New Mexico – Wandering Out Westy

Day Twenty Nine

Tucumcari, New Mexico to Lake McClellan National Grasslands, Texas

Left New Mexico and headed into Texas. Flat dessert land surrounding us for miles and miles. Drove through Amarillo. Stopped to get free wifi at Starbucks and catch the world up on the past week. Then picked out the only blue water on the map, a lake in the middle of National Grasslands, close to the Oklahoma border. Drove toward a moorage on the horizon as we approach the lake, it turned out to be northern Texas’ biggest dried up puddle. Not a drip of water was visible in this lake of sand and dirt, but the oak tree groves surrounding the body-less water was no disappointment! And National Grasslands, shmaz-lands, it seemed to be protecting the oil drilling rather than the wildlife. The wind tore through the place but with a little tree protection we decided to still keep the pop top down. Watched the sun set deep into the sky before eating the pizza we ordered as take-out. Snuggled up as the wind sang us to sleep.

Day Twenty Eight

Albuquerque to Tucumcari, New Mexico

Last night driving into Albuquerque the lights sparkling on the horizon felt like we were entering New York City. In the morning we drove into Old Town to get a local vibe. There are lots of little gifty shops lining the sidewalks with unique and brightly colored New Mexico flare. In the center is a plaza with a tall white balcony, and on this particular day a celebration was taking place with drums and shakers and chanting, what a way to honor a person’s life. It was beautiful. Leaving Albuquerque we headed east in a straight line. Drove almost to the Texan border but decided to stop for the night in a little town along Route 66, Tucumcari. Setting the scene for the evening, entering this little ghost town felt like driving onto the set of Pixar’s Cars, a once thriving place is now barely surviving. Rolled into Kiva RV park with their neon lighted sign at full glare, welcome to slab city in New Mexico. We were greeted by a man in a white tank top and shorts, smoking a cigaret. In pure southern hospitality he welcomed us to the park, showed us our site and invited us to participate in the beers and burgers BBQ farewell for a couple who had spent a month at the park, complete with laser lights at the community gazebo! Turns out the owner and his brother moved from Georgia to entrepreneur this RV park business in New Mexico on Route 66. It was quite an experience but reading beyond the cover let us meet a few genuine and interesting people.

Day Twenty Seven

Mesa Verde, CO to Albuquerque, NM

Arriving at Mesa Verde National Park was exciting, but I wasn’t prepared to be so blown away by the past. This park, unlike most National Parks, is not so much a nature park; driving to the site takes an hour through a windy prairie flat between canyons (hence Green Table for its name) with shrubs and a few pinyon trees. But the second you step down to get under the cliffs, you are transported to another time, the Classic period years 1100-1300 to be exact. What a joy to explore such ancient ruins that are so very well preserved. We decided to take the ranger tour of Cliff Palace, the largest site of remains in the area. They predict over a hundred people once lived and stored their food in the kivas, rooms, and towers built into the cliff. The Ancestral Puebloans were farmers, their fields grew on top the Mesa, above their cliff dwellings. They were also climbers, etching hand and foot holds into the sheer cliffs to reach their crops everyday. We got to climb a series of ten foot long ladders to get in and out. It was quite unreal walking throughout a village with hand shaped rocks for bricks and dried sand water mortaring the walls to stand so perfectly straight you could put a level to it! Three story tall towers reaching up and single story round rooms (kivas) dug deep into the base of the cave. Evidence of soot lined walls and ceilings of rooms where fire was their heat and cooking source. Tiny crawl spaces led back to rooms of storage for winter months. It was amazing feeling and imagining the space alive with its everyday hum to survive. In the Mesa Verde area there are several known cliff dwellings and Cliff Palace is thought to be a gathering place for all groups, a place to store extra crops and resources to be divvied out during winter or long droughts that sometimes lasted years. Either way, the lack of evidence of war or fighting and the intense evidence of a strong community based life has reassured my faith in humanity. What a true treat to enter a past that has been diagnosed by historians and archeologists but still holds its mystery for there is no written documentation for what life was like, all we know we know from the trees. Back on the road in Robin we headed to “four corners”, arrived precisely a half hour late, apparently it is an actual place owned by the Navajo tribe, and they close their gates at 7. Here we were imagining two invisible lines crossing with a sign stuck in the middle reading Four Corners. Oh well, so much for being in four places at once. We got back on the highway New Mexico bound. Cruised at night toward Albuquerque and saw the most magnificent shooting star, it’s tail lasted for many seconds before it burnt out, brilliant! Landed in Bernalillo, a suburb of the main city to sleep for the night.