Author Archives: Jill and Bud

I joined Bud Wednesday at Coronado Campground in Bernalillo, NM, a northern suburb of Albuquerque. We stayed here once before, it used to be a state park but the city took it over. There is an interesting historic site here and the campsites are nicely done.

But the city has grown up to it and this is the road just outside the park. We changed our itinerary when I left Bud again. He went from Homol’ovi in Winslow to a commercial RV park in Gallup to here. They were straightforward drives with very little navigation required, but certainly not scenic; right along I-40.

The view here isn’t great, as we face the commercial buildings along the road.

You can look over at the Sandia Mountains, but Tuesday Bud said there were 50 mph winds with 70 mph gusts and the dust was so thick it obscured the view.

Today we took a walk in a nearby park along the Rio Grande.

That was a nice walk among the cottonwoods…

and there were good views of the river and mountains.

Still this last couple of weeks has not been much fun for Bud. I am so grateful that he again took over moving the trailer and caring for Matey so I could have a last visit with Judy and spend time with her family.

I am just leaving California today, so I was able to explore a bit of the area with my nieces. Here Michelle, Jeanie and I are walking in the hills near where Jeanie lives on the southeast side of Folsom Lake.

It’s a very pretty area…

with lots of trails. Jeanie usually bikes these on her mountain bike, but since she fell and broke her clavicle she’s walking.

And Michelle and I were happy to walk with her.

Yesterday morning we took a stroll on the walking path Judy used every day she could. She lived on the southwest side of Folsom Lake and Michelle has been staying there. Cheryl, Chayse and I joined her there.

In the afternoon I had a real treat as Jeanie took me to the Acorn Trailhead and we walked some of her and Scott’s favorite biking trails.

What beautiful country, and there’s been rain lately so everything is green; not the norm here.

This area is on the northeast side of the lake. It’s hills and pasture…

with some very large cows.

I took my usual landscape shots…

and because Jeanie was along we got some selfies.

Thank you Michele, Jeanie and Cheryl for being such wonderful hosts. You are your mother’s daughters, to be sure.

Four days after I got back from helping my oldest sister with Mom’s stuff I got a call from my sister, Judy in California. “Judy”, I said, “it’s great to hear your voice.” We had been talking regularly but Judy often was out of breath or coughing because she was in the hospital fighting pneumonia but this time her voice sounded clear and strong. But she did not have good news. The doctor had just come in and told her they had nothing else they could do for her. “I’m not going to make it,” she said.

So the next day, last Saturday, I left Bud with the dog and the trailer again and flew to Sacramento. I got to spend four wonderful days with my sister, crying and laughing and saying goodbye. It is a tribute to her that the nurses in the ICU unit where she had been did not want her moved to a hospice room. She would make quips and give them heartfelt thank you’s every time they came in to poke or prod her.

She was asleep more than she was awake in the last days, but she always smiled when she woke. And the most frequent words said were “I love you.”

In three weeks I lost my mom and my sister and this loss is huge.

She left me her three beautiful daughters, and though they have thanked me for coming I truly feel I was the one who owed them the thanks.

This is the support crew having a memorial Christmas cookie bake in March, because that was a favorite thing in our family. That’s Jeanie in front, then Scott, Michelle, Luke, Cheryl, Chayse and me.

Lots of laughter, lots of tears.

I am blessed to have a family that in tough times pulls closer and loves harder.

Thank you, Mom; thank you, Judy.

The most prominent thing about this park are the wide open spaces.

But there is a lot hidden in plain sight, like the herd of wild burros we see one place or another each day.

And this rather beautiful Visitors’ Center…

with these stunning stone walls.

There are also two ancient villages of the Hisat’sinom people that you can visit. These are the ancestors of the Hopi people that still live at Second Mesa, sixty miles north of here.

The park was developed with the cooperation of the Hopi’s to preserve the sacred places. The flags are the US flag, the Hopi flag and the Arizona flag.

There are few remaining walls at Homol’ovi I, but you are allowed to wander the site…

where shards of pottery are everywhere.

You are not allowed to take anything and people seem to cooperate, instead placing their finds on flat rocks where others can see them.

This site was settled in the thirteenth century and had about 1100 rooms. It was abandoned by 1400,

possibly due to frequent flooding by the Little Colorado River, which drew the people here in the first place.

Besides pottery we found stones that appear to have been worked.

We also visited Homol’ovi II. This site had more of the old walls showing,

including this kiva.

But here you are restricted to the sidewalks.

The site was extensively vandalized before the creation of the park.

Both sites are fenced…

and have cattle guards at their entrances to protect them from the wandering burros.

Our third exploration was on the Tso’vo Trail. The name means path of the rattlesnakes.

The stony hill we walked on looked like a very snakey place, but it’s still very cold here, so no snakes are out.

We did find some faded petroglyphs, which are faint even with enhancement.

This was the clearest one.

We also found these shards strewn down the side of the hill. We think they might be petrified wood.

We’ve enjoyed wandering about here, despite the cold.

Yesterday I flew to Phoenix. Bud and Matey came to the airport and we drove back to the mountainous area of Cottonwood, AZ.

Bud had moved the trailer to Dead Horse Ranch State Park.

When I arrived it was cloudy and chilly with some ominous clouds over the mountains.

While I was in New York Bud and Matey had spent four days at Roper Lake State Park, just northeast of Tucson. Bud took some pictures for me.

It looked like a beautiful spot…

with camping right along the lake.

That looks like a pretty nice site…

and a gorgeous sunset.

They then moved on to Dead Horse Ranch State Park where he caught the nearby mountain in this dramatic lighting.

This morning Matey and I got to walk in sunshine enjoying the distant mountains.

We then headed north on I-17 over the snowy mountains towards Flagstaff and then east on I-40. We don’t usually take the interstates, but the alternatives through these mountains looked like a challenge for the truck and camper.

I was happy to find when we reached Homolovi State Park outside of Winslow that it was lower and warmer, though the scenery isn’t as dramatic.

There is plenty of space here, and herds of wild horses and burros.

I had an altercation with this bush when we were setting up. I slipped off the edge of the paved pad and fell into it. Happily it didn’t have thorns but Bud had to haul me out of it.

The bush won as I got a hole in my favorite pair of jeans (and a smaller hole in my leg).

Still, I think I will enjoy it here.

And I will try to keep posting, even though every time I take a picture I think about how my Mom loved to see the posts and read the blog. She had an iPad and knew how to get to her email and find the notices when I posted. She never typed a reply, but we talked about the photos when I called her.

My mom, Marion K. Bebee, known to friends and grandkids as Marni, died last Wednesday, February 19th. This is a picture from the last time I saw her well, last May. Here we are celebrating her 105th birthday.

She even blew out her birthday candles. She was a remarkable woman, both for the length of her life and the quality of her caring. My cousin, Susan, told me she had just received a birthday card from Mom for her birthday February 12th.

Happily, Mom was pretty well until the last. I called her every day. On Saturday afternoon we had a nice talk and she assured me she was fine being by herself in her apartment. She could take care of her own needs, she said, and had just finished doing up her dishes.

Unhappily, she died in February. I was able to fly up to be with my sister, Joan. I got here in time to be with Mom at the end, but I let Joan do the driving. I’m not used to this stuff!

There is beauty in everything. There is beauty in a peaceful death after a long life lived well. There is beauty in the sun on the snow. But I would much rather have visited in May for Mom’s 106th birthday as planned. We’ll be up here again, then, but it won’t be the same.

Last year we came to City of Rocks State Park and were so impressed with its unusual rock formations…

and isolation in the surrounding desert that we decided to come back and stay a week.

If you don’t need any water or electricity…

and especially if you have a small camper…

you can camp in some interesting and private sites.

We, however, are staying in the trailer ghetto with electric and water hookups.

The sites are actually pretty nice, with enough space…

decent views and landscaping with native plants. We have yucca,

agave,

and Ephedra, or Mormon tea at our site.

I think we’ll like it here.

After 37 days and seven great parks we have left Texas behind. We spent last night at Leasburg Dam State Park in New Mexico.

It was just a one night stay as I added this park halfway between Hueco Tanks and City of Rocks State Park when I learned that Hueco Tanks limited stays to three days. Oops. But it worked out, we didn’t have to unhitch on the level concrete pad at Leasburg Dam and woke up to this lovely sunrise.

Matey and I had a nice walk on a loop trail this morning…

that took us across this bridge over a canal paralleling the Rio Grande. The warning signs weren’t needed now, the canal is perfectly dry.

In fact, there wasn’t much water in the river…

and the dam seemed to be holding back gravel.

But it was scenic…

and we found this species of prickly pear cactus that I remember from past trips but hadn’t seen this year. I love its reddish polka dots, but those are very tiny but very penetrating spines, so I was careful not to brush against it.

The main draw of Hueco Tanks are the incredible pictographs that have been painted here over thousands of years. The earliest ones are from over 6,000 years ago. Yesterday I went on a guided tour to see them. This was the first wall we stopped at. Although it looks like all that is here is writing from the historical era (late 1800’s) there are ancient pictographs underneath.

I have an app called iDStretch that lets you look at your picture with different colors and can bring out the pictographs. This is the same photo, but now you can barely see the more recent writing while the 6,000 year old pictographs stand out.

A number of these images have been dated and our guide told us the oldest ones were mostly geometric designs like those in that first picture. My favorites are the masks like this one that are about a thousand years old.

Here, our guide Chris is pointing out part of a story pictograph. The white tree that shows quite faintly is part of what is in essence a story mural. These were done in the more recent past.

Using the enhanced images you can see a few white figures to the left and the tree to the right.

The other side of this drawing shows more figures, including a man who appears to be wearing pants and a hat. The Kiowa say this is the story of a small band of Kiowa who were trapped in a nearby canyon by enemies, including Spaniards. The legend is that after some time holed up in this cave at the end of a box canyon the Kiowa climbed up through the cave and over the canyon wall at night and escaped.

Chris then took us into the canyon…

and up to the cave.

Three climbers went up a ways to see what it was like. Chris has done the climb, and it was very scary and dark in the daytime with modern equipment. Those Kiowa were pretty desperate to do it at night with no equipment at all.

We scrambled around and saw some other neat pictographs.

They are quite startling when you enhance them.

Some more recent ones need no enhancement at all.

It was a fun hike and we went places that I wouldn’t have gone on my own, and not just because it’s not allowed. There was a lot of climbing, but I didn’t get pictures of the steep parts, I was too busy trying to stay on my feet and keep up.

We came to this state park on our first journey west as full-timers. We liked the campsites then and we like them now.

The state is very protective of this area, the hills of rock here are impermeable to water so collect water in their depressions, making this a place that has been visited by humans for millennia. Pets are only allowed in areas outside the rocks and without a guide visitors can only visit the North Mountain. A permit is required for that.

That works fine for us. There are plenty of trails around the mountains.

They afford nice walks…

and beautiful views.

The campsite is a lovely place to sit.

Our cabana is tucked up under the rocks.

It too gives nice views.

On Tuesday Bud and I got a permit to hike the North Mountain. We wanted to climb to Kiva Cave, but the wind was so strong that Bud thought we might be blown off the rock ramp that was our first ascent. Instead we walked the Laguna Trail to the interior of the “mountain”.

That led to an area that almost always holds water…

and to a rock alcove next to it. Notice the water lines on the rock walls.

There were also pictographs here, though fairly faded.

We found a protected ravine and decided to climb up there.

This appears to be a water sculpted boulder. Bud is pointing to what we thought might be a faint pictograph of an animal.

It was a bit of a scramble,

but we managed to get high enough for some great views.

These rocks rise pretty abruptly from the flat desert around them.

We had a fun hike, even though we didn’t get up to the Cave Kiva.

The scenery is beautiful…

and the rocks make for a dramatic setting for picnics as well as camping.

That wind kicked up the dust and later in the day we lost our clear blue sky to the grey-orange dust. Luckily we had already had our fun.