Petrified Forest National Park

We loved going through the Petrifed Forest.  Its right off of I-40 before you get to Holbrooke.  The Painted desert is on the north side of the freeway and the Petrified Forest is on the south side of the freeway.   Everywhere you look you see beautiful giant pieces of colorful "wood".  It was a whole forest of trees that were buried by a flood and over the eons the wood was replaced by minerals.  All kinds of colorful minerals are in these specimens.  The wood looks like someone came with a chainsaw and cut it up into smaller pieces but it actually broke up naturally and just looks like its been sawed.
We stopped at DoBell Ranch which is next door to the park.  The ranch is privately owned and is full of petrified wood that you can buy for 30 cents a pound.  The national park doesn't allow any collecting so your only choices are to buy it from sellars in town or out at this ranch.  You are welcome at the ranch to go out and pick your own or pick from their piles.  They have a great museum and the granddaughter of the original ranch owner showed us around and was very nice.  There were small pieces of petrified wood everywhere you walked and she kept saying to fill our pockets.  We found a very nice piece (not too big) that we kept as well as a small dinosaur bone and some other free samples of beautiful rocks. 

We left Prescott Valley and stayed in Quartzsite a few days and are now at the refuge for the winter. 

Painted Desert

We left Las Vegas, NM and went through Albuquerque just after the balloon festival so we missed seeing all of the beautiful balloons in the air.  Our next stop was Gallup, NM.  Gallup is one of those cute little Route 66 towns.  Lots and lots of Native American jewelry, art, rugs, etc.  Every shop was full of beautiful stuff.  New Mexico has a law that they have to say in the store if its authentic native american made so if it doesn't say then its not.  What they don't protect you from is whether the stones in the jewelry are genuine turquoise or not so you want to go to reputable stores and if the price is too good to be true then its suspect. 

Our next stop was the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest National Park.  Its two parks in one.  The northern part of the park is the Painted Desert.  It has fabulous vistas of multicolored rock.  It reminded us of the Badlands in South Dakota.  You can actually drive your RV through the park and most of the pullouts for picture taking are big enough for RV's.  Most people drove their rig through but we chose to park the RV in Holbrooke, AZ and drive through with the truck.

We are now sitting in Prescott, AZ enjoying some nice mountain views and enjoying mid 70 degree temps.  

Colorado Springs

We spent a few days in Colorado Springs after quickly going through Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas.  We found an old but nice campground east of the city.  We had somewhat of a view of Pikes Peak but there where too many power lines in the way to get any nice pictures of the peak.  We took a ride on the Cog Railway up to the top of the peak.  It was a beautiful day and we go some nice pictures.  We sat across from an elderly couple that were celebrating their honeymoon.  They were a very cute couple.

We also drove through the Garden of the Gods.  The rock formations there are incredible.  I think this one is called "kissing camels".   We spent one of our days in Colorado Springs getting new tires on the truck and found out that the batteries needed replacing as well.   We hit the road again and now are a little north of Santa Fe in a little town called Las Vegas, New Mexico.  We've got two more weeks of traveling before we get to the refuge where we will be parked for the winter. 

Wild River State Park

We hightailed out of Northern Lights Resort -- afraid it was going to snow on us before we got out.  We got out just in time because it did snow up there a few days after we left.  We stayed a couple of nights at Pleasureland RV --- the dealer where we bought our RV.  We had them put another clear coat finish on the exterior of the RV to keep it easy to clean -- and nice and shiny.  Our next major purchase will be new tires for the truck.  The truck has close to 70,000 miles on it -- its just getting broke in -- but with all the driving we've done on gravel roads, etc.  its time for new tires.

We then moved over to Wild River State Park and got one of the last spots available.  I forgot how much Minnesotans like to camp in October to see the changing leaves.  They were beautiful at the park.  We enjoyed seeing beautiful fall colors the whole drive down from the resort.  We were hoping to get to the Black Hills but with the cold weather we are trying to get south faster.  We are stopping in Des Moines and then on to Nebraska and from there maybe Kansas and/or Colorado.  

Fish & Fowl

I had to post one last fish picture for the season.   This was the last nice walleye Jim caught before we pulled the boat out of the water.  I have been fishing off of the dock at the resort when its nice which hasn't been very often lately.  Its been cold, rainy, windy and sleeting off and on for the last several days.   We still have guests going out fishing in all kinds of nasty weather. 

We have this one very pretty Goldeneye duck hanging around our dock.  This duck isn't interested in eating bread like the mallards that hung around most of the summer.  We had left over bird seed from making pine cone bird feeders with the kids so we fed the ducks the seed.  We had everyone feeding the ducks -- adults and kids alike enjoyed it. 

We are pretty much packed up and ready to head out.  Can't wait!

Fog on the Water

The lake water is cooling off fast but the air temp has been dropping faster.  The fog takes awhile to lift in the mornings.  The fishermen pace the dock until they can see far enough to go out fishing.

One of our workamper couples has left and we are glad we will be leaving in two weeks because the cold is coming.  By Tuesday its supposed to only get in thelow 50's with low 30's at night and a very hard freeze coming tomorrow night.  There go all the flowers -- oh well the deer were eating all of the flowers anyway.  We were spraying the flowers with "deer stop" but it wasn't really working. 

We have had the boat winterized and plan to store it up here since we are coming back to work here one more summer.  It will be nice traveling with just the 5th wheel.   

Fall Colors

Fall colors pretty much happened overnight up here.   The colors along the gravel road from the resort out to the blacktop are beautiful.  Looking at the colors along the shoreline from out in the boat is breathtaking.  Its been dry and cool at night so the leaves turned color overnight and then started to fall.  It won't take long and it will be over.  We don't mind though because we can usually follow fall colors as they happen while heading south.  We have been starting to get the resort ready to shut down.  The big water towers that the kids play on came out of the water.  Otherwise, if they stay in too long the muskrats start chewing on the cords holding them in place in the water. 

We are taking our boat out of the water and having it winterized.  We plan to store it up here for the winter.  We can use one of the resort boats if we want to get out on the water.  It will be vey nice traveling south without the boat.    We hope to check out the Black Hills , Wyoming, Utah and then Arizona.