Stan and Connie Spielbusch's Web Site

StanAndConnie.com

December 2001

We're finally traveling again! After a long sittin' spell in Kansas City for family activities and some other scheduled events, we have moved to Mesa, Arizona (a suburb of Phoenix) for the winter.

Also while in Kansas City, I created an easy-to-use reservation program for campgrounds and resorts, called Campground Master. You can check it out at Campground-Master.com. If you know of a campground that's interested in computerizing their reservations and accounting, please let them know about it!

December, 2001

Travels from Texas to Arizona...

We took our time (sort-of) and stopped at a few places along the way down to Mesa for some sight-seeing. Actually the best part of the trip was the driving itself. We really enjoyed the wide-open spaces of the southwest, from west Texas hill country to the Arizona desert. I'm sure it would just be considered a boring and desolate area by many people, but when you have the time to watch as the terrain goes slowly by, you can see so many interesting things. Then again, I was happy just to get behind the wheel of the "house" again after so many months, and on the big roads of the southwest it really drains away the stress of everyday life. Forget the 70 mph speed limit, just go a relaxing 55 and enjoy the view.

Where else but the southwest will you see interesting things like this ;-)

(Click photos to enlarge)

There were quite a few surprises along the way. I always thought of New Mexico as desert, but farming and ranching is quite common. We saw a number of cattle ranches, dairy farms, cotton fields, pecan and walnut groves, and other crops we couldn't identify. It was harvest time for much of the cotton and pecans, so it was pretty interesting to see. Cotton littered the roadside in some places, either blown there from the trucks hauling it or from the harvesting machines. We stopped to pick some up out of curiosity -- it's just like a cotton ball (gee, what a surprise!), with a seed.

I was also rather surprised by the number of mountains and mountain ranges. Mountains seem to border Texas and Mexico in the area south of El Paso (I always thought that the border was just a river), and southern Arizona is much more mountainous than I expected. I had only expected desert and a few isolated mountains. Luckily we avoided snow by going the southern route along I-10 (We watched it snow in the mountains but none reached the ground where we were). Had we gone I-40 through Albuquerque and Flagstaff, we could have been snowed in for days.

Pecos, Texas

We stopped in Pecos for a couple days to relax, have some good Mexican food, and take in a museum. The Pecos museum is housed in a pair of old saloon and hotel buildings, which have some history of their own. The saloon was built in 1894, and the hotel a few years later. The saloon and hotel lobby still have the original woodwork, including a bullet hole in the window frame (and there's a story to go along with that, which made for some interesting reading).

In addition there are a lot of exhibits of period objects in typical settings, like a doctor's office, school room, kitchen, barber shop, etc. My favorite was the beauty chair / torture device:

I also liked the old switchboards, one of which was still being used in Pecos until 1984. Here's one of them, with my cell phone sitting on it for historical contrast:

Carlsbad, New Mexico

Connie had to tolerate my interests quite a bit this trip -- the beginning of this was our side-trip to Carlsbad and Roswell. Naturally the purpose of the side trip was to see Carlsbad Caverns and the Roswell UFO museum, which I could not possibly "pass up" without visiting even though it was a 200-mile 2-day detour.

In order to visit the sights easily, we stayed a couple nights in a very nice RV resort called 7 Rivers Cove. It's about midway between the caverns and Roswell, making a good base camp. This is a brand new RV resort with some of the nicest facilities we've seen (even a tanning bed!), and wonderful sunrises and sunsets over the mountains to boot.

It's also next door to a pecan farm, so we got a couple pounds of great fresh pecans while we were there. I'd post a photo of the pecans, but they didn't last long enough for the camera to capture them ;-)

Carlsbad Caverns National Park is a first-class operation. It really puts to shame all of the other cave tours we've taken. Even the 8-mile drive up to the caverns entrance was impressive, with several scenic turnouts with nature and history information.

While the rock formations in the caverns were pretty much the same as in any cave, the experience was much different than most. For one thing, they have 3 different tours -- one ranger-guided and two self-guided. We skipped the ranger tour since I expected that to be the same as other cave tours, and we could only handle two tours anyway. When taking the two self-guided tours, you start the first one by going down into the cave using the natural entrance. (There is also a large amphitheater where visitors can sit and watch the bats come out every night, except that the bats move to Mexico for the winter after October so we didn't get to see that.)

Then begins the long long walk downhill...

The cave is 750 feet deep, and it takes over a mile walk to get to the bottom. It doesn't sound that steep (and there are long stretches that are mostly level so you can rest), but it's a real workout for your legs, believe me! But it was well worth it. I liked the ability to take it at our own pace, studying the formations at our leisure. And of course if you get into trouble in the bat cave, there are bat-phones!

At the end of the first tour you end up in a rest area, complete with a snack bar and gift shop. I had to have a pizza, just so I can say that I've had a pizza 750 feet underground! After a welcome snack, we began the tour of the "big rooms". These rooms really are big, some being over 100 feet high and with formations to match. Unfortunately, despite all of my efforts I couldn't get any decent photos of the formations. It's just too dark and too large for a simple camera to handle. The best I could get is a close-up photo of just a portion of a formation.

Oh well, I'm sure you've seen plenty of cave photos.

Roswell, New Mexico

The next stop was Roswell, famous for being reported as the site of a UFO crash in 1947. I don't know if it really happened, but it's fun to speculate. (The townspeople say that UFO stands for "unlimited financial opportunity".) For the "Roswell" TV show fans, there's even the real Crashdown Diner across the street.

The main attraction is the UFO museum and research center. It was actually started by the man who discovered the crash, and you can even visit with him in the museum if your timing is right. I'm not sure if we saw him, but there were two men talking very seriously about the crash reports in the library, and I think he was one of the men. (I didn't want to be a "nosey tourist", so I didn't interrupt them to find out.)

Anyway, the museum has an interesting collection of articles and information about the investigation of the incident, including all of the articles claiming that it was just a weather balloon. Both sides are actually presented rather fairly, so you can decide for yourself. There are also exhibits showing all of the common hoax photos (with explanations), and a variety of models depicting reported scenes.

We also picked up a map to the "actual" crash site, but since it was 60 miles away and apparently is just a bunch of rocks, we didn't bother going to it (although I do like rocks...).

Another good museum in Roswell is the Roswell Museum and Art Center, which also houses the Robert Goddard rocket museum and a variety of historical artifacts of the old west. The art was interesting, and included works by Georgia O'Keefe, Rogers Aston and others. I liked the carvings by Rogers Aston, and the wagon models (there were about 10 of them, created by various people and all very realistic). Connie really likes the Chuck Wagon (I may have to make some modifications to the motorcoach soon....).

The Goddard museum contains a complete replica of Robert Goddard's workshop, set up like he's working on a rocket now. With this and the other exhibits of actual rockets and rocket pieces, you get a good idea of what early rocket science was all about. I got a real kick out of his control panel, which looks like it was assembled out of whatever he had available. It really reminds me of the panel I put together for my train set when I was a kid!

Deming, New Mexico

Our next stop was a little town about 30 miles north of the Mexico border. Once again, Connie was pretty much just along for the ride as I indulged my own interests. Besides being a convenient distance between Pecos and Phoenix (and having an RV Park run by the Escapees club), it's a good point from which to visit some interesting state parks. In particular, City of Rocks State Park and Rockhound State Park.

City of Rocks State Park is a site to see. It would also be a pretty cool place to camp, if you have a fairly small RV (most state parks aren't set up for large motorhomes). The "city" is the remnants of a volcano. More precisely, it's largely made up of the rocks resulting from the ash and other volcanic "spewings" from a violent eruption, which has weathered down to what we see now. It's reminiscent of a natural Stonehenge. The shapes and precarious positions of the rocks are pretty interesting to look at. You can even camp or picnic among the rocks.

There is also a desert botanical garden, and since we were pretty much the only people in the park we had the park ranger all to ourselves to explain all of the different types of cacti and other plants. She was really nice and enjoyed visiting with us.

Connie was really interested in learning how each plant was edible, and also the other uses for the plants. For instance, the creosote bush is an antiseptic, some cactus roots can be used to make soap, and most cacti are edible, even the blossoms and roots. We had been wondering how all of the cattle we had been seeing in the desert are surviving, but now we know that there are plenty of living nutritious plants all over. They just don't "look" alive except for one time in the year (monsoon season) when they bloom. They work very hard to get and retain their water, so they maintain a tough dead-looking exterior to avoid water evaporation.

Nevertheless, some cacti were showing fruit.

Finally, there was Rockhound State Park, where they actually encourage you to take rocks out of the park. Jasper is said to be plentiful, and if you look (or work) hard enough you can find agate and geodes or thunder eggs. I was keen on finding some lapidary material (rock that can be used to make jewelry, carvings, or whatever), because the RV resort we're staying at for the winter has a fully equipped lapidary shop (rock workshop) and silversmith shop, and I'm anxious to try my hand at it.

The park is nestled on the hillside of a mountain, the remnants of another volcano. It also has a campground, with a wonderful view of the valley below.

It didn't take long to fill my bag with as many rocks as I cared to carry back down the trail. I'm not terribly good at identifying the "good stuff" yet, since most of the time you can't tell how interesting the interior of an agate or jasper rock is until you cut it open. For that matter, I'm not completely sure that I even got any agate or jasper. I guess I'll find out when I get to the lapidary shop. (The man at the visitor's center told me where the good agate geodes are, but it's much farther up the mountain than I cared to go this time, and would have required some serious digging with a rock hammer and chisel to get them out of the limestone.)

Right next to Rockhound State Park is Spring Canyon. The main part of it was closed off (for the winter I assume), but we got close to it and drove through some interesting terrain where it had snowed the day before (we're pretty high up at this point, probably 6000' or more).

In mid-December we arrived in Mesa, Arizona for our winter stay. Read about it here!

Thank you for visiting our travel site. Please visit our other sites too:

Campground Master -- A tracking program for your campground or inn. Easy to use and learn, but modern and powerful. One of the most inexpensive systems, great for small campgrounds. Designed by campground owners and full-time RVers.

MysteryPhotos -- Every week a new photo is shown, which may be a close-up of something, or a section of a common object or sight. Guess what it is and you might win a prize. Lots of fun for the whole family! Free screensaver and wallpaper too.

Awesome Screen Savers -- Cool photographic screen savers of the highest quality, for Windows PC's. Download FREE Lite versions of them all. Some are created with photos from our travels, some are awesome photos from NASA. (Contact me to have a screen saver made with your own photos!)

Cottonwood Software -- My shareware business site, currently featuring File-Ex 98: a Windows 95/98 dialog enhancement tool. Great for people who work with a lot of files.

Free -n- Cool -- Tons of Freebies, Giveaways, and Cool Sites -- all in one! You'll find a large selection of free samples you can get mailed to you, free games, screen savers, internet services, etc., plus hundreds of contests of all types, and a unique "intensely cool sites" list.