Getting the heck outta Dodge

After my wonderful time in authentic Old West towns of Colorado such as Silverton, I was expecting Dodge City, Kansas to also have quite a bit of it’s Old West heritage preserved as well.

Unfortunately, not so much.

Sure, there was Wyatt Earp Drive (the main street through town), and Boot Hill, but the Old West buildings there were a bit too new and perfect-looking compared to the more authentic ones I’d just seen in Colorado:

Or maybe it was the fact that they built a modern Applebee’s restaurant right next to this attraction, but I decided to not pay to tour this place and moved along to see other the other sites.

They seemed to have a pretty good-sized downtown

But there is no doubt that the main industry in town these days is meat packing, and it’s quite a production.  Much, much larger than the so-called “Beef Capital of the World” (Hereford, TX) that I passed through last February. 

This slaughterhouse was one of a couple big ones in town.  Hundreds of trucks coming and going.  The night before, I had noticed a lot of cattle trucks on the road.  Seems like they make the rounds to all the cattle feed lots mainly at night, and by the next morning, nothing but a few hundred mundane-looking refrigerated trucks wait in the parking lot.   Dodge City seems ideally located for this kind of operation—way off the beaten path of Interstate highways and far away from view of suburbanites gobbling up their $1 Happy Meals without a care in the world.   Somehow, I think the cowboys of the Old West would be appalled by this.kind of corporate hyper-automation.  No more “Home on the Range” herding grass-fed cattle across large expanses of open range land…unless you happen to be in New Mexico!.

Riding along the Santa Fe Trail

While driving down some of the steep passes in Colorado, I noticed that my toad brakes didn’t seem to be coming on unless I really stepped firmly on the motorhome brakes.   The ReadyBrake system is a mechanical surge brake, so it should certainly be activating automatically when descending a steep hill (similar to how the surge brake on my T@B trailer did).

I noticed ReadyBrake was located in Kansas and called to see if they might be able to inspect and adjust my setup and they were more than willing to.  So, I planned my return route home through Kansas and thought I’d try staying off the Interstates and seeing some more backroad scenery.

I’d driven a short bit of the Old Santa Fe trail while in Santa Fe, and thought it might be fun to take that route from New Mexico into Kansas and set my first day’s destination for the old Wild West town of Dodge City.

To get there, I first needed to cross over one last range of mountains via the curvy downhill turns of Highway 64 east of Taos.  The drive was relatively uneventful up to the town of Eagle Nest, but skies were growing darker..

Still, it wasn’t raining so we continued eastward into the final range of mountains.

As the road became curvy again, it began following a mountain stream that looked like it might make a pretty lunch spot.  By the time I found an area to pull off, the skies were now getting pretty dark. I went back to start making my lunch, and not two minutes later the skies opened up and it began hailing and raining something fierce!  Now, other cars were pulling off the highway as well.  I was SO thankful I had pulled over when I did!

It poured for nearly half an hour before we could safely get on the road again.  Fortunately, nothing got damaged, and we stayed inside the RV and dry the whole time.  By the time we reached Cimarron, it had stopped raining entirely and never rained again on us the rest of the day.

I had thought the town of Cimarron would be more touristy as it was an important historical town along the Santa Fe trail, but other than a few large commemorative signs of the famous cowboys such as Kit Carson, there was really nothing at all to see—the town was run-down with no real businesses or attractions.

As we got past Springer, NM, the landscape really began to open up.  Mountains were now behind us and nothing but 500 miles of prairie ahead of us.  I can’t imagine what the pioneer wagon train families must have gone through to drive this trail.  But I was sure glad my little Conestoga wagon had air conditioning, a fridge, a potty, running water, and could travel this route in hours rather than days!

There were still some signs along the New Mexico portion of the trail, that the landscape had not changed much since the wagon train days:

There were still a few real live cowboys (galloping along on horses rather than ATVs no less!)


and a few old buildings that looked authentic:


and cows roaming home on the range.

As we crossed into Kansas, we drove through countless small dilapidated towns that seemed to be hanging on by a thread:

But nearly every one of them had a large grain elevator:


And miles of grain growing in the fields surrounding each town..

The evening skies of Western Kansas weren’t quite as dramatic as Taos, but they were pretty close!

We rolled into Dodge City just after nightfall and made our way to the Wal-Mart where we spent a hot but uneventful night.

The other sites of Taos

The super friendly owner of Taos Monte Bello RV Park pulled out a local tourist map while I was registering and gave me a full run-down on all the sites to see—the downtown plaza, the Pueblo, the churches, the Rio Grande bridge, and even the shortcut routes the locals take to get around the daily traffic jam downtown!

So during my time before and after work, I tried to do a few quick tours to see a few things.   The Rio Grande bridge was just a couple miles from the RV park and incredible to think that what looked so narrow a river here was so wide next to the river road I’d taken to get up to Taos!

I quickly toured around the downtown plaza one night before all the shops closed:


Also downtown is Kit Carson’s house, but unfortunately it was already closed for the night:

Of course, what trip to Taos would be complete without a trip through Julia Roberts’ neighborhood!  Julia has a 100-acre ranch here, but sadly, she was out of town so I wasn’t able to bump into her at the organic grocery store!

I didn’t have enough time to visit historic Taos Pueblo (they also wanted a pretty hefty photo fee to do so), so on my last morning in Taos, I visited the church at Ranchos de Taos that Georgia O’Keefe had painted and Ansel Adams had photographed, San Francisco de Asis Mission.  Wow!


The buildings in the plaza surrounding the church are also on the National Historic Register and were just a vibrant:

I really hope to return here again soon some day to spend more time in this wonderful place!

The Magnificent Skies of Taos!

Every time I start to grumble a bit about my job, I think about the flexibility it allows me to work from magnificent places such as Taos.  For as stressful and demanding as a “virtual office” workday might be, at day’s end, I can shut down the laptop, walk out the RV and take a sunset stroll in the desert.

Our campground, Taos Monte Bello RV Park, was located outside of town on the mesa top with nothing around to block the 360-degree views of the the skies and mountains.  I lucked out with a site at the end of the park—a front row view of the sunset each night!

and the sunsets were indeed….glorious!

The afternoon light before sunset was also pretty amazing in Taos.  Must be something to do with the mountain backdrops, but I couldn’t help hang my camera out the car window as I drove past some of these scenes!

One night, as if Taos was trying to “one up” itself for the “Best skies in America” designation, it pulled out all the stops and gave me this wonderful little rainbow to enjoy.  Taos, New Mexico is indeed the “Land of Enchantment!”

Down to Santa Fe via Four Corners

I had never been to the Four Corners before, so since I was only about 45 miles away, I decided to swing by to see it on my way to New Mexico.

Just west of the large mesa where Mesa Verde is located, the landscape immediately begins looking like all those old western cowboy movies and TV shows.  Flat, dry valleys with a few large buttes in the distance.  I kept thinking I’d see a stagecoach roll by!  But I did see some tumbleweed roll across the road.

The Four Corners monument is on Navajo land, and since they’ve made quite a tourist attraction out of it, they wanted an admission fee of $3 per person.  No big deal for a solo traveler, but a large family might re-think the value of stopping here.   It was basically a concrete plaza with markers showing each of the four state boundaries (Arizona, Utah, Colorado & New Mexico).   There were a number of benches, but tourists were mainly just coming to take their pictures at the marker itself.  Surrounding the plaza were vendor booths where tribal residents could sell their wares.  There didn’t seem like much to look at or to buy.

It was pretty amusing to see how creative each person wanted to get with their photo pose—some got down on all fours with their butt sticking up in the air!  Others did the backbend gymnastics move (stomach up).   I decided to just go the lame boring route--- sorry folks!

I had hoped to get a shot of Millie on the corners, but discovered that dogs are not allowed on the plaza, so Millie had to stay with all the other dogs in their motorhomes.

So, within about 15 minutes, we were on our way again and had “been there, done that” with the Four Corners Monument!

The drive to Santa Fe was long and fairly boring, with the exception of the large rock formation called Shiprock, which could be seen for at least 60 miles! 

I originally thought I’d overnight in a Wal-Mart parking lot just north of Santa Fe, but when I parked and went to start up the generator it would not start—no sound at all.  So, on to Plan B and trying to locate a campground at 6:00pm on a Friday night!

Fortunately, I had good cell service and my trusty iPhone/iPad app called Camp & RV to quickly locate and call nearby campgrounds. 


This app is a “must-have” for every RV’er!  I don’t like to make advanced reservations that often, so I use this app nearly every day when traveling to find my best overnight option—be it a Wal-Mart parking lot or a campground.  If you don’t have a Apple device, it’s also available for Android phones, or for free via any web browser. 

Side Note:  A few days later when using this app, I happened to submit feedback to the developer (there’s an easy link in the app to do so).  He responded right away and we had a nice email chat.  Turns out, he’s also a View owner and happens to live in Santa Fe!  Too bad I didn’t realize this when I was there, but Adam seems like a great guy and very dedicated to making the data in his apps as current and accurate as humanly possible.  Thanks for the app, Adam!

Ok, back to our originally scheduled program .  I called and found a nice campground to stay at for the weekend, Rancheros de Santa Fe, so with reservations now made, I could now relax and enjoy the evening again! 

With all the driving we did on Friday, we spent most of Saturday resting around the campsite.  However, Millie did need a quick shopping trip to Petsmart to get more dog food (and of course, plop her paws up on the checkout counter to get her free dog biscuit!).  I also had to get my fix for some wonderful southwestern food that always seems to taste better in Santa Fe (yummy blue corn enchiladas!).

On Sunday morning, I ventured out to revisit historic downtown Santa Fe.  Not much has changed since I last saw it about 10 years ago, which is just fine—it’s a great place to stroll around and check out artwork and museums.
  

Sunday afternoon, we left Santa Fe to drive up to Taos (a town I’d never been to before but had been eager to see for a number of years).  There are 2 roads to Taos, so I took them both! —the low road along the Rio Grande river (and, yes of course, Millie went for a quick swim in that nice river!)


and the scenic “High Road to Taos” through the mountain forests and small native farming villages:


When driving the river route, the road climbed from “river level” to “mesa level” up on top.  It was a good place to stop and to start enjoying the incredible skies of Taos!