We settled into the Desert Rose RV Resort in Bloomfield after a fairly short 50 mile or so trip from Durango. After lunch we did our laundry at the park’s very nice laundry facility. After that we just stayed in for the rest of the day.
Friday, July 29th, we headed out after lunch for some local geocaching. Although we had stayed in Farmington, New Mexico, just 25 miles West, for a few days a couple weeks ago, we had not come this far East for caching,
so we had quite a few to choose from. We managed to get nine finds in a couple of hours, with two DNFs tossed in for good measure. Bloomfield is a small town, about 7,000 population, and is pretty much a crossroads community. It lies at the intersection of the two primary highways in Northwest New Mexico, US 550 which goes North/South and US 64 which goes East/West. A lot of the local jobs are also in support of the oil and gas industry, as is Farmington.Saturday, July 30th we set out early, about 9:00, from Bloomfield, driving South on US 550 for Sante Fe again. The drive was about 190 miles, but Highway 550 is a major artery in this area and is a four lane highway all the way from Bloomfield to where it ends at I-25 North of Albuquerque. The road is also fairly level without a lot of up and down grades to worry about. We were headed back to the Sante Fe Skies RV park, where we were earlier in the month when we stopped at Sante Fe. The reason we are headed back to the same place so soon is that our good friends Barry and Colleen Cohen are also headed to the same park. They have been in Denver, visiting their daughter, and we set up our travels to meet them in Sante Fe. They are coming down I-25 from Denver and have over twice as far to travel, over 400 miles, but they should still get in by mid afternoon.
We arrived at the park at about 1:30 and got settled into a nice spot. Barry and Colleen arrived about 3:30 and parked in the site right next door. We had a great reunion, we had last seen them in Camp Verde, Arizona back in June. They came over for cocktails and we then fixed dinner for all of us. They are traveling with their six year old granddaughter, Zoe, and have had her with them for about three weeks. Jackie fixed an chicken enchilada dish and Barry brought over some of his wedding soup, both of which were wonderful. The girls played a couple of games of Skipbo while Barry and I just talked. They left about 9:00 because it had been a long day for Barry.
Sunday, July 31st, we all got into our Jeep to spend some time exploring Sante Fe. We left the coach about 11:30 and went to a Mexican Restaurant in Sante Fe called PC’s. This place had been recommended to
us by a guy we met at the FOP Lodge when we were here earlier in the month. We didn’t get a chance to go then, but suggested it to Barry and Colleen for today. We found a very clean, very busy restaurant with a great menu. The food was excellent. Even Barry, who is a bit of a picky eater who doesn’t usually eat a lot, cleaned his plate. I would recommend PC’s to anyone visiting the area. It is on Airport Road, a block or so West of Cerrillos, which is the main road through Sante Fe.After lunch we drove up to Old Sante Fe to do some tourist wandering. They were having a huge art festival in the Old Plaza and had a lot of the roads closed. We finally got a parking place and walked into the Plaza area. We looked at some of the art booths, but found that 90 percent of the stuff was religious art, Catholic icons, crucifixes, that sort of stuff. We spent about an hour walking around, looking at different shops and stuff. We then got back in the car and headed to Walmart for some shopping. Barry and Colleen needed some provisions. After shopping we went back to the coaches.
Barry, Colleen and Zoe came over to our coach and Colleen and Jackie played cards while Barry and I went in the back to sing some karaoke and drink. Zoe watched cartoons on the TV. Barry and I had a
wonderful time singing, as we always do when we are together. About 8:00 we heated up the leftovers from the night before for snacks. None of us were real hungry after the big lunch, but we did nibble a little at the leftovers. 
About 9:00 the Cohen’s left to go to bed. They are leaving in the morning, heading back towards their home in Indio, California. Barry is going to stop in Flagstaff for the night, but it is still a 350 mile drive from Sante Fe to Flagstaff. Then he has another 350 miles from Flagstaff to Indio. I don’t envy his having to be back to work on Wednesday and having to make all these long hauls. A long day for us is 200 miles.Monday, August 1st, happy August and day before the big USA default! Barry and Colleen were packed up and out by 9:00 and we were up to say goodbye. After we had lunch we drove the 45 miles back to the North part of Albuquerque to do some shopping at Costco and a Walmart supercenter. We also made a quick stop at Sam’s Club since it was close by. We needed to get some supplies that might not be available for a few weeks as we wander the prairies.
After our shopping trip we drove to the Rio Rancho Elks Lodge. Rio Rancho is a suburb of Albuquerque, to the Northwest of the city. We had never been to this lodge before. They have a nice lodge building close to the center of town. We noticed coming in that the Intel company, the one’s that make a lot of the chips for your computer, has a huge plant in Rio Rancho. The campus appears to be about a mile long along the main street of town. Must be a big employer for the area.
The Rio Rancho lodge was very friendly and we chatted with the bartender and a couple of other members for over an hour. We visited their casino, but didn’t win anything. Poop! We had a couple of drinks and the lodge bought us one as well. We also got their lodge pin to put on our banner. Yea! After the lodge visit we headed back home after a quick stop at a Papa Murphy’s pizza place to pick up a take and bake pizza. We went home, made our pizza and had a nice evening.
Tuesday, August 2nd, default day, except that I woke up to the news reporting a compromise that was going to pass both the house and senate and be signed into law today. Wow, who would have guessed that they would come to an agreement at the last minute. (Hint: Just about everyone.) We packed up the coach and left the Sante Fe Skies RV park about 9:30 for a 170 mile drive Southeast to Tucumcari, New Mexico. We arrived in Tucumcari about 1:00 and were
greeted by triple digit temps. Yikes. It was 102 when I was setting up the coach. We decided that it was a long drive and too hot to go out to explore, so we just stayed in the rest of the day. We are in the Kiva RV park, which is affiliated with one of our membership groups, Adventure Camping Network (ACN). This gives us camping at discount rates. We called ACN while we were on the way to Tucumcari and made a reservation for three nights at $20 a night, which is pretty good. Their normal rate for a 50 amp full hookup pull through site is close to $30, plus taxes. Although the place looks pretty rustic from the street, when we got back to the sites they were nice level gravel sites with cable and free internet to boot. Much better than what we had in Farmington.What would eventually become Tucumcari was created as Douglas Camp, a railroad construction camp built by the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad in 1901 as it pushed the line West. Because there were so many gunfights at the camp, it was nicknamed “Six Shooter Siding.” Like many of the railroad camps, settlers gradually moved into the area and in 1908 the town was founded and renamed Tucumcari. The name comes from the nearby Tucumcari Mountain, which was named by early explorers in the region. Tucumcari is a rough derivation of the Comanche word for “lookout.” The town is also one of the many small towns which laid along the route of old U.S. 66, and main street still has many of the old, colorful neon signs and a couple of the famous “shape buildings,” which popped up along Route 66 over the years. There is a Mexican restaurant in the shape of a sombrero and a curio shop shaped like a huge Tee Pee.
Wednesday, August 3rd, we awoke to humidity! Now I know there are some of you who would say, why mention that? I grew up in the desert and lived in desert areas almost all of my life. Humid for me is 10 percent. This morning it was super sticky, everything you touched felt damp and sticky. We did have some pretty testy thunderstorms roll through last night. None of them lasted too long, nor were they serious cells, but lots of lightning and thunder (which I enjoy and Jackie hates) and hard rain for ten minutes while the cell goes over. It was enough to leave the ground wet, which means humidity this morning.
After lunch we went out to do some geocaching in Tucumcari. We were last here in 2006, which was before we started caching, so this is virgin territory for us. I was surprised that there were several dozen caches in town and geocaching was even listed on the town’s sheet of “things to do”
that was provided by the RV park. We did seven caches in a couple of hours, along with two we were unable to find. One of the caches we went to, actually one of our DNFs, was named Six Shooter Siding, and was supposed to be located very near the original camp site where the town started. While we were caching we noticed that the town appears to be slowly dying, with dozens of abandoned stores, buildings and houses, all around the center of town. It is a very sad looking little town. About 3:30 we decided it was getting too hot, it was in the high nineties and humid, so we went to the Tucumcari Elks Lodge. This lodge has RV sites in the lot behind the building and we had stayed here for two nights back in September of 2006. We had originally planned on staying at the lodge on this trip too, but decided that with the extreme heat we needed 50 amp service so we could run both air conditioners, and the lodge only has 30 amp.
There were several people in the bar, but only one said hi and the bartender was a little slow to warm up to us also. We had a cocktail and spent a few bucks each in the casino. Again, no luck with the Elks slot machines. Oh well, a donation to a good cause. We found that this lodge has about 450 members, which is pretty good for a town of only a little over 5,000 population. We also picked up a lodge pin. We had one from 2006, and they still had the same pin, however, they also had their centennial in 2009 and they had a new pin made for that, so we got the newer pin for our banner.
After a cocktail at the lodge we drove around town for a little bit, just sightseeing, fueled up the Jeep and then headed back to the coach for the night. About 7:00 or so the monsoon thunderstorms started up again and went on for about two hours, just like the night before. Lots of light and noise, a little rain and wind, and then a quiet night.
Thursday, August 4th, another sticky morning. After lunch we went out to do some more caching. Although it was just as hot as yesterday we seemed to have an easier afternoon of it. We managed to get an even dozen new finds with no DNFs. One of the caches took us to an antique store and we spent about a half hour wandering around looking at the stuff in the store. After we were done caching we stopped at the Tee Pee curio shop, the one with the front shaped like a tee pee, and then headed back to the coach about 3:30 to get into the A/C again.
Friday, August 5th we were up and out of the RV park by about 9:30 for a day of travel to Amarillo, Texas, about 100 miles East on I-40. We made a stop for fuel before leaving Tucumcari because diesel is about a nickle cheaper in New Mexico than it is in Texas. Once we cleared New Mexico, about 60 miles West of Amarillo, it was clear that we had made the prairie. There wasn’t a mountain anywhere in sight. It took us a couple hours to get to the Oasis RV Resort, about five miles West of Amarillo on I-40. This is a very nice RV park with all 50 amp full hookup sites, perfectly level concrete pads and patios, nice streets, nice clubhouse and amenities, including cable and internet. The best part is the rate for a full week was $120. That’s just a few cents over $17 a day. The park is a little stark, there is no grass or trees, but when we were coming down the road everything for a hundred miles around is brown and dead because of the drought. Grass would probably just be dead and ugly anyway. It was hot, 99 degrees by 1:00 when I started getting setup, so I didn’t do much outside except put up the shade screens.
While we were on our way between Tucumcari and Amarillo Jackie got a phone call from some friends of ours back in Indio, Pat and Monte Montes, asking us if we were going to be in Amarillo tonight. It turns out that Pat and Monte were also traveling in their motorhome on the way to Michigan and were going to be overnighting in Amarillo! Pat and Monte were members of the Indio Elks travel club, the Desert Drifters, and we have known them well for years. We were excited to be able to cross paths with friends.
After we got settled in Jackie and Pat talked again and we made plans to meet at the Amarillo Elks Lodge about 6:00 for dinner. They are staying on the East side of town, we are on the West, but he Lodge is about in the middle. We agreed and decided that we needed to leave the coach around 5:30 or so to be sure we got to the lodge on time. About 4:30 I turned on what I thought would be the local news on local television (off the antenna, not the satellite) and found the network’s national news show on. I immediately checked the internet for time zone information, looked at my phone, and realized, oh oh, when we came into Texas we went into the central time zone. It wasn’t 4:30, it was 5:30! I told Jackie and she went into high gear and miraculously, we were ready to go by ten to six and made the Elks Lodge only ten minutes late! Yea us!
We had a great time catching up with Pat and Monte over some cocktails and then dinner. The lodge had a pretty good dinner menu, that they serve five nights a week. Jackie had a nice steak and I had the shrimp dinner. We finally decided it was time to head for home about 9:00, the latest we have been out of the coach in a long time. We were really happy to have the chance to cross paths with Pat and Monte. They are leaving in the morning for their next stop, Oklahoma City. We told them to be sure and try to make time to see the OK City memorial where the Federal building was blown up back in 1995. We had been there back in 2006 and were very moved.
When we left the lodge we found that it had rained a little bit while were in having dinner, but it had quit and the temperature had dropped into the 70's, very nice out. We drove home in the dark, a rare event, and spent the rest of the night in the coach (after changing all the clocks!).
Our arrival in beautiful Amarillo, Texas for a week stay will mark the end of this chapter of our travels. I will post again in a week or so as we wander the prairie. We will be here for a week, then head up into Oklahoma and Kansas. Until we meet again, “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.” (Henry David Thoreau) See ya soon!
