Ancestral Puebloans Or “Oh no, not another Roman Ruin!” Why the subtitle for this piece? Well, when I was a child and my family lived in Turkey, this was a refrain my brother and I would chant, with a groan, when we stopped on our tour through western Turkey at places like Didyma and Miletus. Well - this was kind of what Max and Miles would say when they would ask “where are we going next?” “We’re going to Mesa Verde.” “What’s there?” “Some really cool cliff dweller ruins, with ladders you can climb up to see them.” “Oh no, not [View Full Entry]

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Piper and I have been hanging out at the hotel taking advantage of the indoor pool. Mark is with his buddies (Gary, Michael, Jorma, and Nick) at the NRA Whittington Center taking a 3 day course in the Barrett 50 cal Rifle. Piper and I decide to venture into Raton for lunch and find the Sweet Shop. In business since 1923, it is currently owned by Mike J. Pappas. His father opened the Sweet Shop in 1923. In the gift shop I see a book entitled, "Raton - History, Mystery and More." I enjoy the bits I read standing there and [View Full Entry]

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The drive from Texas to Raton, NM is incredible. Piper thinks that a mountain out the window looks like a volcano...turns out she's right. It's Mt. Capulin. There aren't a lot of places to stay in Raton, we are at the Holiday Inn Express. When I check in, they let me know there is a complimentary dinner for guests every night - potato soup and chili dogs tonight - and hot breakfast every morning. Cool! When I walk the dogs, housekeeping gets on their radios and soon I have a crowd on the patio admiring the dogs. Daily, they'd meet us [View Full Entry]

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Oklahoma City to Raton, NM. We are still on I-40 West. Today is a great travel day! Lots to see. Gigantic windmills courtesy of the Oklahoma Wind Energy Center dot the landscape. They look like something out of a sci-fi movie. We also see one of the real buildings that the animators creating the movie, CARS used in the film. In CARS it was the custom paint shop of one of the characters. Lots of tiny derricks also dot the landscape, along with windmills straight out of Wizard of Oz. Managed to get a shot of the Welcome to Texas [View Full Entry]

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It was really dark outside when we woke up this morning in Holbrook and that could only mean one thing in Arizona, RAIN, RAIN and more RAIN !! We forced ourselves to get up even though we wanted to lay in bed all morning and listen to the rain beating down on the roof. By the time Tim finished unhooking everything on the RV, the rain had slowed a little, so we decided to stay at the KOA and enjoy some of their all-you-can-eat pancakes. It's kinda neat, because most all of the KOA's we've stayed at on this trip have [View Full Entry]

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Dear friends and family, Today, I am packing for my caving expedition to Chile. The purpose of this trip is to map caves, for a NASA project, in the Atacama region of Chile. We are going to the Atacama because it is very similar to Mars. The Atacama is the driest place on earth and has little to no vegitation. The project goal is locate caves on Mars, using thermal detection devices, so we are using the Atacama as an analogy site. If we can detect caves in the Atacama we should be able to find them on Mars. In doing [View Full Entry]

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Colorado to New Mexico Great Sand Dunes National Park Our second day on the dunes we were lucky, as locals said the wind had been unseasonably strong (evidently it blows a lot in the spring, but usually not so much in the summer); it calmed down substantially and we had a pleasant stroll through the water of Mather creek over to the sand dunes, put our shoes back on (to protect against hot sand), and began our climb up. Climbing a mountain of sand is tricky when it is steep. We walked across some ridges, but at a certain point we [View Full Entry]

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Quick words on Santa Fe. Adobe. Dry heat. Railway Runaway Cowboys. Smoky. Dustbowl. Canyon Street. Fine Art. Pork Burritos. Lamb Tacos. Religion. Three Deer. Pitch Black. Public Bathrooms. Gravel Pit. Wrong turns. Santa Fe to Flagstaff: 383 miles Flagstaff was a pleasant break. We stayed in a hotel called Little America and rubbed clean the stenches we’d been collecting from the airs of different towns. The hair is no longer oil soaked. My face is no longer scratchy with stubble. My thirsts for beer and hot tubs were each taken care of, regardless of the fact that it was raining at [View Full Entry]

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Roswell. Managed not to be beamed anywhere, and the only thing that got probed was my bank ballance for the hotel and gas.... Wounder it there was ever a guy called Jim who got beamed up by aliens....JimBeam. hmmm must have a drink over that one. Had a quick look at Roswell, fairly normal town, the usual tourist shops of Alien stuff, and alien museam, most of the street lights in the centre of town are alien heads. Headed out of town towards the west on highway 70, it started out a yet another flat straight peice of road through arid [View Full Entry]

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Got underway a bit late today, not on the road until 9am, felt like half the day was gone. Had a quick look around Kerrville and got some nice pics down by the Guadalupe river which runs through the town. Not sure of the population but is a good sized town with everything you need and the usual stuff you don't But is still small enough to have that country feel. Fill up with gas, topped up the oil, yip its using a bit, didn't while only driving around town. Generally todays trip was another just drive and get there day [View Full Entry]

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