After the engine threw a rod in Texas and needed replaced, I eventually ended up selling my van. It made sense – it was a 1980 model and was not going to get any newer. It was still in Texas. I’d just found out I was pregnant when I sold it and knew that while it was comfortable for solo travel it wasn’t going to be a great family vehicle.

I always missed it though. I sort of wished that I’d just paid to have the engine replaced. I’d browse RV listings, but I never saw the right thing at the right price. I’m unwilling to pay the prices for a newer RV and a lot of the older ones just aren’t in good shape. Plus there are a lot of types of RV that just wouldn’t meet my needs.

So when I heard a family member with a small RV was upgrading to a newer and larger model, I mentioned I’d be interested in the old one… and here we are!

I am now the proud owner of a 1990 18 foot Toyota Sunrader which I’ve nicknamed ‘The Yot’.

I was looking for good pictures of the inside, but I don’t seem to have any. I have lots of weird pictures of it instead. Mostly there are pictures of little things I’ve been working on fixing – the leaky shower faucet, the propane valve that spritzed me with propane when I first tried it, the bathroom cabinet that was falling off.

I do have a few inside pictures from when I first got it two months ago that I’ll share. I’ve been hard at work on it so some things look different now. Maybe at some point I’ll get some good inside pictures of the changes I’ve made.

I got it about 2 months ago and have mostly been at work fixing things, customizing things, etc. Overall it’s in pretty good shape considering it’s age, but it’s spent a lot of it’s recent life just sitting and is in need of some love.

It’s been fun to have a project to work on. Considering the amount of computer work I do it’s a nice change to have a hands-on project.

I’m also really looking forward to taking trips! After the last year (plus) I am antsy to get out.

B is at an age where he’ll like exploring too. Although RV travel with a young child is definitely a bit different than traveling on my own.

So far we’ve taken two trips – the first for one night and the second for two. There is nothing like actually taking an RV out to see what works and what doesn’t.

I’m looking forward to exploring more and (hopefully) sharing more about my travels. Although I don’t want to jinx myself because my blogging record for the last year has been dismal – I was working a TON and just doing the whole parenting a young child during covid thing.

Now things are looking really different. I’m taking the summer off work, at least mostly. My family is all vaccinated except for B who is too young. And I have a new RV to explore in!

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Can I be honest? Well, it’s my blog, so I intend to be. My first visit to Palo Duro Canyon State Park didn’t really impress me. But, (spoiler alert) my second visit did.

My memories of my first visit are a bit vague. I’m sure I have pictures somewhere, but I don’t know where. What I do remember is that it wasn’t awe-inspiring and I didn’t feel a strong need to go back.

Granted, I don’t think I so much as got out of my car there. Probably it was dreadfully hot so I drove the loop in my air-conditioned Honda, decided it was lame and took off.

I think part of this was due to expectations. Palo Duro Canyon is sometimes advertised as ‘The Grand Canyon of Texas!’ The thing is, I’ve been to the Grand Canyon and it completely fell flat with that comparison.

The literature says Palo Duro Canyon is the second-largest canyon in the United States, although I’m not sure on how they measure this. Is it depth? Width? Length? Some combination of these things?

In any event, it’s on a very different place on the WOW! factor scale than the Grand Canyon. Perhaps because it’s width makes the depth less impressive?

I have to take a moment here to provide some context. Palo Duro Canyon is in the Texas panhandle which can be characterized as flat cow country. (Now featuring giant windmills that have sprouted up over the last decade because it’s often unpleasantly windy.)

Anyway, Palo Duro Canyon State Park does have three cabins on the canyon rim that you can stay in. I am obsessed with State Park cabins, so it was on my mental bucket list to stay in one some day. They are generally booked up weeks in advance, so despite my many trips through Amarillo, it had never worked out.

And then Sarah posted on her blog about staying at Palo Duro in her van and her experience there was clearly so different from what I remembered.

It still was not that high on my list to go back to until I took up the 30 Day Ride Challenge to ride my bike for 30 days in a row in July. And not just to ride, but to ride a trail that’s mapped on the Trailforks app.

I had a business trip to Tulsa, and the only trails on the app between Albuquerque and Tulsa were at Palo Duro Canyon.

I was poking around online and found the reservation page for the cabins and amidst solid blocks of ‘booked’, there was a single cabin available for one night- the night I would be on my way to Oklahoma. So I booked it, happy with my ridiculous luck.

Texas gets hot in the summer and I knew if I wanted to ride my bike I’d want to be out early to do it and having a place to stay in the park was the way to go.

The Lighthouse Cabin

My first stop when I made it in to the park was my cabin. The outside was ridiculously charming. The cabins were built out of rock by the CCC.

The inside was almost too rustic for me, with paint peeling off the walls. (OK, with the baby I’ve been thinking too much about the dangers of lead paint with every antique toy from the grandparents.) I am sure this cabin is old enough to have layers of lead paint in there.

But it met my needs, had AC and the location was amazing. Oh, and the bed was super charming.

Plus it came with a beautiful green and blue lizard.

Exploring the Canyon

After unloading the car at my cabin, I took off to go explore the cabin.

I drove the full loop at the bottom of the canyon, checking out the little store/restaurant and aiming to get a feel for the place. There’s an amphitheater where they have the musical Texas some summer nights. Also lots of RV and tent camping plus picnic areas and hiking, biking and horse trails.

I had a picnic dinner at a cute picnic table that sat all by itself under a tree at the top of a small hill with a little trail leading up to it. The spot was just too cute to pass up.

Then I went on a bit of a hike. By then it was getting on towards sunset and the lighting was amazing on the red rocks and dirt. The temperature was also starting to become bearable.

I hiked as far as I could before feeling like I needed to turn back before it got dark. I also ran into two tarantulas on the trail on my way back as the light was fading.

For whatever reason, I stopped and took pictures of them. I guess I instinctually want to capture interesting, notable or unusual things that I find. Then later looking at my pictures I thought, “I have no desire to look at pictures of big spiders” and deleted then deleted them.

Mountain Biking at Palo Duro Canyon

The next morning I was up and at the trailhead before it was really light out. I went on my bike ride. (I took the Spicer, Givens and Lowry trail to the Lighthouse trail and then on my way back I also did the Little Fox Canyon Loop- a total of about 11 miles.)

Staying in the Lighthouse Cabin made me feel like I needed to check out the Lighthouse Rock. That trail mostly felt like a super-highway. It’s the most popular trail and basically they try to keep it so they can drive a 4-wheeler out there to rescue people that don’t bring enough water or aren’t prepared for the heat.

It didn’t make for the most interesting bike-riding (The SGV trail made up for that though). But it did have excellent views and the final ascent to the Lighthouse is a challenging bit of trail- basically unrideable.

There’s a bike rack at the bottom, which I should have taken as a sign to leave my bike there, but instead I persisted with carrying it up the trail a little bit before wising up and stashing it in a bush.

Then I was rewarded with a view of this thing:

The trails were pretty fun, with extra points given for being the only mountain bike trails in the area. I would definitely ride there again, although I would prefer not to do so in July.

By the time I got back to my car, it was just so hot. There were a few other trails I’d been interested in checking out, but by that point it was just too hot for me to actually do so.

Plus it was time to get a shower and get checked out of my cabin.

Palo Duro Canyon is now much higher on my list of places to return to. While I wasn’t totally in love with the cabins, I would stay in one again just for the location. Or I’d camp there at a different time of year. There are a few more trails I’d love to explore on my bike and some others that looked like they’d be fun to hike.

To me, it’s a much more interesting place to stay than any of the options in nearby Amarillo.

If you’re in the area, Amarillo does have a free RV museum that’s fun to check out and Cadillac Ranch is also an interesting and photogenic place. Just don’t forget the spray paint!

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Today I went out for a bike ride on some of the nearby trails.  These are the same trails where I often go out hiking with B.

While I was riding along one of the Forest Service roads, I spotted some funny looking tracks.  Most of the tracks I see out there I imagine are some sort of big cat – maybe a lion or a tiger- but are really probably just from somebody’s dog. 

These tracks I knew were not from a dog.  Some of them looked like giant paws, but the others looked like funny shaped human feet.  They were shorter and wider especially around the ball of the foot and toes, but definitely made me think of people feet.  But the other ones that looked like giant paws seemed menacing.  The combination of the two together made me very much not want to meet this thing.

I almost rode on past, not wanting to mess up my attempt to beat my best time on the trail.  Then I thought that not being able to stop to take a picture of something cool was not the sort of biker I wanted to be.  Plus, I wanted to find out what sort of tracks they were.  I’m not really very enlightened about such things, but maybe I should learn more. 

When I got home and showed the pictures to S, he said it was probably a bear.  We googled bear prints, and yep, definitely a bear.   The difference between their front and back paws is very distinct. 

It’s not as though I didn’t know that there are bears in the area.  Somehow seeing the tracks made it seem so much more real.

Holy crap.  There was a bear walking right here and sometime in the last 48 hours since I was here last.   Also, this is not very far from where B and I were 3 days ago.

I love finding stuff like this.  One of the things I love about hiking, biking and generally exploring is just the treasure hunt.  A funny looking mushroom, a glance of a squirrel running to hide, a peak at some deer, a tree growing in a funny spot or a cool rock.  It’s exciting to me.  It keeps me going to see what is around the next bend. 

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The DeSmet dairy sells fresh milk (raw or pasteurized), eggs and yogurt.  It’s a low-key operation.  The little store is pretty much help yourself.  Payment is on the honor system: you put cash in the box or run your own credit card and leave the receipt with your signature.  But if they are out of something and you call the owners will drive over to restock the fridge.

The first time I went, I took along my sister, and her two pre-teen kids.  The kids were thoroughly unimpressed with our outing even though we did run into one of the owners and get a tour or the milking room.  The building in the picture above is mostly all there is to see other than some green fields for the cows to graze in. 

Frankly, I’m not quite comfortable with where milk comes from.  I still drink it and as long as that is the case, I do like the idea of fresh milk.

B seemed to think it was very good milk.  After we got home, S poured himself a cup but let B have a drink of it.  B gulped down as much as he could and then threw a fit when S took the cup away.  (B is freshly weaned this week.)

I have to agree that it is very good milk too. 

On the way to the dairy, we saw signs for a Farmer’s Market so we had to go check that out too. 

We came away from the Farmer’s Market with 4 dozen eggs, one large zucchini, tomatoes, plums, lemon cucumbers, normal cucumbers, a clove of garlic and a lavender plant for about $25. 

I paid $2 for the zucchini though and it was definitely a rip-off.  A booth a little ways down was selling similar ones for $1.  I knew it was a bad deal even before I saw that: I know zucchini grow like weeds once they get going.  And they’re not even really that good.  The thing was that I had already picked it up and told the guy I would take it before he quoted me the price.  I didn’t imagine that it would be so much, but I didn’t want to back out.  So I just paid the $2.

We also drove by this big flea market on the way to the dairy so I decided I wanted to get out and look around there.  It felt very flea-markety.  Lots of little booths selling stuff that was mostly junk plus some nice tools.  I seriously considered tool-hunting, but decided I wasn’t sure I actually needed any right now. 

But otherwise, there was a wide assortment of well-used stuff: pans, clothes, toys, an old-school trike that I considered buying for B, weird things like packs of diapers and toiletries, gum and old license plates.  It was dusty and the cigarette smoke was thick, despite being outdoors.  I heard more Spanish than English. 

I ended up buying a knitted snake finger puppet and small toy dump truck and bulldozer for B.  The dump truck and bulldozer are already at work out in the sand box.  The snake has eyes that I’d worry about B trying to eat, so I’m not sure he’ll get to play with it unsupervised any time soon.

So my take away from the day was this pile of loot and a few lessons learned.  First, ask how much the zucchini is before deciding to buy.  Second, survey all the booths before making purchases at any of them.  Third, flea markets are a good place to buy toy cars. 

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Today, I had plans to go out hiking with baby B this afternoon.  But it felt hot and sunny when we walked up the street to the mailbox, so I didn’t feel like hiking.  OK, it was probably only 80 degrees out and I probably should have just gone.  Since I didn’t go this afternoon, after B was in bed, I headed out for a quick hike before the sun set.  By then, it was actually very pleasant out.

Of course, I had to bring the new camera along.

I have been focusing on trying to learn about the aperture settings.  For my simple purposes, this controls how much of the image is in focus.  For example, a large aperture is used in my portraits of baby B where he is razor sharp, but the background is blurred out.  A smaller aperture is often used in landscape photography when one basically wants the whole image to be in focus.

Just getting this basic principle down has opened up a whole world of options for me.

Here’s a picture of the trail I was on with the mountains in the background.  Have I mentioned recently how crazy fortunate I feel to live 5 minutes away from this trail system?

It was so gorgeous out and I easily could have stayed out for another couple of hours if it wasn’t rapidly getting dark.  (I was very impressed with how my camera did with the low light levels after the sun sunk below the horizon.)

A larger aperture also lets more light into the camera which makes it easier to get sharper images.  The picture of the tree above was taken at f/2.8.

I love the effect of a subject that is in super sharp focus with a blurred background.  While aperture has a lot to do with this, I’m finding it to be related to zoom level as well.  For reasons I don’t yet really understand, standing further back and zooming in makes the contrast between the sharp focus of the subject and the blurred background much more pronounced.

I’m sure any experienced photographer knows all about the explanation and some day I will too.  For now, I am just having so much fun experimenting and learning about all of this.

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Quartz Mountain Nature Park was one of the original Oklahoma State Parks, although I’m not sure it’s still classified as a State Park.  It is still run by the state of Oklahoma and is very State Park like.  It is a gorgeous, unique area that is all the more precious because of the part of Oklahoma it’s in.

Many people think of Oklahoma as flat and although this is far from true for the whole state, part of it is very flat.  Western Oklahoma tends to be cow pasture or cropland with the occasional small town here and there.  It can be quite a challenge to find good places to visit in that part of the state.  Quartz Mountain is so different from the surrounding area.

It features these super cool, rocky hills that rise up out of the flat land.  There’s a nice lake with cabins and a lodge.   There’s a golf course, hiking trails, camping areas and rock climbing.  It also features a conference center and performance center.

S and I recently went out to Oklahoma city with baby B for a work conference and stopped by Quartz Mountain for a night on the way home.  Our lodging turned out to be a bit disappointing- we’d had a room booked in the lodge, but they were over-booked and we got moved to a cabin.

The cabin was old and a bit grungy, but we were tired and Quartz Mountain is far enough from any other lodging options that we stayed there for the night.  I had wanted to try out one of their cabins at some point and, well, now I know what they’re like.

The surrounding area was nice though.  We saw several white-tailed deer around our cabin, which all disappeared when I went outside with my camera.  Our cabin was surrounded by trees and it was a very short walk down to the lake where we went to drink coffee in the morning.

After our coffee, we went for a hike at the Baldy Point area.  One of the trails looked really cool, featuring just the exact amount of rock climbing that I’d be willing to do without gear.  It was so tempting, but just seemed like a bad idea to attempt it while carrying baby B.  It’s one thing to put myself at risk.  It’s quite another to put him at risk.  So, we stuck to an easier trail, but it was still a nice hike in a cool landscape.

Quartz Mountain Hike

Click on a thumbnail to view the larger version

Once we got back to the car, we spent a while watching a couple of rock climbers scaling one of the rock walls.  The sign said the area is Oklahoma’s premier rock climbing destination.  Frankly, I’m not sure Oklahoma has many other rock climbing destinations at all, but it did look like a good place for it.  Then we were off for a long drive with a baby back to New Mexico.  Traveling is definitely more work with a kid, but still worth it.

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When I first found out I was pregnant, I already had plans for my due date- August 21- to go see the solar eclipse, but it looked a whole lot like I was going to have to change those plans.  For the whole nine months, I kept saying that I hoped baby would arrive a couple of weeks early and we’d get to go see the solar eclipse anyway- which was exactly what ended up happening!

Traveling with a three week old baby is not exactly the easiest thing- but then again having a new baby to take care isn’t the easiest thing to start with.  The hardest part for me both traveling and in general is just waking up so many times during the night.  I enjoy the time spent taking care of baby, but I am so longing for a few more consecutive hours of sleep (not to mention time to do other things).

I don’t think there are many things that could motivate me to travel right now, but eclipses are one of those rare things and I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to see one in my home country.  (The last time I had a chance to see a solar eclipse was in 1999 in Turkey- hard to believe it’s been 18 years since then!)

We drove to Fort Collins Saturday, spent the night in a hotel and then drove up to Glendo State Park on Sunday to meet my dad and some other family that were already camped there.  It was pure luck that they were able to get a camp site there as the park had been full before opening up eight temporary camp sites in an empty field right before they showed up.

The camp site was nothing exciting- a spot in a field with no shade, other campers very close and a well-traveled dirt road about 25 feet away that led to lots of dust.  But it was a short distance down to a sandy beach by the lake, it was crowded for a state park, but not crowded for an eclipse-viewing spot and it was right in the middle of the path of totality.  We felt incredibly lucky to end up where we did and since I’m such a fan of state parks, that added a bit of something for me.

Monday we watched the eclipse from the beach down by the lake.  We had perfect weather for it.  It is an experience beyond description… and not one that lends itself to good cell phone pictures.  The temperature started to drop as the sun started to disappear.  The shadows do this weird thing where they turn to crescents as the moon starts to cover the sun due to the change in shape of the sun.  (OK, obviously the sun doesn’t really change shape, but it appears to.)

And totality was just amazing.  One of the really cool things was that it looked like sunrise or sunset all the way around the horizon.  This was something that I was not expecting at all.  (The previous solar eclipse I saw was in an area that was more humid and the cooling of the air caused the humidity to condense into clouds making it not nearly as spectacular.)

After the eclipse, we decided to hang around the state park and let traffic die down a bit.  It was a good thing we did too because southbound I-25 was pretty much a parking lot for 200 miles.  My family that did hit the road right away said it took about 8 hours to make it 100 miles.  We ended up waiting for the state park to clear out a bit and then moving to a much nicer camp site closer to the beach in the shade of some cottonwoods.

I was glad we didn’t hit the road right away, especially as Google maps still showed traffic as being super backed-up when I checked a bit past midnight (what else was there for me to do while up with the baby in the middle of the night?)  By 4am, it had finally cleared up and we made good progress towards home when we headed out the next day.

So many things worked out for us to make it a really great experience from baby arriving early to the weather to the great campsite we got!  I’m so thankful that we went.  It feels good to have gotten out on a trip post-baby.  It’s sort of proof that I can still travel and do cool things.  And… I am so glad to be back home and really don’t have any plans for another trip anytime soon!

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We made it out on a short trip last week that included two nights camping in the National Forest and a night at the lodge at Mesa Verde National Park.

The first night camping was in the Jemez Mountains near a spot that I went camping at last year and just fell in love with.  Unfortunately this year somebody else was already at my favorite little camping spot by the creek.  The spot we ended up at instead was still surrounded by lots of gorgeous tall trees, it just didn’t have the creek.  It was the perfect place to stop for a night on the way up to Mesa Verde.

Mesa Verde National Park is less than 45 minutes from Durango where I grew up.  It’s one of the places people visit when they visit Durango.  It’s the sort of place one doesn’t go at all when living in Durango.  My mom says she took me there once when I was a baby, but I have no memory of it at all.  I’ve always felt a little like I got jipped since I never got to go.  But that has now been remedied.

I know that verde means green in Spanish, but for whatever strange reason when I would hear Mesa Verde, I always thought ‘red’.  Having visited there has helped a bit to get that misconception out of my head.

There is a lodge in the park named Far View Lodge and it did live up to it’s name with sweeping views.  The views were definitely the highlight of staying at the lodge and breakfast out on the patio was super pleasant.  I have to admit I felt super spoiled staying there because as a kid my impression of National Parks were of places where one found a patch of dirt for a tent.  Staying in a lodge room feels so plush.

Mesa Verde is known as one of the best archeological sites with many cliff-dwellings and other ruins.  I have to admit that ruins of old places are kind of something I don’t really get that excited about.  They just look like dilapidated buildings to me and most of the stuff they say about the people that lived there seems like guesses at best.  Mostly I was there because I liked the idea of staying at the lodge in the middle of nowhere.  But since I was there, it seemed like we should check out the ruins.

Most of the cliff-dwellings require going on a paid tour to see them.  After seeing the crowds and some annoyingly loud kids at the museum where tickets can be purchased, we decided that we didn’t really want to go on a tour and would stick to the cliff-dwelling that is open to just walk around.  Unfortunately the trail to it was closed due to a rock slide and we had to make do with a view from across the way.

We ended up taking another trail 1.25 miles out to some petroglyphs.  It would have been a bit more enjoyable had we planned for a hike.  The way out to the petroglyphs I felt fine, but by the way back I was sorely wishing for a drink and a snack.  I also fail to get very excited about ancient graffiti, but it was a very neat hike along the side of the canyon with rock staircases and a few narrow passages.

After the hike we had a much-deserved lunch and then left the park for another night of camping in the National Forest in Colorado.  I know there are a bunch more ruins and things that we didn’t get the chance to see, but I don’t feel like I’m missing out.  It’s a pretty area and I wouldn’t mind going back if the opportunity presented itself.  I also don’t feel a pressing need to go back.

Clearly it’s the type of thing that some people are very into.  There were license plates there from dozens of different states and people at the restaurant there speaking languages I didn’t recognize.  If one is into archeological-type things then it’s clearly a must-see destination.  For me, I’m glad to have seen it but would probably be happier going to a new place next time.

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I’m always confused about whether it’s supposed to be botanic or botanical, but according to the internet, the ABQ BioPark Botanic Garden is a Botanical Garden.

I’d been there once before for the River of Lights which is a fantastical display of Christmas lights made into amazing shapes like flowers and bunnies that is held around Christmas time each year.  That was in December at night- a very different experience from an early summer morning.  (The River of Lights was awesome and definitely something I’d recommend going to see if one had the chance.)

This time around I made it there just a little after opening on a weekday, which seemed to be a perfect time.  A few hours later about the time I left the crowds were picking up and it was starting to get hot.

It was just the perfect place to spend a few hours leisurely walking around, looking at plants, and a little ‘wild’ life- a few ducks, some fish, some bunnies and a lizard or two. Hoppy is always a fan of anywhere that has other bunnies for him to say hi to.

Click on a thumbnail to view the larger version

I didn’t see quite the whole area before feeling that I’d had enough, but I’d like to go back and check out the rest of it sometime. It’s certainly an enjoyable place to go walk around and I think I might have to see about bringing a picnic along sometime.

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Moving to Albuquerque one of the things I worried about was being further from nature.  There are things I like about cities, but at the end of the day I think I like nature better.  This weekend, I had a chance to explore a couple of the trails in the Sandia Mountains.  There are trail-heads less than 15 minutes from my new house that head up into the mountains.  While I’ve always known the Sandia Mountains were there, I never quite realized how easily accessible they are from Albuquerque.

While the trail-heads are busy, once I’d get half a mile up the trails the number of people declined a lot. It was so nice to discover how easy it is to leave the city behind and really be totally out in nature. Both of the trails I tried this weekend were very cool (Embudito trails 192 & 193). They wound up little canyons and there were plenty of rocks to scramble up and other small obstacles to keep things interesting.

It was super nice to get outside and do a bit of hiking. Between moving and everything else that I’ve had going on, I haven’t been out hiking and exploring as much as I would like. Hopefully this is the start of that changing. I’m really looking forward to getting out and exploring more of the trails in the Sandia Mountains.

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