AIBF Day 2

Today we headed back down to the Launch Area to watch the mass ascension. This time we stayed outside the gate and watched from the hill. Not as intimate but also not as crowded.

There are hundreds of balloons, so naturally they come in all colors and patterns; also all kinds of shapes. Today I want to show you some of the interesting shapes. Not all of them, there are too many. But here are a few:

Okay, that was the standard shape, but the decoration is pretty amazing.

 

 Here are some gathered, still on the ground. Perhaps this gives you an idea of their size.

Must represent both sides

 

And in the air:

And finally, a representative from Brazil, a man-eating fish. Lots of detail here.

That's it for today, what wonders does tomorrow hold?

AIBF Day 1

Well, here we are at the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, at long last. This morning we got up at 5:45 (people who know Gene look shocked now) and caught a shuttle to the launch site. They told us just to follow the crowd, and crowd there was. It looked like St. Peter's Square when the Pope is speaking. What's more, the crowd is free to mingle amongst the balloons.

As luck would have it, we were standing next to a trailer when the crew started pulling out the pieces. We got to watch the whole process of setting up and inflating a balloon close up.

This last picture was supposed to be a video of the balloon taking off but only the last frame transferred.

The whole process took about 45 minutes.

Then we stood around and watched the scene around us. We were surrounded by balloons filling up and taking off. (Also by incredible numbers of people.) The pictures don't do it justice.

Hopefully more tomorrow if I can solve a sudden connection problem.

Santa Fe

Drove down from Taos to Santa Fe. The road follows the Rio Grande river most of the way. It still has a gorge much of the way. Jean called ahead and got us a space at a campground in the city. The directions didn't seem to match the maps she has. Tried calling back but got a recording, the lady had already left for the day. Eventually we figured out that "Serio" was actually Cerrillos St.. When we got that straightened out, we still couldn't find the campground. We found it on a app on Gene's smart phone and got the GPS coordinates. The campground is behind some buildings, and the sign is covered by trees. It turned out to be a good spot, quiet and  right on the bus line to downtown.

So next morning, after a good breakfast at a local cafe, downtown we went. We wanted to spend some time in the Plaza, the old part of town. Jean was especially interested in the Indian vendors that set up in front of the old Governor's Palace. It turns out they were all selling jewelry.

We learned about a nearby Wells Fargo, so we walked two long blocks from the plaza. It was cool and restful inside, so Gene rested while Jean did her business. Santa Fe is at 7,000 feet elevation, and we (especially Gene) tired easily and a little bit of walking led to heavy breathing. So the rest was welcome.

Next we walked several blocks to the Georgia O'Keefe museum. Gene went through two rooms, and then retired to the film where he could sit down (no benches in the rest of the museum). Jean continued on through the rest of the exhibit, then joined him and watched the film.

Back to the plaza, we enjoyed ice cream on a shady bench; and being well-rested, took a tour by the shops around the edge. Most (but not all) of the shops here are high-end and very expensive. There is lots of turquoise, they even cover skulls with it.

The view up one of the streets is to the cathedral. We didn't go there, just enjoyed it from a distance.

In Santa Fe, they like to hang long ropes of red chiles out front as part of the decoration.

We also spotted a mural that covered the whole side of a small building.

The bus took us back to near the campground. We paused in our walk back to have sandwiches at a Schlotzsky's, which we haven't seen since Newport News.  All in all a tiring but enjoyable day. Tomorrow we are off to Albuquerque.

Taos

After spending a most pleasant weekend in Denver, we got back on the road again. This time heading for Taos. Leaving Denver the road runs mostly down the "low," flat country. When we crossed into New Mexico, we finally got off the interstate and took a right turn for Taos. That means heading into the mountains. Taos is in a high plateau, about 8,000 feet elevation. To get there the road goes through Cimarron Canyon. This is a winding, climbing road through gorgeous country. There is a river in the canyon, so there were lots of trees and other greenery. We wished we had a dashboard camera to record the beautiful drive.

As usual, as we approached Taos, Jean started looking for a campground. We needed full hookups because we didn't want to miss NCIS. We don't go too primitive on these trips! She found one that sounded okay and got directions. Once we got into Taos, it became apparent that there was a problem with the directions. When she went into a grocery store to get further information, the clerk said that that guy was "a little squirrelly." When we got there, the place looked like it hadn't seen much maintenance for quite a while. The proprietor was an old gent with a walrus mustache hanging over a beard. He was hard of hearing and quite laid back, but very pleasant and well-spoken. We paid for a night and pulled in to a space close to the bathroom (there were only three other rigs in the campground). The site was level and equipped with all the amenities.

After a pleasant night, we decided to spend another night. We had a little problem in the morning that I won't bore you with, but it kept us until the owner showed up about 11:00 so we could pay for another night. Then it was off to the Taos Pueblo. That is a few miles north of town and is the oldest continuously-occupied site in the country. They were getting ready for a religious celebration and no photography was allowed, but I grabbed a cell-phone picture from outside the compound.

Taos Pueblo with Sangre de Cristo mountains in the background

The community consists of several adobe houses, some built together like apartment houses, on either side of Blue Spruce Creek, which provides all the water for the community. The people here continue to live mostly a traditional life with no running water and no electricity. They do use cars and cell phones though.

After wandering around some, going into shops, and eating some frybread and an Indian taco, we headed on for the next spot.

The next spot was the Rio Grande Gorge bridge. It is about 10 miles west of town. The valley is mostly flat and covered in sage brush. It is easy to put yourself in the minds of the pioneers driving their wagons across easy country,

when suddenly they find themselves on the brink of a 650-foot-deep gorge they didn't see coming.

By now it was getting late and we headed back in to Taos to look for some supper. Taos is a small, very old town with narrow streets and one main road through town. Consequently the traffic is bumper to bumper all the way through. Anyone familiar with Berkeley Springs gets the picture.

We stopped at a Wendy's to grab a salad and were faced with incompetence on a major scale. It took half-an-hour for one customer with a handful of coupons to argue, negotiate, and figure out what he wanted. Meanwhile the other staff was having a hard time getting the right food to the right customers. We finally got our food in time to get back to the motorhome and watch NCIS. Got to keep your priorities right.

Next day (today)

There were three things we wanted to get done today. First we went in to Taos to the Plaza. This is the oldest part of the city. Jean spend some time shopping while Gene sat in the plaza and read a magazine. This part concluded with a visit to the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, yum.

Then we went out to find the Earthship Visitor Center. This is just a few miles beyond the Gorge. An Earthship is a home built of recycled and local materials and independent of the grid. The structural walls are built of old tires filled with rammed earth. The building is bermed and has south-facing glass walls. The building uses solar and wind power. This provides both 110VAC and 12VDC to operate lights, and pumps, etc. Just like a motorhome. The roof  collects rain water, and reuses its water several times. Grey water (from sinks) is filtered and used to feed plants in special beds and baskets behind the glass wall. The leftover from this is used to flush the toilet(s), and that is then sent to a septic tank. Many of the houses grow most or all of their food.

The organization has been in existence for several years and there are Earthship houses all around the globe. It is a fascinating concept, and seems to work well. The designs outside Taos tend to have lots of swoopy curves, but that is not a requirement.

Finally, on our way to Santa Fe we stopped to look at the old Spanish mission of San Francisco de Asis, a few miles south of town. This is a massive adobe church, in excellent condition. We were too late to go inside, but we took a lot of pictures of the outside.

Approaching Santa Fe, Jean got on the phone and got us a space at a campground in Santa Fe. Most of the campgrounds were filled due to the upcoming balloon festival. Once more she got someone on the phone that seemed a little ditzy. Jean couldn't match the directions she gave us with anything on the map. When she called back to get clarification she got a recording because the office had closed. She finally figured out that "Serios" was actually "Cerillos" Street. Once we got that straightened out we still couldn't find the campground. Lots of detective work and two tries with the GPS finally revealed a campground hidden behind some buildings. There were more problems once we got there, but we finally got settled in. Tomorrow we go downtown to the plaza, and then get ready to check in at the Balloon Fiesta Friday.

On to the West

We are now starting our long-awaited Big Trip to the Four Corners area. Having read all of Tony Hillerman's Navajo cop stories, we are going to look over the territory.

Since the first part is just a long slog across the country, I am starting a little over a week into the trip. The first stop we made was in Louisville, KY, to visit Jean's nephew, Jason, and his family. While there, they took us to downtown Louisville. They are doing some renovation there. The fronts of the buildings are considered historic, so they prop up the front, then tear down the rest to build new behind the old front.

We went on to visit a very good museum.  We spent most of our time in an extensive exhibit on the Lewis and Clark expedition. Well done, and we learned a lot. Outside they were having a sort of street fair featuring local clubs and do-it-yourself projects. Gene couldn't resist the power tool races.

Racing belt sanders

After Louisville, we headed for Missouri and Kansas. That took a couple of days, during which we sometimes lost track of what time zone, or even what state we were in. We wanted to visit Gene's cousin in Kansas City, MO, but he was too sick to have visitors. Maybe on the way home. So we pressed on to Lawrence, KS, to visit an old college buddy. We caught up with him in the hospital, about to go into hospice. So far the KC area was not a cheerful part of the trip.

People had been teasing us about crossing Kansas: totally flat with miles and miles of corn and wheat. In fact, much of Kansas is rolling hills, slowly flattening out as you travel west. It isn't seriously flat until the far western third. We didn't see much corn until the very western end. We saw some soybeans, but mostly what we saw was miles and miles of sorghum (also know as milo).

It took about two days to get across into eastern Colorado, which looks exactly the same. Our last morning in Kansas we went to the Prairie Museum in Colby. This is a well-done, indoor-outdoor museum. A couple of the things that caught our interest were the reproduction sod shanty (high-class version with a wood floor and roof) and  a windmill that has folding blades.

In Colorado, we spent the first full day going through the Rocky Mountain National Park, which was celebrating its 100th year. The weather was beautiful for late September (some years there is snow by then). The aspens were turning their beautiful fall colors. The road through the park climbed to 12,000 feet. We got out at about 11,700 feet to walk a short distance to an overlook and had to stop half-way to rest and catch our breath.

We entered the park from the eastern side, which fronts on the flat part of Colorado. We exited on the southwest side which is in the mountains. We then headed for Denver to visit relatives. What we thought would be a short, easy trip turned out to be several hours of mountain driving, through a high pass and down a long valley. As we approached Denver the traffic got quite heavy. We made it in our projected time, but it was pushing all the way.

Next day, in Denver, Gene bought a new tire pump since the one he bought a month ago started blowing fuses. Grrrr! Then the family went to Zorba's, a Greek restaurant owned by Jean's daughter-in-laws best friend. Afterward we visited the Botanical Garden. This is an extensive garden, including an indoor tropical zone. It is well-done and full of beautiful plants. Scattered throughout the garden are statues of horses that look like they are made of driftwood. It turns out they are bronze, colored grey.

We also drove by Molly Brown's home, but didn't go in.

So this part of the trip, which was mostly driving to our main area of interest, turned out to have some interest of its own. Tomorrow, we head for Taos. Will post again in a couple of days.

Vermont to Massachusetts

Wednesday 5 August

No Wifi yesterday so it is another two days together. This seems to be the standard for this trip.

Chilly night, we added a blanket in the early morning. Slept in 'til 9:00 here in the deep, dark woods. Gene walked to the entrance and bought another night. After breakfast we drove .3 mile to the Quechee Gorge Visitor's Center. A pleasant hike through the woods and under Rte. 4 bridge took us to a fork in the trail. The trail to the left goes down into the gorge (steep), the trail to the right goes along the rim to the beginning (variable). We went right and shortly came to some stairs to shops on Rte. 4. We bought some water and went back to the trail. An up and down hike of about .4 mile took us to Dewey's Mill Pond dam, the beginning of the gorge.

Gene took some pictures in cloudy conditions and went back to the store. To the right of the store was the Rte. 4 bridge over the gorge, with a sidewalk. We went out on the bridge and took another picture.

 Then we continued on, thinking it was the way back to the Visitor's Center. After a long walk we realized we were going in the wrong direction. Back at the store we looked the other way and could almost see the motorhome!

After this adventure, we drove to the King Arthur Flour complex. It includes a cafe, where we had delicious sandwiches. Next it was back to the Quechee Gorge Village with a store for Cabot Cheese and  several other venues. Jean shopped while I took a nap.

Then one more trip back to White River Junction to pick up a few groceries at the Coop grocery store. Were running back and forth over the same stretch of road like a yo-yo. Finally we drove in to Woodstock (a new stretch of road) to see what it looked like. We found out it has municipal Wifi so I finished up the previous blog entry and posted it. A pleasant walk down town eventually brought us to a restaurant (Maloza Carribean Bistro) where we had supper.

Back at the camp, I talked briefly with a neighbor that was in a black Class B that looked similar to ours. It looked like a Sprinter but was actually built on the new Ford van chassis. It is similar to a Sprinter but is two feet shorter. Several RV builders use the Sprinter chassis (and now the Ford) and  I am always interested in how they arrange things. So far, I still prefer the Roadtrek, and now that I have spent five years modifying and customize ours I am not even interested in the fancy new ones.

Thursday and Friday

Our next goal was to visit Plymouth, MA. Not that we are particularly interested in the town itself, but because an old friend from Jamestown Settlement, Whitt Perry, is now working there. His job is to get the reproduction of the Mayflower II ready for Plymouth's 400th anniversary in 2020. Being in Vermont meant we had a chance to see him and catch up. It also meant a possible guided tour of the ship.

Thursday got us into Massachusetts, within range to make a lunch date on Friday. After a long lunch and visit, Whitt gave us a tour of the maintenance facility and then took us (two miles) to the ship.

A detailed, top to bottom, tour of the ship showed us how the she differs from the ships at Jamestown, even though they are the same period. Basic design and rigging is the same, but layout is different. Mayflower is slightly larger than Susan Constant, and the stern is quite different. It also showed us that he has a lot of work to do to get the ship in top shape in five years. I hope we will be able to check in periodically to watch progress.

After our visit, we were able to get to Connecticut Friday night. After that it was two days of homeward bound, mostly on interstates. We got home on Sunday night to conclude a trip of just under two weeks and just over 2,000 miles. It was a nice trip, now it's back to the old day-to-day.

Burlington and beyond

Monday, 3 August and Tuesday 4 August

Monday was a casual day --- for us, not for Alan and Valerie. Valerie went in to work, where she is dealing with a software change-over, always a recipe for problems. Alan and Jean went off to deliver a new refrigerator to one of his rentals. I caught up on some chores around the motorhome, did some stuff online, and took a nap.

In the evening we went to the edge of downtown to a Mexican restaurant. There we had a long, casual meal and lots of conversation. Afterwards we walked down to the waterfront for Gene to have his annual look at the Lois Maclure, a reproduction of a 19th century canal boat rigged as a schooner. On the canal, she is towed as normal. On the Hudson or Lake Champlain she raises her two masts and sails. She seems to have fallen on hard times since the last time he saw her. She is no longer moored where visitors can come aboard and the hull needs quite a bit of work. Her masts are up, but there are no sails bent and while she has booms rigged there are no gaffs. She was a pretty sad sight.

Then we went up the hill for cremees. That is what they call soft ice cream in Vermont. We sat on the deck and enjoyed a striking sunset while slurping our cremees. A lovely end to a quiet day.

Tuesday was departure day.  We had topped off our water tanks on Monday so we were away by 9:30. Away but not quite on our way. We drove up to the campground at North Beach where we dumped the tanks. Then to Hannaford's for some groceries. By 10:30 we were actually on our way. Namely, Gene tried to recall how to get to the interstate from the various trips he took with Alan. We made it with only one wrong turn (easily corrected) and headed for Montpelier.

We like downtown Montpelier, but it is damnably hard to park a motorhome there. We finally found a place at the edge of the business district and headed for a store we knew about. When we got there it looked threatening, so Gene went back to the rig for the umbrella. We had gone to get a particular bumper sticker we had seen there on a previous trip. Their stock of bumper stickers was way down and they no longer had it. Shucks.

By then it was time for lunch and we headed to another of our favorite places, the Skinny Pancake. We got there just as it was beginning to rain. Lunch was accompanied by a heavy downpour with hail. By the time we got out it was still raining, but lightly. Still, we were glad to have the umbrella.

Next item on the list was a visit to Bragg Farm. This is a maple sugar farm that we had stayed at a couple of years ago thanks to Harvest Hosts, an organization that puts RVers together with farms, vineyards, etc. for overnight parking. When we were there we bought a supply of maple syrup, and we have gone back there for our supply ever since.

Having checked off everything on our list, we were footloose and fancy free. We decided to follow I-89 to Quechee Gorge, "the Grand Canyon of Vermont." Along the way another heavy storm caught up with us. Rain and a little lightning for a while. We both decided that Vermont is beautiful, even in bad weather.

We pulled in to the campground at Quechee State Park, which is actually leased from the Corps of Engineers. They told us to pick a spot and come back and pay for it. When we got back, Jean learned that the fellow who handled our registration is a student at JMU.  At the same time, a Class C pulled in and asked for the site we just claimed. It seems he camps there frequently and knows which sites he wants. Luckily he had some other preferences as well.

This is a great campground. The sites are large, well-separated, and surrounded by trees. Like most state parks, there are no hookups, but the bathrooms and showers are well-kept. Probably not a place we would choose to dry-camp for a long time since the trees filter out most of the sunshine, but it suited our purposes just fine. We'll probably stay another day.