July 27--29, 2011 Rocky Mtn Summer Trip

The last couple of days we've had g'son James visiting and we've been very busy with activities geared to a 5 year old. We swam often, which he enjoys. And we visited Tumacacori Mission which is south of Tubac. We've started James on the Junior Ranger programs at many of the parks we visit. He enjoys it and we learn new things too. The next day we visited Colossal Cave Park which is on the southeast side of Tucson. We, of course, took the cave tour which was really interesting. James was a little bit shaky at first, but he soon got into being in a real cave. I had told him I was pretty sure that cave bears were inside so that probably accounts for his anxiety. In addition to the cave we also visited an old cattle ranch which was an outpost of the Empire Cattle Ranch some 50 miles away. I think his favorite part was the ice cream treat after passing his latest Jr. Ranger test. July 28th we all loaded up and we took James home. We continued our trip through Payson, to Holbrook on I-40 and then east. This is the first trip in a long time without Starship Avion since we'll be staying with Cousin John in Littleton and then in one of the cabins on the Miller property with old friends Kay and Ernie.

After a long drive we made it to Gallup and stayed the night in a motel. The following day we found a couple of trading posts that were open early and browsed through the Native American jewelry. Betsy found a couple of small items and then we hit the road again. From Gallup we flew east through Albuquerque to Hwy 14 which is known as The Turquoise Trail which went to Santa Fe. On the way we stopped in Madrid and Cerrillos which was our reason for doing that particular road. Cerrillos, for hundreds of years has had turquoise mining. Cerrillos turquoise is a very distinctive green blue color. Our final destination that day was Las Vegas, NM which we had briefly visited about 12 years ago. I thought it was a neat town then and have been waiting to get back there. Everywhere you looked something was named after the Rough Riders of the Spanish-American War. We finally ask what the deal was and learned that several men from the area were recruited for that unit since they new horses and how to shoot. We found a couple of antique stores, drove through the old historic residential center and even found an old Fred Harvey hotel down by the depot. A busy couple of days.