Day 23 - Sunday, 7/12/09 - SETTLED

I have sore muscles from climbing the kiva ladders at Bandolier into the sacred caves, so we take it slow.

In the late afternoon we head down to Old Towne to the small boutique shops to buy souvenirs for family. We watch a Navajo silversmith hammer a sterling silver bracelet. It is very intricate work. We can see why the items end up being so expensive.

There is a Navajo artist there who has a sign up requesting that his picture not be taken. Others will let you take their pictures for $1.

At the end of our day, we stop in a very high end shop where the bolo ties made by Navajo artists are in the $2000 range. The saleswoman tries not to act insulted when we ask if she has anything in the $50 range.

Many of the shops in Old Towne are actually art galleries. We stop in one with interesting paintings. It is run by a young artist and his wife who are contemporaries of my son Ethan. We talk about Ethan's blown and carved glass and the guy is very interested.

We finish our day with dinner with Uncle Arthur Byers, Nancy Greiff and her husband Robert at The Range Cafe' in Albuquerque. My dessert, Death by Lemon, was outstanding, and so rich that I had to take half of it home. Robert had lived in Utah and Arizona, so he gave us a lot of advice about what to see and do on our trip.

Day 21 - Friday, 7/10/09 - ON THE ROAD

Got car off the dolly with help from friendly Michigan neighbor at RV Park. He is about to drive away and sees Bob struggling to figure out what to do. He stops his vehicle and, explaining that he has been in many similar predicaments before, gets out some wooden blocks and jacks up the front of the car.

He will not allow his wife or I to help push the car off. Putting the car in Neutral, they let the car roll backwards off the blocks. As a result of all the pushing, Bob ends up with bruises the size of a pear on his arm and chest. But I guess you don't argue with a gift horse.

We see lots of housing developments with houses so close together it looks like a prison or military complex. No trees soften the landscape.

Giant irrigators fascinate us. There are many types,that spray from both bottom and top. They rotate and move along the field automatically. As a result, the corn is so much greener than we have seen before. It is such a contrast with the brown and scrubby land around the fields.

More windmill farms. It is very windy today. We are beginning to see mesas in the distance. There is something on top of the mesas. Are they windmills or radio towers?

There is no evidence of solar energy use. That surprises us. One thing that is pleasing, though, is that there have been no billboards for over 100 miles.

The terrain dramatically changes from TX to NM. There are grey grasses.

We are on Historic Route 66. At Dell's Restaurant, there is a giant cow on the roof.

Along the roadside, we see train tracks with double container trains on them, possibly heading for a shipping port where they will be loaded on a tanker.

I start calling this area "Mesa Land". Did wind shear off the tops?

We see some antelope on the range. Reminds us of a song......

There are lots of 1940's and 50's cars rotting in the sun, in the middle of a vast field of scrub.

We have a nice relaxing dinner with Uncle Arthur Byers at Olive Garden in Albuquerque. We are able to treat him to dinner courtesy of one of our generous wedding guests.