Heading west June, 2016

          Tuesday, May 31, we left Fairview to make our way west.  Our ultimate destination was Anacortes, WA, but we weren’t due there until July 8.  We’ve planned many stops along the way.  Our intermediate destination was to be in Visalia, CA, on June 15, and we’ve allowed plenty of time to get there.  Our hope was that we would find an interesting place to stop and explore for a few days before travelling on to the next interesting stop.

            Following friend Chuck’s advice (who has driven between California and Illinois many times), we decided to take US 54 and US 56 to I-25 in New Mexico.  Certainly we could have found a faster route, but we were excited to “take the road less travelled”.

            Our first night’s stop was in Linn Creek, Missouri, in the Lake of the Ozarks country.  We realized that we had never explored this area!  Jan remembered vacationing there with her parents and brothers about 60 years ago, but that didn’t count.  We were close to Bagnall Dam and were off to explore.  Lake of the Ozarks was one of those Depression era success stories.  Construction had begun four months before the Stock Market crash of 1929, so this area of central Missouri had plenty of jobs during the 30’s. 

            The impoundment of the Osage River eventually created a shoreline longer than that of California.  One of those quirky facts that we liked to uncover:  among others, backwaters extended up into the Pomme De Terre River, named by the Lewis and Clark expedition.  The name means “Potato River”.  Wild potatoes??  Even more interesting, the indigenous Osage people called this river “River of Big Bones”, for the mastodon bones they found along its banks!

            It was quite evident to us that this area of central Missouri

relied heavily on the tourist dollar.  We saw lots of condominiums sitting at the water’s edge next to a marina full of speedboats, restaurants of all sorts, and, of course, a microbrewery or two.  Horseshoe Bend Brewing Co. wasn’t our favorite, but we knew we cannot always hit a homerun!

            Our route on US 54 through Missouri and into Kansas was beautiful.  Off the interstate, we travelled through every little town enterprising enough to entice US-54

through the middle of their downtown businesses.  We saw beautiful old courthouses sitting in town squares, storefronts that had seen better times, and homes built 100 years ago.  This wasn’t a fast way to travel, but so interesting.  As I’ve said before, for us the trip is about the journey, not the destination.

            Eventually, US 54 took us to Wichita, KS.  We had passed through here last fall and resolved to return and explore…and so we did.  We parked Abe at the Air Capital RV Park and drove downtown to a likely looking brewery - River City Brewing Company.  We found great beer and yummy food, in the Old Town part of Wichita. 

            The primary reason we wanted to explore this area was because of Wichita’s aviation history.  According to Wikipedia:  In 1917, Clyde Cessna built his Cessna Comet in Wichita, the first aircraft built in the city. In 1920, two local oilmen invited Chicago aircraft builder Matty Laird to manufacture his designs in Wichita, leading to the formation of the Swallow Airplane Company.  Two early Swallow employees, Lloyd Stearman and Walter Beech, went on to found two prominent Wichita-based companies, Stearman Aircraft in 1926 and Beechcraft in 1932, respectively.  Cessna, meanwhile, started his own company in Wichita in 1927.  The city became such a center of the industry that the Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce dubbed it the "Air Capital of the World" in 1929. (Were you wondering about the name of our RV park?  That’s where it came from!)

            We had great hopes for the Wichita Air Museum, housed at the airport in the 30’s Art Deco terminal.  Imagine our disappointment when we discovered it was only open on the weekend!  Rats.  We were due to leave Wichita on Saturday morning, June 4.  Not to worry, though!  Other places to explore awaited!

            We drove downtown to see the Keeper of the Plains statue at the confluence of the Arkansas and Little Arkansas Rivers and enjoy a walk along the water.  The statue was erected in 1974 and stood 43’ tall.  

          There were several museums along the river as well as a beautiful view of downtown Wichita.

            Our next stop was Wichita’s botanical gardens and a delightful stroll the through beautiful displays.  I was particularly proud of this photo of a bee on a cone flower, but I could bore you with many more!

            Friday, June 3, following up on recommendations from another friend, Dave Carpenter, we drove to Hutchinson “Hutch”, KS.  Dave suggested we see two things:  Stratica salt mine and the Cosmosphere museum.  What good advice!

            We were surprised to learn of this huge salt deposit in the middle of Kansas…far from any ocean.  The Stratica web site was a wealth of information:  The Hutchinson Salt Member of the Permian Wellington Formation was formed about 275 million years ago when the Permian Sea dried up. One of the largest in the world, the extent of this bedded salt deposit is 27,000 square miles in central and south-central Kansas and is marginal to Permian Basin salt deposits in Oklahoma, the Texas Panhandle, and southeastern New Mexico that cover 100,000 square miles.  The purest portion of the salt vein at this location is 650 feet underground and is still mined here today. Strataca has access to about 300,000 square feet of mined out area. We also learned that this huge salt deposit was discovered in 1887 by a man who was looking for oil on his property and salt mining had occurred in some fashion ever since.  If all of the mine tunnels and chambers were lined up end to end, the chamber would be 150 miles long. 

            Of course, we couldn’t pass this tour up so donning hard hats, away we went.  The tour included a “salt railroad car” ride through the tunnels and rooms and a small museum display, all below ground, surrounded by walls of salt.  During the tour we saw many rusty remnants of old mining operations.  (I should mention that this part of the mine was worked in the 40’s and 50’s.  Although salt is still mined here, the active mining was far from where we were allowed to explore).  Nothing that was brought into the mine was returned to the surface and everything was brought down in a 4’ X 5’ elevator!  

           This old truck was dismantled then reassembled in the mine. 

            A document storage company had purchased a large portion of the inactive mine.  Old medical records, state documents, and even archived movies and costumes were stored here.  This area reminded me of that last scene in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” where the Ark of the Covenant was stored in a huge warehouse.  I suspected there were some rather interesting things in some of these boxes.  

            What were the other 35?

            Our second stop in Hutchinson was the Cosmosphere, a superbly done museum of space flight.  It was rather anticlimactic after the salt mine and delivered much the same information as the museum we had been to in New Mexico.  Jerry did manager to get his photo taken with a couple of astronauts, though.

            Saturday, June 4, we hit the road again, to the very SW corner of Kansas and the little town of Elkhart, KS, on US 56.  I was not very optimistic about this stop, but since it was just for overnight we really just needed a place to park.  Prairie RV Park turned out to be behind a carwash!  We did have a patch of grass but that was all.  We did, however have 50 amp power and only paid $20 to stay…not bad!

            Acting on our belief that there was always something new to see we went exploring.  We knew that we were on the edge of the Cimarron National Grasslands.  We soon discovered that the Santa Fe trail passed through this area and that Point of Rocks was a famous landmark that marked the route. 

            We followed remnants of the Santa Fe trail as we travelled through the panhandle of Oklahoma and into New Mexico.  This butte, called Wagon Mound, just outside of town of the same name.  Using our trusty “Roadside Geology of New Mexico” we learned that this butte was the result of two separate lava flows occurring in the past couple of million years.  This landmark was used by the travellers on the Santa Fe trail as a guidepost for the route to Santa Fe…6 days away!  We made it to Santa Fe from Elkhart, KS, in about 5 hours!  Good not to travel in a covered wagon. 

            We settled in to Santa Fe Skies RV Park for three days to explore this area too.  We had not been to Santa Fe before and were ready to learn.  Since we arrived on Sunday, June 6, there wasn’t much going on, so we found the Railyard area of Santa Fe and another microbrewery - Second Street Brewing Company.

            Have you ever been on a long vacation and simply reached your saturation of learning/seeing/doing new things?  That’s how we felt about Santa Fe on Monday morning, so we headed for the hills…literally.  We drove into the Jemez Mountains, about an hour NW of Santa Fe to see Bandalier National Monument.  

From Wikipedia:

Bandelier National Monument is a 33,677-acre United States National Monument in New Mexico preserving the homes and territory of the Ancestral Puebloans of a later era in the Southwest. Most of the pueblo structures date to two eras, in total from 1150 to 1600 CE.  The Monument is 50 square miles of the Pajarito Plateau, on the slopes of the Jemez Volcanic field in the Jemez Mountains.

            The ruins of the Puebloan city were located along Frijoles River canyon, with some of the structures on the floor of the valley and some of the rooms along the walls of the canyon.  These Indians were hunter-gathers with rudimentary farming skills, but had a large trade route extending into Mexico.  Their life span was about 35 years and they were small in stature…men 5’6” and the women 5’.  The rooms of their dwellings reflected their size.

            We were not far from Los Alamos and thought surely there would be a great museum there, but as luck would have it, the building was undergoing extensive remodelling and did not get good reviews  So, we did some grocery shopping and found a spot for a beer and dinner.  Pajarito Brewpub and Grille had some of the best calamari we’d had outside of Monterey, CA.  Yum!

            All three late afternoons at Santa Fe Skies RV park we had clouds, wind and the threat of rain.  Too early for the Southwest’s monsoon season, but that was what it felt like.  The first evening we were there, the counties to the south of us had tornado and hail warnings.  Yikes!  We had wind and showers on the second evening for a little while, which gave us a lovely double rainbow.  Our RV park sat on a ridge overlooking the valley and we had spectacular views of the clouds as they boiled up to the south of us.

            On Tuesday, June 7, we made it to the old part of Santa Fe to visit the historical museum and the Palace of the Governors.  Santa Fe has been the capital city for five different entities…Spain, France, the Confederacy, Texas, and, of course the US.  Lots of history here!

            We arrived in Gallup, NM, on Wednesday, June 8, and planned a two-day stay.  We drove to see the downtown and found it to be full of old buildings, pawnshops, and Indian merchandise stores.  Gallup was in the middle of a Navajo Reservation and was quite proud of its Indian heritage. 

            Native Americans from Arizona and New Mexico were the Navajo Code Talkers during World War II.  These young Navajo men were Marines who used their knowledge of the Navajo language to transmit secret military information in the Pacific theater.  Their “code” was never broken and not one message was lost or incorrectly transmitted.  After the war the young men who returned home became community leaders and change agents for better lives for the Navajo people.  Very impressive! 

            During the 30’s and 40’s Gallup was a popular location for filming Westerns.  El Rancho Hotel was where the film crews and actors stayed while making movies.  In fact, over 150 “Hollywood Stars” stayed here, including Jimmy Stewart, Katharine Hepburn, and John Wayne, among many others.  The hotel is on the National Register of Historic Places and was still in operation.  We wandered the hotel hallways and saw a star’s name above every door, but never found the room belonging to John Wayne…and you know we looked!

            The 49er Lounge, the El Rancho Hotel’s bar, was an interesting spot.  Probably because Gallup was on Route 66, this bar had lots of business.  The members of a vintage car club were “wetting their whistles” the afternoon we were there.  The picture above shows one of the stained glass windows in the bar…the best of several.  Lots of patrons from all over the world had tacked dollar bills to the walls and ceiling…but not us.

            Friday, June 10, we were on the road, headed west once again, with Flagstaff, AZ, in our sites.  Although we had driven through here several times in the last 30 years, we had never stopped to explore.  We thought three days here ought to do it!  Greer’s Pine Shadows RV Park was our home away from home and an interesting spot.  We managed to get Abe leveled ok, but no way could we use our camping chairs without putting blocks under the front legs, so we wouldn’t fall out of them!

            Our first touristy destination was north on US 89 and Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument.  This whole area had experienced a huge amount of volcano activity.   As recently as 10,000 years ago the volcano sent ash over 800 square miles and ejected miles and miles of lava.  Because this area was so dry and at an elevation of at least 7,000 feet, the weathering of the lava flows had been minimal.

            At the time of Sunset Volcano’s eruption, there were ancient Pueblo people living in the area.  No doubt many died, but the ruins of many of their Pueblos remain and were a part of Wupatki National Monument.  We stopped at “the Citadel”, ruins on top of a small mesa, which overlooked a sinkhole.  What an interesting spot.  Jerry did a great job of composing this photo.  In the background were the San Francisco peaks (more old volcanoes), the sinkhole, the Citadel ruins, me (of course!) and a rain cloud with virga (rain that didn’t hit the ground).

            By late afternoon we had absorbed all the information of the area that our brains had room for, so it was off to old downtown Flagstaff and a beer at Flagstaff Brewing Company.  The whole southwest seemed to be infected with the notion that beer should be “hoppy”…not our favorite!  So, after one beer at this spot we went across the street to Lumberjack Brewing Company and found brews to our liking.  Even better, we sat around the outside fire pit and visited with three young (our kids’ ages) couples from Phoenix that had come north to escape the heat.  Delightful, chance meeting and lively conversation with folks we’ll never see again!

            Saturday morning we decided to drive to Sedona by way of Oak Creek Canyon.  This 12-mile long route between was one of the more spectacular drives to be had.  Travelling through this amazing area prodded the amateur geologist in both of us and we learned that about 8 million years ago, the Oak Creek Fault became active.   The modern Oak Creek Canyon developed along the fault zone as Oak Creek eroded the area.  The spectacularly eroded walls of the canyon are buff to white and red Permian sandstones.  The youngest rocks were a series of basalt lava flows, the youngest of which is an estimated 6 million years old.

            Jerry had been here with his buddy Chuck 25 years ago or so and knew to drive to the top of the mesa where the airport was located.  What spectacular views!!!  We discovered a path to the “Sedona Overlook” that led from the airport parking lot and soon found ourselves on top of this little knob.  From here we had more spectacular views to the northeast.  These red sandstone mesas were mesas were beyond description

            We chose an alternate trail back to the airport parking lot, called the “airport loop”.  We were rather naïvely thought that this would be a shortcut back to the truck…in 95^o heat and no water!  About a mile into the route we turned back, and later learned that the loop was 3.3 miles.  Whew!!  

            We did get to see more spectacular scenery, though!

            We continued to drive southeast out of Sedona along AZ 179, the Red Rock Trail, and eventually connected with I-17 to return to Flagstaff.  Along the way we found the Full Moon Saloon and re-hydrated ourselves.  We had the place to ourselves and had a lively conversation with Jordan, the bartender, who reminded us of daughter, Joy!

            Sunday morning we were off toe church at Living Christ Lutheran Church, about ¼ mile down the road.  This congregation, like so many others we have visited is shrinking and is in the call process for a pastor who will assist them in growth through deliberate community outreach.  The folks we met were warm welcoming, and we wished them well in their endeavors!

            Sunday afternoon, June 12, we drove to Lowell Observatory, located on a mesa on the west side of Flagstaff.  Percival Lowell, a wealthy Bostonian, established the observatory in the 1890’s to search and record the canals of Mars.  (Of course, the notion of Martian canals has since been disproved).  It was here in 1930 that Clyde Tombaugh identified the ninth planet, Pluto.  Pluto has been demoted from planet status to that of a dwarf planet, but that fact was barely touched upon during our tour.

            The Clark telescope was built in 1896 and housed in a dome built by two local bicycle repairmen.  The telescope was used to identify the expanding nature of the universe…another significant discovery.  Lowell Observatory has been busy!

            Monday we left the cool temperatures of Flagstaff and continued west on I-40 to Needles, CA.  What a shock!  Our weather station said the outside temp was 101 but it was a dry heat. Needles expected to have 120^o temps by the weekend.  We didn’t linger!

            Tuesday, June 14, (today) we parked just east of Bakersfield, CA and will make it to Visalia tomorrow, June 15.  As we drove across the southern end of the Mojave Desert, we were surprised to see the hillsides showed a hint of green.  Usually by mid-June the hills are a golden brown.  We saw lots of LONNNGGG trains as we travelled through Arizona and this part of California. 

            Our final descent into the San Joaquin Valley, our home for more than 30 years, reminded us of the importance of agriculture all throughout the central valley.  In fact, the RV park where we stopped is in an old orange grove on the east side of Bakersfield.

            We will be in California visiting family and friends for several weeks, so there will be more stories to come!