Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta

We left Farmington on Sunday morning, and drove to Grants, NM, about three hours south. We met twelve other rigs from our club and the Sacramento area club and spent the night. We all pitched in on a potluck dinner that was wonderful! The next morning, we lined up and caravanned to Albuquerque and the Balloon Fiesta. We were parked with about 200 other Holiday Rambler motorhomes and trailers just across the street from the balloon field. There were a total of approximately 1,700 rigs of all shapes and sizes in the lot. School busses drove through the lot every 15 minutes, starting at 4 AM each day to haul us to the balloon field and back.

On Monday evening, Tom and a friend rode their bikes over to the field to watch the launch of gas-filled balloons for the “America Challenge” race.

About half of the nine participating balloons were filled with helium and the others were filled with hydrogen. The race is won by the balloon that travels the farthest. Last year, the winner landed in the Florida panhandle. This year, the winds took them north with the winner (who also won last year) landing near Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. I guess they had a bit of a problem trying to get the chase crew across the Canadian border, but it all worked out in the end.

On Tuesday morning we got an early start on the bus and got to the field where about half of the 750 balloons entered in the Fiesta took off between 7 & 8 AM. The other half took off from other locations and attempted to fly into the balloon field. It was a spectacular thing to watch. After buying a program, we discovered that Tom’s friend, Myron, was entered in the fiesta. Tom crewed for Myron for several years at balloon meets in California, Oregon and Arizona. Myron has been flying at Albuquerque for 31 of the 36 years the Fiesta has been held. We thought he had retired about three years ago, as he’s now over 80 years old. The program told us where his launch position was located, so we scampered over there to see if he was really there. He was, and it was great to see him again. He has sold his balloon to a friend of his from Reno, and has been instructing that friend as a balloon pilot. He now has his private license, but to fly at a balloon meet, he has to have a commercial license, so Myron is the listed pilot and flies with him.

Once the flying activities were done, we shopped the Main Street where about 200 food and souvenir vendors competed for the almighty dollar. We chose breakfast burritos to eat, an item nearly every food vendor offered.

Wednesday morning was a “mass ascension” and all 750 balloons lifted off from the balloon field. It is something you have to see to appreciate. They lift off in waves, under the watchful eyes of the “zebras” or launch directors.
It took 1 ½ hours to get them all in the air. By flying the winds, most of the balloons could take off to the south, then rise about 1,000 feet and catch winds to the north, which brought them right back over the field.

Thursday and Friday mornings featured about 100 “special shape” balloons in an early takeoff, then a number of more conventional balloons launched from off-field and participated in flying competitions that involved trying to grab a prize envelope from the top of a 20-foot pole, and tossing a beanbag at targets marked out on the field. The prizes were worth trying for; a Honda Ridgeline pickup and an $8,000 watch were among them.

Thursday evening, we planned to attend a “balloon glow” where the balloons inflate but do not fly. They look like giant light bulbs and “twinkle” in unison. We also decided to go out to dinner with friends a couple of hours before the event, so we picked a restaurant less than five miles away. Whoops, that didn’t work. It turned out that the Thursday evening crowd was the largest in Fiesta history, and it took us well over an hour to get back to the RV parking area. There was no point in trying to get to the balloon field before the “glow” was scheduled to end, so we watched the closing fireworks show from the motorhome. We were supposed to meet our friends, Pam and Karl, on the field, but obviously, we didn’t make it, so we met them on Friday morning for that day’s special shape ascension.

We planned to eat “at home” on Friday night so that we could make it to the field for a repeat performance of the balloon glow, but unfortunately, the wind came up and the glow was canceled. Curses!!

Saturday morning’s weather was perfect, so we went back to the field for another mass ascension. It was as spectacular as Wednesday’s launch and we enjoyed it thoroughly. By this time, we were becoming experts on breakfast burritos, having tried three different vendors, and settling on “Hello Deli”, a vendor who also has a restaurant in Albuquerque. Their burritos were the freshest and tastiest, with scrambled eggs, bacon, hash browns and green chiles. Yum!!! We chose them three days in a row. Although a balloon glow was scheduled for Saturday night, we were about “ballooned out” and chose to go out to dinner again with some of our friends.

On Sunday morning, we slept in! We watched the mass ascension from the motorhome, then packed up to leave the campsite. We expected a real mess trying to get out of the one exit, but it wasn’t bad at all. We only traveled about nine miles, into the city of Rio Rancho to visit with Pam and Karl. They have a brand new adobe style home that Pam has decorated beautifully. They have a large motorhome garage to house their coach, and lots of room for visiting motorhomes. Their motorhome area has electric, water & sewer hookups; better than a lot of RV parks we have visited. Also, Pam let Debbie wash a few loads of clothes and they fed us a fine dinner. What more could we ask??? We had a great visit, and will see them again in Sacramento at Thanksgiving.

We took so many pictures at the balloon fiesta that we've created a new web album to put them in. You can click on the link on the right side of this blog to view all of them.

We’ve decided to visit Kartchner Caverns near Tucson, AZ on the way back to California, so we’ll tell you all about that visit the next time.

Take care.

Rally in Farmington

From Durango, we traveled the 50-some miles to the city of Farmington, New Mexico. The purpose for the trip was to attend the Rocky Mountain Regional Rally of the Family Motor Coach Ass'n (FMCA). We participated in their International Rally in Redmond, OR in August, but had never attended a regional rally.

There were about 450 coaches in attendance, and there were a number of classes and seminars to attend, as well as a number of new motorhomes to dream over. We both attended a seminar on traveling to (and in) Alaska which was very informative. Debbie spent many hours decorating a canvas tote, and Tom attended a very good class on fire & life safety for motorhomers. The instructor, a retired firefighter, talked about the various types of extinguishers and how to use them. He emphasized that fire extinguishers are not meant to put out a motorhome fire, but to fight your way out of a motorhome on fire! Sobering!! We got hands-on fire extinguisher use, and lots of very valuable information.

While at Farmington, we took an hour drive with our motorhoming friends to Shiprock. It is a rock monolith that is considered sacred by the Navajo. It is quite impressive, but there is also a monolithic rock formation leading to Shiprock that is just as impressive. It ranges from 40 to 70 feet tall and 10 to 12 feet wide.

Tom tried to take a photo of our group using the self-timer on the camera, but as he hurried to get into position, he slipped in the sand and amused everyone by falling over. No damage done, though.

The rally was over on Saturday night, so on Sunday we headed for Grants, NM, about 150 miles south. We'll meet up with other Holiday Rambler friends so that we can all caravan together to Albuquerque on Monday. We'll be there until next Sunday, attending the big Balloon Fiesta. I'm sure there'll be lots of pictures of that when we next get to publish an update.

Durango & Silverton Railroad

We arrived in Durango, CO on Sunday afternoon, and after we got settled and greeted more RV friends, Carol & Lee, we sat down to wait to see the trains returning from Silverton. The narrow gauge tracks of the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad ran right through our RV Park.

On Monday morning we drove into town to catch the 9 AM train. The railroad has seven steam engines built in the 1920’s. They weigh between 127 tons and 143 tons and develop approximately 1200 horsepower. The track was built in 1881 – 1882 as a narrow gauge branch of the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad to serve the gold and silver mining communities in western Colorado.

On the way to Silverton, we waved at our motorhomes in the park. The ride was great! We sat in one of two open cars so that we could see all the sights. It was a bit cool when we left, but we dressed in layers, so we were pretty comfortable. The tracks follow the Animas River all the way to Silverton. Although for most of the trip, the river was alongside the tracks, we went through a canyon with the tracks cut into the side of the canyon and the river far below us.
The aspen trees were showing their fall colors which were a brilliant yellow.
Once we arrived in Silverton, we wandered down the one paved street to find lunch. We found it at “Mad Momma’s Pies”. It was a real mom & pop place, with pop behind the counter and mom delivering orders. The food was great, especially the pies. After lunch the girls went shopping and the guys found the local brewpub and rested.

The train pulled out about 2 ½ hours after we arrived, and the trip back to Durango was uneventful…until we stopped to check a “hot box”. That meant a bearing in a wheel & axle overheated and started smoking. The engineer, fireman, conductor and a brakeman all got off to try to fix it. They worked at it for about 45 minutes, then decided they couldn’t fix it, so we traveled slowly down the track to a siding where they could drop the car. All the passengers from that car squeezed into the remaining cars for the rest of the trip.

Since we were almost two hours late getting back to Durango, the train stopped behind a hotel next to our RV Park to let passengers off. Several in our group have dogs that needed to be let out of their RV’s, so they got off and three of us rode the train into town to retrieve the cars.

We were planning on going out for our Anniversary dinner that evening, but with the late arrival, we had sandwiches in the motorhome, instead. Oh well, we’ll just move the celebration a day or two. It had been a real fun day, even with the delay on the ride home.

From here, it’s off to Farmington, NM for five days at an RV Rally.

Mesa Verde National Park

It's been a while since we've posted to the travel blog, but that doesn't mean that we've been sitting around somewhere. It's just that we haven't had internet access until now. So, we'll publish a couple of updates while we're in Grants, New Mexico. Then we travel about 60 miles to Albuquerque to the Balloon Fiesta grounds. I'm sure we won't have internet access there, either, so the Balloon Fiesta posting will have to wait until we find an internet cafe or move to an RV Park with wi-fi.


On Friday, September 28th, we left Spider Rock Campground and headed for Four Corners, the only place where four states touch at the same point. From there, we headed to Mesa Verde Nat’l Park in southeastern Colorado. If you’ll look at the colored state map to the right, you’ll see that Colorado is now colored in. This is the first time we’ve had the motorhome in this beautiful state.

We stayed in a nice campground just outside the National Park. We met our good friends and fellow RV’ers, Bob & Diane in the campground as planned. We decided to go into the nearby town of Cortez for dinner. As we returned to our motorhomes, a bear ran across in front of us. It headed right into the tent camping area, but we didn’t hear any commotion from that section of the RV park, so I guess it ran right through without stopping to check garbage cans or ice chests.

On Saturday, we drove into Mesa Verde and took a half-day ranger led bus trip to a number of architectural heritage sites both atop the mesas and in the cliff dwellings below. The park includes over 4,500 archeological sites, including 600 cliff dwellings. The bus trip included stops at a number of sites. The ranger had a great background, with a degree in geology and a minor in archeology. He is a teacher in Cortez, and has spent the past seven summers as a ranger in Mesa Verde as well as participating in archeological digs in the park.

We stopped at a pit house village on the mesa top. It dates from around 750 AD, and features two Kivas, which were ceremonial rooms built underground. They were probably used for healing rites, or to pray for rain, good crops, luck in hunts, etc. The columns that extend from the wall shelf are pilasters, used to support a pole and mud roof. Entry was by ladder through a hole in the roof, which also served as a chimney for the firepit in the floor.

The highlight of the tour was a visit to Cliff Palace, the largest cliff dwelling in the park, with over 150 rooms. After viewing the dwelling from the mesa top, we climbed down a series of stone steps and wood ladders to the dwelling itself.

This ruin dates from the 1200’s and took three years to build. It is of sandstone block construction with mud mortar. Many of the rooms were used for storage, but the living areas averaged six feet by eight feet, enough room for two or three people. The people were primarily farmers, with their growing ground on the mesa top. They also hunted extensively for the game in the area. In the late 1200’s, all of the cliff dwellings were abandoned. The generally accepted reason was due to a prolonged drought that almost totally destroyed their way of life.

After viewing the ruins "up close", it was another climb up to the mesa top and our bus back to the Visitor Center. It was another great day on this trip. From here, we’re off to Durango, CO, to meet some more RV friends and to ride the Durango to Silverton narrow gauge train.

We’ll publish again when we get wi-fi access.

Hubbell Trading Post & Canyon de Chelly

Wednesday morning we left Williams and headed east on I-40. After passing Winslow, you know, "Winslow Arizona, don't forget Winona, Kingman, ....", we headed north and stopped at Hubbell Trading Post, a National Historic Site founded by John Hubbell in 1876.

It is one of approximately 30 trading posts he founded to provide merchandise to the natives and provide an outlet for native-made goods. It is the oldest continuously operating trading post in the Navajo nation. It serves as grocery store, hardware store, etc. to the Navajo, a "tourist store" for native goods, and a museum of native handicrafts.


From there it was off to Canyon de Chelly and a real adventure. We had reservations at a Navajo-owned campground on the rim of the canyon. It is "off the grid", with solar and wind powered generator. Howard Smith, the Navajo owner, hauls water from Chinle, 10 miles away. But even so, it was a great place. Our campsite was large and secluded, and included a rock fire pit and firewood. And, imagine this, wi-fi! Howard turns it on for about 4 hours per day, and it works well.

On Thursday morning we took off in the CRV to explore the canyon with Howard as our guide. Regulations prohibit travel in the canyon without a Navajo guide and a four-wheel drive vehicle. After some negotiating with the Park Service Ranger, a couple from Santa Fe were allowed to follow us in an all-wheel drive Honda Civic with Howard providing commentary by walkie-talkie.


The road in the bottom of the canyon was all sand. For part of the trip we were travelling in a wash that had gotten rain about three days earlier, and that was no problem. Other parts of the trip were in dry sand which was of a little more concern, but the old CRV handled it all with no problem.

The trip was fabulous!! One of the most fascinating sites was called "Newspaper Rock". There are several hundred petroglyphs (the carved ones). This is but a small portion of the rock. The carvings go back more than 1100 years.




The pictograph to the right, done in red vegetable dye was one of many we saw during the trip. Besides the rock wall drawings, we visited several Alcove cliff dwellings. These dwellings were built between 700 AD and 1200 AD by an ancient pueblo civilization known to the Navajo as "Anasazi". There are probably 15 - 20 cliff dwellings in Canyon de Chelly. The best known and largest in the canyon is White House Ruin. It is a two-level village set into an alcove in the canyon wall. It is the only site that can be reached without a native guide, and then only by a 2-mile trail from the top of the canyon. Because it's a popular site, a number of Navajo craftsmen
set up their wares for tourists to check out and
hopefully purchase. Of course, Debbie found the perfect silver bracelet and talked the artist into posing for a picture with her.
After about 7 hours in the canyon we drove out, after assisting our friends in the Honda Civic get "unstuck" from some deep sand, we headed back to camp. Before finishing our day, we took a road trip to an overlook to view a column called "Spider Rock". Legend has it that the spider woman who occupies the rock taught the Navajo how to weave.

We got there just before sunset and got some great shadows.

All in all, we took about 80 photos, way too many to include in this blog update. To see the rest, you'll have to click on the link to our web album, "Southwest Trip 2007".

From here, it's off to Mesa Verde National Park where hopefully we'll be able to publish another post to this blog.

Train Trip to the Grand Canyon

First, let me say that Williams, AZ is at 6,800 feet, and the nights are cold! It was in the mid-30's when we got up on Tuesday! Our train to the Grand Canyon left at 10 AM, and it was in the low 60's by then, so that's OK.
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Before we boarded the train, all passengers were asked to attend a "wild west shootout" next to the depot. I guess that's so we're all not milling around the train, waiting to board. Four bad guys and the Marshal had a confrontation, after which, only the Marshal was left standing. How about that!



The Grand Canyon Railway has two operating steam engines which they use (along with a diesel helper engine) during the summer. The rest of the year, they use diesel exclusively, so that's what we got. No matter, though, it was a great trip.



There were 13 passenger cars on the train, each had a passenger service agent. Ours was Barbara, who offered us Diet Pepsi which made her special in Debbie's eyes.


The trip took just over two hours and was lots of fun. A singer/musician wandered through the cars and got a little "group sing" going. One of the "shootout" cowboys spent time in each car also, and visited with all the passengers.

Once at the canyon, we grabbed a quick lunch at the Bright Angel Lodge, then spent time walking along the rim.

Like Yosemite, private autos are discouraged, and they have a fleet of natural gas-powered shuttle busses to take visitors along the rim. Debbie wanted to mail some stuff, so we rode a shuttle to the Post Office, then back to El Tovar Hotel before boarding our train for the ride back to Williams.

El Tovar Hotel from Bright Angel Lodge

The trip back was just as nice as the trip to the canyon. We saw deer, elk, antelope, rabbits, squirrels, and lots of cattle. Arizona is a "free range" state, so cattle are not fenced in. If the train should hit one, the company has to pay the rancher $1,000. And if it's pregnant, there goes another $1,000 for the calf.

We were almost back in Williams when train robbers were spotted running their horses along side the train. They must have had an inside track (Ha! Ha!) because the engineer stopped the train and they came through terrorizing all the passengers. Fortunately, the Marshal showed up right after that, and I'm sure the bad guys were corralled at the back of the train.

To see more of our photos, click on the "Southwest Trip 2007" link on the right.

Tomorrow we're off to Canyon de Chelly for a couple of nights. We'll post when we get a chance.

Gilroy Campout and Williams, AZ

Our first stop on this two-month trip was Gilroy. The RV Club in which we are active, Diablo Ramblers, held their first weekend campout of the fall season at the Gilroy Garlic RV Park. And wow, it was easy to tell we were in Gilroy! The strong odor of garlic permeated the area around the park. Maybe some folks were not happy with the aroma, but it just made us hungry! The weather was a bit unsettled. Lots of clouds and a few showers on Friday, heavier rain Friday night and Saturday, then clearing up on Saturday night. Sunday, which was getaway day from the campout, was much nicer. The gathering was pretty small for our club, only nine rigs, but several members are suffering from illness or injury, and several members are traveling in other areas at the moment. Anyway, it was a fun time for those of us in attendance.

After breakfast we packed up and headed out, spending the night in Barstow, in the Wal-Mart parking lot. Wal-Mart is a good place to stop for a few hours after a day behind the wheel. They welcome overnight campers, and we always check in with their security staff, and purchase a few items while we're there.

Monday we got a good start with Debbie taking her turn at the wheel. We arrived in Williams, Arizona about 3 PM, picked up our tickets for the train ride into the Grand Canyon tomorrow, and ordered a pizza for our dinner.

The train leaves Williams about 10:00 AM, arrives at the Grand Canyon about 12:15 PM, leaves there again at 4:00 PM, arriving back in Williams at 6:15 PM. The weather's supposed to be clear and cool at the canyon, so we're looking forward to a great day.

We'll try to publish another post and maybe some pictures tomorrow night or Wednesday morning, 'cause our next stop, Canyon de Chelly, has no electricity, so I believe that rules out wi-fi, too.

Southwest RV Trip

Well, here we go again. We're off in the motorhome on Thursday, September 20th to our monthly RV Club campout in Gilroy. However, instead of returning home, we're heading to the Grand Canyon, Canyon de Chelly, Mesa Verde, Durango and on to the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta the second week of October. From there, we'll head back to Southern California to participate in two RV Rallies, then to Chico for another RV Club campout before returning home around November 11th.

There's a Google map at the bottom of this page of the southwestern US. If you click on "View larger map" it will show our planned route. I don't know why the route doesn't show on the small map, but it doesn't. Maybe that can be fixed as we learn more about 'blogging'.

We'll post to the blog whenever we can get a computer connection to the web. As we did for the last trip, we'll notify you of postings unless you tell us not to. You can always check our postings whenever you want by going to this web site, http://tomstru.blogspot.com/ . Please let us know if you have suggestions for the blog.

Bye for now.