Salome, AZ

After being here almost a week we will be leaving in the morning for Palm Desert, CA. We had a good visit with friends John & Mary Fielding from Fri. thru Sun. They left on Mon. morning for Michigan. On Mon. we drove about 80 miles NW to Lake Havasu City. While there we drove over the London Bridge. Havasu City looks to be a tourist town. On the way back we stopped at Parker Dam and Parker, AZ. All of these places are on the Colorado River that runs between AZ & CA. The area between Parker and Parker Dam is really pretty. It is in a canyon between the mountains. The elevation sign said the elevation was 450 ft. The elevation here at Salome is 3300 ft. We booked the month of March at an RV park on the Calif. side of the river. Our site will be right on the bank of the river. We have also booked the month of Feb. here at Desert Palms in Salome.
Salome is located 100 miles west and north from Phoenix and 80 miles SW of Prescott. It is in the desert with mountains on all sides. There is some farming here in the valley. Right now they seem to be raising cotton and cantaloupe are being harvested. It is irrigated by wells and some ditch water from a dam in the mountains to the north. A few miles to the west in another valley there is a large dairy. If it wasn't for the water there would be only dirt and scrub similar to sage brush. The town of Salome appears to be around 500 residents with many more winter residents. There is a small grocery store, post office, restaurant, hardware-lumber yard and a parts store. Desert Palms RV Park is a really nice 200-300 space RV Park developed in the last 5 years. It also has a 9 hole golf coarse. There are many other RV parks in the area most are smaller and not nearly as nice. In fact some appear to be pretty run down. A lot of the men here have 4 wheel ATV's and spend time riding in the desert and the mountains. The women do crafts, painting etc like most RV parks. Just across the road to the south is a small airport development that has houses and hangers. We see ultra lights and small Cessna's taking off and landing there.

Salome, NM

We arrived in Salome, AZ just afternoon today after spending from Sat. until this morning at the Thousand Trails Resort between Cottonwood and Camp Verde AZ. We are finally seeing some farm ground having seen none since leaving Texas some two weeks ago.
On Tues we visited Montezuma Castle located near Camp Verde, AZ. Southern Sinagua farmers began building this 5 story 20 room dwelling early in the 1100's. It stands in a cliff recess 100 ft. above the valley. It is believed that 150 to 200 Sinagua lived here until about 1400 when they seem to have just disappeared. On Wed. we drove US 89A to Prescott, AZ and had a spent a very enjoyable afternoon visiting with my cousin Dick Williams and his wife Gloria. Prescott is on the other side of the mountains that are just west of Cottonwood. It was a very pretty drive with lots of switch backs. It is a good thing we drove it in the car as I had planned to go that way with the motor home this morning. Some of the turns going thru the town of Jerome couldn't have been navigated with the motor home and car in tow. As a result we changed plans and went south on I-17 to just north of Phoenix were we went west on US 74 and then Us 60 to Salome.

Cottonwood, Az

We visited the Grand Canyon Thur. &Fri. What a spectacular place to visit. It hardly seems possible that something so large and grand could be out in the middle if what seems to me like a desert. We didn't see all there was to see because the altitude made it hard for Nancy to walk & breath. What we did see was certainly worth the time we spent there. We are now in Cottonwood, AZ at about 1/2 the altitude. Nancy is breathing much better and doesn't have near the aches that she has at higher altitudes.Cottonwood in in a big valley between two mountain ranges south of Flagstaff.

Holbrook, AZ

Wed. we took a 250 mile drive in the car. We went east from Holbrook on I-40 and then north on 191 to Ganado where we saw the Hubbell Trading Post. It is a trading post that dates back to the 1860's. The Navajo, Hopi and Apache Indians traded wool and such for the necessities they needed. It is now run by the national park service and on the National Register of Historic places. See photo lower right.
Next it was west on 264 to the Hopi Indian Villages located atop the mesas with a stop at Keems Canyon for an authentic Hopi meal at noon. We had a soup made with hominy, onion, spice and some kind of meat along with fry bread. It was really very tasty. The villages are atop 3 different mesa's. Unlike the Acona village at Grants, NM these have electricity and are inhabited year round. I talked to a Hopi man and he indicated that most have running water also. Photo top left. It was back toward i-40 on RT 87 traveling through the Painted Desert before heading back east on I-40to Holbrook. The area we were in is very poor land covered with Junipers, rock and very little grass. On Rt 264 between Ganado and the Hopi mesa's there are many Indian homes along the way.

Sky City

It is 32 degrees here in Grants, NM this morning. Nancy has a dentist appointment at 10AM and then we will head west. I think it will warm up after we get over the continental divide at Gallop, NM.
Yesterday my cousin Arlene took a day off from work and toured us around some of the things in the area. We went to Sky City. It is supposed to be the oldest continually inhabited village in the US. It has been inhabited since 600AD by the Ancona Pueblo Indians. It is on a Mesa and has no electricity or running water. The priests of the village live there year round but the rest of the people have other homes on the reservation. They go there for many sacred celebrations and others live there part time. They have a road up to the village now but in earlier times it was only accessible by foot trail up the side of the mesa (top photo). We also went to another area were we viewed an arch rock formation and and a mountain shaped like an old lady.

Grants, NM

We arrived at Balloon Fiesta field about 1PM on Tues. Oct 9th. WE parked about 1 mile south of the balloon launch field with about 40 other Newmar coach's. Tues evening was orientation and a demonstration by a balloon pilot.
Wed morning it was up early and down to the launch field for the mass ascension at 7AM. It is really something to watch some 600 balloons being laid out and launched in a matter of an hour & 1/2. Nancy stayed at the motor home and watched them come over the top of where we were camped. Mid morning we all loaded into 2 buses and were taken to Santa Fe for a an afternoon of shopping and strolling around the plaza. Thur. morning at 7 AM the launching of some 90 special shape balloons occurred. There was the Wells Fargo stage coach, two super bee balloon, Clara Bell the cow and many more. Thur. evening after a tour of old town Albuquerque and the Indian culture center we watched the glow of the special shape balloons and the fire works that fallowed. Fri. was a free day until 3:30Pm. So we watched the launching of the special shapes again as they came over the motor home. Fri evening we went up Sandia Mountain by tram for supper. The tram ride is two mile up the mountain to an elevation of 10500 ft. Well after we had eaten we were going back to the tram and found that the trams had been stopped due to 45 MPH winds. Since there is no other way down the mountain we had to wait about 2 hrs. until the winds had gone down. We arrived back at the motor homes around 12:30 that night. Sat. was another mass ascension but since the winds were from the south we didn't get to see then come over the motor home.
This morning Sun. I went down to watch them launch again and we then left the balloon RV parking lot around 10:30 AM. We arrive in Grants, NM after noon and have visited my cousin Arlene Harvey this afternoon.

Santa Rosa, NM

I will try this again this morning, I have been having trouble keeping my enternet connection. From the 29th. of Sept thru Oct. 6th. we were in Calico Rock, AR. While there I did some trout fishing on the White River and Nancy visited with her Aunts. On Tues.and Fri evening we drove to Mountain View (25 miles south). We ate supper at Jo-Jo's on the White River and then enjoyed the music on the square down town. Mountain View has a lot of people that either live there or vacation there that have a lot of musical talent. There may be as many as 8 or 10 groups of people gathered together picking and singing.
On Sat. morning we headed west on US 412 toward Tulsa, OK. We spent the night east of Tulsa and then Sun. morning it was west bound on I44 to Oklahoma City were we picked up I-40 west spending the night at Amarillo, TX. Mon. morning we were west bound again for 3 hrs spending the afternoon and evening in Santa Rosa, NM. We had mail waiting for us when we got here so we caught up on things that had accumulated. We toured the Rte 66 Museum and the Blue Hole. The museum has around 30 old cars some have been highly customized. The Blue Hole is a hole around 80 ft deep and about that wide that has a spring in the bottom of it. The water is really blue looking. It has rock formations around it that divers use for diving. In three days we have traveled from the wooded Ozark mountains through the flat farm lands of Oklahoma and Texas to the rolling scrub and grass covered grass lands of eastern NM.
Today we will drive to Albuquerque, NM for the balloon festival.