Capulin is nearly 7,000 feet in elevation, and Jackie does not do well with altitude, so she was not feeling well after we got set up and settled in. She spent the rest of the day on the couch, catching up on TV shows and I did some administrative work in the Man Cave. We are going to be at altitudes of six or seven thousand feet for the next week or more, so hopefully she will acclimate a little and get to feeling better.
Friday, October 12th, we awoke to cold, about 45 degrees, and overcast skies. The weather forecast for the day was showers and thunderstorms possible all day. By 10:00 we were already getting light rain, so we decided to spend the day at home, except that at some point during the day we needed to try and get one geocache find for the day. This was an open day on our days of the year challenge, and so far we have kept up with the challenge. We didn’t want to let a little rain make us leave a hole in the calendar.
We were parked right next door to the laundry room at the RV park, so I started hauling some clothes over there in the morning. We did two loads in the morning, and then another two loads after lunch and after our quick geocaching run. After lunch it was raining pretty hard, but we knew that there was at least one cache that would be fairly easy to get, and it was close by. The cache was at the Capulin Volcano National Monument, which is only about three miles from the RV park. The Monument is on our list of things to do while we are here, but today was certainly not the day to do a full scale visit. The entire top of the mountain, which is actually a 60,000 year old cinder cone, was sheathed in clouds.
However, the cache we were after was a type known as an Earth Cache. An Earth Cache is similar to the old Virtual Cache, which are no longer allowed to be placed, in that there is no actual container or log. You have to visit a place that has some geological or natural significance, and then answer questions about the site. You email the answers to the cache owner to verify that you went to the site. This one was quite easy in that we only had to go inside of the visitor’s center at the Monument and look up the answers to two questions on the educational displays inside the center. We also had to submit a photo of one of us, with a GPS, in front of one of the signs in the parking lot. We will probably come back tomorrow for a full tour of the Monument, the weather is supposed to be better, but we did go into the Visitor’s Center and get the answers we needed, and the photo, so we were able to log the cache. Yea, got the day taken care of.After our quick visit to the Monument we went back to the park and did a couple more loads of laundry. We spent the rest of the day and evening in the coach. About 6:00 the actual thunderstorms started rolling in and our weather alert radio started going off with severe thunderstorm alerts, and even one tornado alert. Fortunately, the tornado alert was for much further south and west, near Sante Fe, so it was not real scary. A couple of really strong thunderstorms passed by just a few miles from us, but didn’t have any that went directly over us. Dodged the bullet again. We went to bed with just light rain, but the alert radio went off a couple more times, until just after midnight when it finally settled down.
After looking around the visitor’s center for a while we drove the road to the summit of the old volcano. The road is only a few miles long and circles the cone as it goes up about 1,300 feet from the elevation at the visitor’s center. Once you get to the top you can see the crater, which is not much to look at since the volcano has been dormant for 50,000 years. The mountain is really just a very large cinder cone formed when the volcano erupted about 60,000 years ago. If you are up to it, there is a mile and a half trail that circles the crater, but neither of us was doing well with the altitude and didn’t need a hike. We took a few pictures and then went back down.
After we left the Monument we took a quick drive to a little town called Folsom, New Mexico, which was about 10 miles north of Capulin. Although there appeared to be a few homes with people living in them, the town was basically a ghost town. The downtown area was completely abandoned. Once we saw Folsom we drove back to Capulin, visited a couple of the shops in the little town, then went back to the coach for the rest of the evening. Sunday, October 14th, we were packed up headed out of Capulin, New Mexico about 10:00, on our way to Las Vegas, New Mexico, about 140 miles southwest. About 25 miles from Capulin we hit the little town of Raton and got on Interstate 25, headed south. This was first time we have driven the coach on an interstate in about a month. We finally had a day with little wind, and much of the trip was downhill, so for the first time in a couple of trips we got decent fuel mileage, 8.9 MPG.
We arrived at the KOA campground just south of Las Vegas about 12:30, got our spot and got settled in for a short, two day stay. After we got setup we headed off to Walmart for some supplies. After Walmart we drove through town and then back to the campground. We have stayed here before, almost exactly a year ago, as a matter of fact. We spent the rest of the evening watching TV.
After that we did another couple of hours of caching and got five more finds, for a total of six on the afternoon, with no DNFs. It took us a while because some of the caches were kind of far out of town. After caching we went back to the campground and relaxed the rest of the evening.
Tuesday, October 16th, was another travel day. It looked like we were going to have clear skies and moderate temperatures to drive in, and little wind. We left the campground about 10:00, made a quick stop for some fuel at a station right near the campground, and then got on I-25 headed towards Albuquerque, about 125 miles southwest. Once we got to Albuquerque we made another fuel stop to top off the tank. I only got a few gallons in Las Vegas because the price was very high. It was about 13 cents cheaper in Albuquerque, so that’s where we filled up.
Once we had full fuel we checked into the Enchanted Trails RV park, located on I-40 at the west end of the city. Back in the 40's this place was built as one of the many “tourist trap” trading posts that dotted old Route 66 in Arizona and New Mexico. It was a trading post until the late 60's, when the freeway was built and the trading post was no longer easily accessible. They built an RV park behind the building and created the campground. This is one of our Passport America parks, so we are staying here for three days for $60, a bargain compared to the KOA we spent the last two nights at.
Wednesday, October 17th, we awoke to the rattle of the slide topper awnings. The weatherman had told us last night the wind would be blowing today, and it was. I am sure glad we are not traveling today. We had lunch at the coach and went out for some geocaching and shopping about 1:00. Within 90 minutes we had managed to get a dozen new finds, mostly because of what is called a power series, located less than a mile from the campground. A power series is where a cacher hides a whole bunch of caches with similar names, often, just changing a number, and hides them along a route, sometimes a tenth of a mile apart, the minimum distance allowed between caches. In this case there are 46 caches along a highway just down the street from our campground. We got three regular caches that were also close by, but then did nine of the caches in the series and they were all about a tenth of a mile apart. We only did a dozen because we got tired of the wind and the area we were caching in was desert and the sand was getting to us.
After our caching we drove to the Costco store to do some shopping. We won’t be close to a Costco again until the middle of next month, so we wanted to stock up on some things. When we got to Costco we noticed we were across the street from the mall, so before going into Costco we went to Penny’s for a while. Each of us had gotten a $10 coupon by email from Penny’s a few days ago, and they expired early next month, so we wanted to use them. We spent about an hour shopping before finishing up and heading for Costco. Oddly, we each found an item of clothing, shorts for me, a top for Jackie, that was originally $22 but on sale for $14, so each of us paid $4.28 for our purchase. Pretty cool. After the Costco run we went back to the RV park, put away our purchases, and relaxed the rest of the evening.
Thursday, October 18th, we left the coach about 11:30 and drove into central Albuquerque for lunch at Landry’s Seafood House. Regular readers may remember that back in August we had gone to the Aquarium Restaurant in Nashville for dinner with Ray and Suzie Babcock. The Aquarium is one of the restaurants owned by the Landry’s group. You may also remember that it was pretty much the “dinner from Hell” and was not a good experience. In addition to our writing scathing reviews on Yelp and Trip Advisor, Jackie sent an email to Landry’s corporate office complaining about the visit. As a result of that email Landry’s sent us a $25 gift card for use at any of their properties. We knew that there was a Landry’s in Albuquerque, so we thought we would give it a try.
We finally had a good experience at a Landry’s. We had gone to a Landry’s in San Antonio in June, and the service was poor and the food mediocre. Then the disaster in Nashville. Here in Albuquerque we had a very competent and pleasant server, the manager was very nice and attentive, and the food was outstanding. I had a seafood pasta dish that was great, Jackie had a broiled seafood platter that she said was delicious. This time we both wrote good reviews on the review websites. My faith in Landry’s has been restored, for now anyway.
After our excellent lunch, which we both took half of home as leftovers, we went out to do some geocaching. In the course of a little less than two hours we had gotten 26 new finds. Yea us! Of course, 21 of them were part of the series we had worked on the day before, but they still count for the numbers. We got 26 finds and no DNFs, so it was a good day. After caching we went back to the coach and relaxed the rest of the evening.
Friday, October 19th, yet another travel day as we work our way back to “home” in Pahrump. We left about 10:00 and continued west on I-40 to Gallup, New Mexico, 140 miles from Albuquerque. We checked into the USA RV Park, a very nice park that we use whenever we pass through Gallup, and got set up in the site in time for lunch. We spent the rest of the afternoon in and around the coach doing chores. We are still at 6,500 feet elevation and Jackie is still having a tough time with the altitude, so we don’t plan on doing too much while we are here. We didn’t go anywhere outside of the park at all today.
Saturday, October 20th, we left after lunch to go out and find at least one geocache in Gallup. Today was a “must cache” day for our days of the year challenge, but there were only a handful of caches in Gallup that are new to us. We have cached here a number of times over the last few years, so we have found a lot of the caches in town. However, someone is always hiding at least a few new caches, so we were able to get two new finds in the downtown area pretty quickly. Once we got our finds for the day we made a quick stop at Walmart for a few things and then went back to the RV park to do our laundry. The park had a very nice laundry facility, so we did our clothes and played some Skipbo while they washed. Once we had the laundry done we went back to the coach. I did a few chores, the most important of which was to check the air in the tires on the coach, but mostly we just relaxed the rest of the day.
We arrived in Williams, Arizona right at 1:00 local time and checked into the Grand Canyon Railroad RV Park. We have stayed in Williams a couple of times in the past, but this was the first time at this park. It is fairly a fairly new park and is adjacent to the depot for the Grand Canyon Railroad, which runs old steam trains up to the canyon and back. We got a nice paved, pull-through spot with full hookups. 50 amp, cable and wifi for $21 a day thanks to our Passport America card. We will be here for three days. Once we got settled in we did a few chores around the coach, but mostly just relaxed and didn’t do much. I went out to get a Sunday paper, but other than that we didn’t leave the coach.
Monday, October 22nd, Happy Birthday to my brother David in Virginia Beach, Virginia. He is the second native Arizonan in the family, having been born a couple years after we moved to Phoenix from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We decided that since we had a couple of days in Williams, and the Grand Canyon is only an hour away, that we would make a quick day trip to the Canyon. We are still well over 6,500 feet in elevation, so Jackie is not too keen on a lot of physical activity, so a nice drive to the Canyon, some lunch, a few pictures, and then back home seemed like a good way to spend the day. We left the coach about 10:00 and drove north out of Williams on Highway 64. The Grand Canyon is only about 60 miles due north of town. On the way we stopped and picked up three geocaches, just because we knew they were there. One was a little bit of a hike from a parking lot in Tusayan, the small town just outside the south entrance to the park, but we took our time and Jackie did OK.
We entered the park about 11:30 or so with Jackie’s Golden Age pass, so we didn’t have to pay the $25 fee they charge. Yea! We decided we didn’t want to go to one of the cafeterias in the park for lunch, we wanted a nice lunch in a nice place. We were astounded by the number of people and cars at the park, especially on a Monday at the end of the normal season. We had to drive around the village loop three times before we found a parking spot. Parking is really at a premium here, although they do have an excellent free shuttle service operating.
A few facts about the Grand Canyon. The park was established in 1919 and incorporates nearly 2,000 square miles of land. Only a very small part of the park is accessible to visitors. Our not being able to find a parking place should not be surprising since the park hosts about 4.5 million visitors each year. The canyon itself is 277 miles long, 18 miles wide at it’s widest point, and nearly a mile deep from rim to river. It took the Colorado River about 6 million years to carve the canyon to it’s present depth.
Tuesday, October 23rd, we decided to spend our last day at an elevation over 6,000 feet just doing nothing. We actually did a few chores, but nothing major. I had noticed a few days ago that our big patio awning, which is electric powered, was not working. I had checked the fuse and found it to be fine. I was going to try and trace the power to see where the problem might lie so the first thing I did was unplug the awning from the receptacle on the side of the coach. I cleaned it, plugged it back in and the awning worked. Five minute job. Yea!
Wednesday, October 24th, another travel day. We left Williams a little after 10:00 and got back on I-40, headed for Kingman, Arizona, about 115 miles west. This trip would take us from about 6,500 feet elevation to 3,400 feet, which would make Jackie’s life much more enjoyable. Other than a pretty strong wind for the first 50 miles or so, it was an uneventful trip. We made a quick stop to fill the fuel tank on the outskirts of Kingman, then pulled into the Fort Beale RV park. This is a small, but very nicely maintained park right off of the Interstate at the junction with northbound Highway 93. We quickly got parked and were all set up by 1:00. We spent the rest of the day relaxing and enjoying the ability to move around without having to start panting. Jackie got some work done “blinging” some clothes with sparkles and I did some administrative stuff. We are only here two days before making our final push to Pahrump on Friday.
Thursday, October 25th, we left the coach about 11:30 or so and drove to the Kingman Elks Lodge for lunch. Although we have driven through town several times, we have never stayed here in Kingman and never visited the lodge. When we got here yesterday I looked up the lodge online and learned that they do lunch almost every day, so we went there for lunch. We did a couple of geocaches while on the way to the lodge, the very first of which we had to DNF because we just couldn’t find it. We arrived at the lodge about 12:30 and the bar was pretty full. The lodge is located right across the street from a public golf course and, although they are not affiliated with the course, they get a lot of lunch business from Elks members who go there to play golf. The food was not fancy, but it was very tasty and relatively inexpensive. I had a grilled beef and cheese with green chili and Jackie had a patty melt.
After Nine-eleven the Government halted all commercial truck traffic across Hoover dam for fear that terrorists might blow up the dam, causing untold damage and death downstream. If Hoover dam failed catastrophically, all the other dams downstream would fail also. Although RVs and busses could still cross the dam, they were subject to search before being allowed to cross, resulting in long delays. The last time I used that route was when Jackie and I went to my dad’s funeral in Phoenix in November of 2002. We took our old motor home from Indio to Las Vegas, picked up my brother Russ and his kids, and then drove down to Phoenix. On that trip we were stopped and agents went through the storage compartments of the coach and we had about an hour delay. We decided that it wasn’t worth the time to use that route anymore.
After we got settled in and set up we took a drive to the UPS store which serves as our address of record. We got to pick up our mail in person for the first time in a year and also meet the new employees, some of whom we only talked to on the phone. When we got back to the RV park we went down to the clubhouse for happy hour at 4:00 and talked to some people that we knew. Including the manager and her husband, there are two other couples here that we know from previous visits, either here or at other RV parks. After happy hour we went back home and relaxed the rest of the evening.
Since we have reached the point we consider to be the end of our summer travels, it also seems like a good place to close this chapter and get it published. We will be here in Pahrump for two weeks, so our next episode will be in about two weeks. Until the next time, work on your inner happy and then let it out for the world to see. Bye.
