We began the summer with a visit to Tucson to watch a dog and two cats for a friend while he was away. We had watched them before so we were all familiar with one another. Tucson is hot in the summer so we took our walks and walked the dog very early, soon after sunrise, to avoid the midday heat. Later in the day we enjoyed the backyard pool or just stayed inside where it was cool. One day we paid a visit to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, where we attended a demonstration of several desert birds in their auditorium. It was interesting to see these beautiful birds up close. Click on the first photo in each block to view larger images in a slideshow.
We left Tucson at the beginning of August, on our way to Zion National Park and Las Vegas. We had spent part of our honeymoon there in 1974 and we were returning to celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary. On our way we spent the night in Page, Arizona, and we stopped to take a look at Glen Canyon Dam, which forms Lake Powell. We also stopped at Pipe Spring National Monument in northern Arizona, originally a Paiute homeland and later the site of a fort established by Mormon settlers. Pipe Spring has a reliable water supply so it was of great value to those living in the nearby desert.
We enjoyed our return to Zion. It is one of the most beautiful National Parks and we had a hotel room with a patio with a great view of the red cliffs, which we enjoyed. We took a morning hike in Zion Canyon and were somewhat alarmed by how crowded it had become, not like 50 years ago. The next day we ventured out to Kolob Canyons, a more remote section of the park, and we were greeted by much smaller crowds and more serenity. After Zion, on our way back to California, we spent a night in Las Vegas and had a fancy dinner. We had been to Las Vegas on our honeymoon, as well, and it, too, has changed a lot in 50 years.
When we returned to California we spent a long weekend in the Bay Area, visiting with Andy and enjoying one of our favorite walks along the waterfront at Crissy Field in San Francisco. We also did some exploring in Petaluma, an old town in Sonoma County, north of San Francisco. Then from mid-August to mid-September we were in Sutter Creek, an old Gold Rush town in Amador County in the Sierra Foothills about 50 miles east of Sacramento. We were petsitting for five cats, arranged through TrustedHousesitters. Every cat has a unique personality so some of the cats warmed up to us quickly and others kept their distance. We enjoyed frequent walks through the interesting and picturesque old town.
After a brief stop in Sacramento we headed east again to spend October in Raton, New Mexico, to watch a cat for friends while they were on vacation. We traveled through northern Arizona and made a stop at Ganado, a small town near the center of the Navajo Reservation. While there we visited Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site, a restored trading post dating from 1878. From there we spent the night in Chinle, Arizona, just outside Canyon de Chelly National Monument. We spent much of the next day exploring Canyon de Chelly, known for its natural beauty and for some well-preserved cliff dwellings. Leaving Canyon de Chelly, we climbed up, then down, 8800 feet in the Chuska Mountains on our way to northern New Mexico. Near the end of the day we traveled past Shiprock, a volcanic feature that early settlers thought resembled a sailing ship with its sails unfurled. Shiprock is striking in part because it is accompanied on two sides by volcanic curtains that erupted through cracks in the earth’s surface. Traveling along, as we approached the town of Shiprock we came to realize that we were there on the weekend of the Northern Navajo Fair. Traffic was heavy and for several miles the highway was lined by stalls selling crafts, food, and almost anything else you could think of. It was a big deal. The next day, on our way to Raton, we stopped in Chama, New Mexico, to visit Tierra Wools, a well-known sheep fiber, wool, and weaving store. We had tried to visit them a few years ago but they were closed for the winter at that time, so we didn’t want to miss our chance this time. Their products are beautiful.
We arrived in Raton in early October to begin our one-month stay. We were watching Rosie, a small Manx cat with a short bobtail typical of her breed. Rosie was an independent cat but she could also be affectionate when she chose to be. She had the odd habit of wanting to be scratched and petted while she ate. We stayed in an old ranch house on a working horse ranch just outside of Raton. The lady in a nearby house took care of the horses but we saw them every day in their pens and pasture. They were beautiful quarter horses. Raton is an old town that was a thriving mining town about a century ago. Nearby mines supplied coal for the Santa Fe Railroad. The mines closed around 1950 so now the Raton economy is based on ranching and tourist travel along I-25. We had previously spent most of our time in New Mexico around Albuquerque and Santa Fe, which are heavily influenced by the Pueblo and Spanish cultures. Raton was interesting to us because it is more of a cowtown, influenced more by nearby Texas than by central New Mexico.
Our friend grew up on the CS Cattle Ranch near Cimarron, about 40 miles southwest of Raton. Her family still runs the ranch so we had the opportunity to visit the ranch and see what a large-scale cattle operation looks like. The ranch was established in 1873 so they had a big celebration last year for their 150 year anniversary.
Having been intrigued by the ranch, on another day we took a drive back out to Cimarron to check out some of the old buildings in town. We had a printed tour map that described some of the buildings. Cimmaron was thriving about a century ago but is now a rather sleepy little town.
On another day we drove out to Capulin Volcano National Monument, about 30 miles east of Raton. Capulin is one of a series of small extinct volcanoes scattered across northeastern New Mexico. It was preserved as a National Monument because it is a good example of recent volcanic activity (recent by geological standards, anyway). We drove along a road to the top and walked along the rim trail.
We left Raton in early November to return to California for a while. We took a southern route to avoid possible snowstorms in the Colorado mountains, which turned out to be a wise choice, as snow throughout the region followed just a few days after we left. We took an extra day to visit two National Monuments between Grants and Gallup in western New Mexico, El Malpais and El Morro. El Malpais roughly translates as “The Badlands” in Spanish, and it preserves several rather recent (again, by geological standards) lava flows. Farther down the road, El Morro is a large cliff or rock outcropping that has a large pond at its base. Because it was a reliable water supply it attracted inhabitants of the region as well as travelers, from the early time of the indigenous people through the time of the Spanish explorers to the later time of the settlers moving west from the East Coast. Because the sandstone is soft, people were able to carve their names and other text into the rock, hence it is known as the inscription rock. You can still see petroglyphs from the early period, Spanish and Latin inscriptions from the explorers, and names and hometowns of the American settlers. We had a light dusting of snow at El Morro, but nothing to slow us down.
It’s always fun to catch up with you! You’re living the dream!