Caravan – Day 12 – Durango, CO

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