On the Road Again…..

Willy Nelson stopped by the campfire last night.

          We had our usual good time just singin’ and playin’ our guitars.

          Not really, I can’t sing a note as anyone in my family can attest to,  and, besides,  the only thing I can play is the radio.

          But when “On the Road Again” popped into my head when thinking of a title for this post, well……

          Today is Wednesday (4 AM as I write this) and as I put my best “Travelogue Narrator’s” voice on here,

          “We bid a fond farewell to Durango and her neighbors as we drive ever Westward in search of the Perfect Walmart Parking Lot. So until we meet again, Adios! Durango, someday we’ll find our way back to you and your skyline of awe-inspiring mountain ranges.”

          What a load of crap.

          My daughter lives here and it is one of our Bases here in the West.          Of course, we’ll be back!

          But today is a Travel Day! Another “Ho-hum-incredibly-great-weather-as-usual” kind of day that abounds in this area. Our next destinations are several stops in Arizona where two of Paula’s cousins live. We have a few days to get there and luckily there is no shortage of sights along the way.                                                                                             The Drive itself may be rewarding enough, especially with the Gigundo Vista Visage Bug-Splattering Windshield in front of us. Our route takes us through Northwest New Mexico, past Shiprock and the Four Corners Monument, which because of an exceedingly embarrassing surveying error, is not, in fact, positioned at the precise location of the intersection of Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah. (Maybe Willy stopped by their campfire the night before they went to work and they all had some extra libations, et al, if you catch my drift.) Oh well, at least it makes for a good story!                                                                               All of this is on the expansive Navajo Indian Nation’s Reservation or The Rez, as it is locally known. It is the largest Reservation in the nation, totaling a little over 27,000 square miles of desert, open range, and some of the largest coal deposits on the planet. To give you a perspective on how large it is, New Jersey is around 8000 square miles in size. Interestingly, and probably much to the chagrin of the Hopi Nation, the reservation entirely surrounds the Hopi’s Reservation. This issue has been around for a while, and of course the U.S. Government and their incredibly bad record of handling Native American affairs, compounded the problems. But, if you go back far enough, the Hopi’s, who still live in Pueblos,  have a much better argument for living here because it is easy to trace their history back to the Ancestral Puebloans (Anasazi) whose relics and cliff dwellings abound in this region. The Navajo where a nomadic tribe from areas much to the north of here.                                                                                                         But, back to our route. We had planned on visiting Navajo National Monument, a part of the National Park Service, but it is closed due to the Covid Deal. It seems that Covid hit the Navajo with more severity than any surrounding populations.  So we are probably going to pass that by in favor of two NPS Parks a little further south and they are Wutpaki N.P. (one of the Ancestral Puebloans site ) and its neighbor Sunset Crater N.P. (this entire area is rife with old volcano activity). 

          This is the area that we plan to “Boondock” in. Boondocking is the term given to just parking and staying, not hooked up to any utilities. Even staying in the aforementioned Walmart parking lot is considered boondocking. The site will be on Bureau of Land Management land, (BLM for short) which is just public land that can be used for just about anything that is legal.  BLM land does have some practical regulations having to do with the likes of fires in the dry season and not destroying the Ancestral Puebloan sites, the majority of which, lie within BLM management areas, all across the Colorado Plateau. This is the geographic term given to the expansive land uprising that starts around Flagstaff, Arizona and continues northward and eastward thru Utah, New Mexico, and Colorado.

          Enough of the Geography lesson. No worries, you are all just auditing this course, there are no quizzes, and it is not even pass/fail.    It is just for fun. 😊   

(Same day, Later in the Evening,  7PM)

          The trip today went as planned.

           Ho-Hum gorgeous weather.

          300 Miles of Western Desert Scenery.

          Zero Traffic

          And not even one Interstate Highway!

          All was good until we got to the entrance to the Four-Corners Monument.

          Closed.

          Now I can understand how Covid has affected many areas and has wreaked havoc on many a Travel Plan. But this particular site is a giant concrete pad with the outlines of the four boundaries intersecting at perfect right angles.  One does not need a Guide to interpret this.        Maybe they are afraid of vandals, but really, this place could have been made available. So undaunted, we went off into the desert, I took out my phone, went on Google Maps, found the real Four Corners, drew our own State Boundary Lines, and stood in all four States at once!

          Not really, but it would have been fun to try! We had kind of a schedule to keep because the place where we were planning to Boondock today is a National Forest, administered in the same way as BLM land and therefore needed some reconnoitering to find a decent (level) campsite.

          Arriving too close to dark is taboo.

          So back into the Whale we clambered and continued on our way. This day was the antithesis of most of our other travel days so far, so there are no hair-raising or near-catastrophic stories to tell.

          Sorry about that.

          But I’m not!

          We arrived here in the Cocochino National Forest a little after three in the afternoon and as it turns out, non-too soon. The area is well used, and the sites scattered among the pines were many and varied. They are absolutely, slam-dunk, perfect for Camping.                                                   Especially if you have tent.                                                                                 Or a Pop-Up.                                                                                                                Or a Pick-up with a Camper in theback.                                                          

Or a small travel trailer.                                                                                  

Maybe even a smaller, traditional RV.

          But NOT a Full-Size Big-Ass Coach.

Hey! What did we know? We wandered our way in on the more than adequate graveled road and looked for sites for us to occupy. I felt like we were in Goldilocks and the Three Bears…..

          “This one is too small”.

          “This one is too rocky”.

          “This one is not level enough”.

          We tried one that looked promising, but after we tried to level and were unsuccessful, we spent an inordinate amount of time trying to extricate ourselves from the clutches of the various trees and rocks that seemed to pop up after we entered this site. Paula outside on her cell phone communicating with me inside, frantically working the controls in an attempt not to get too many scratches on our pretty baby. Well, let’s just say we finally managed to exit, and we will only need a few Band-Aids to fix her up.

          Undaunted (and we really liked it here, plus we did not want to be the guests of Walmart of Flagstaff ), we tried the other direction.

          Nope.

          Nope.

          Nope.

          Ahh…. Maybe?

          I exited the coach and looked around. Level looked good. Trees spaced nicely. Exit without backing even appeared ok. So, in we went and held our breaths as the leveling process began. It’s not that we can’t park in a spot that isn’t level, it’s just that we need to be level to put the slides out, which makes it way nicer to be inside walking around, cooking , bathrooms, etc.

          There is an Auto-Level System aboard the senses our attitude and adjusts accordingly. But it does have its limits, so finding a spot that is fairly level to begin with is a necessity.

          Finally, after many big tweaks, and then some tiny tweaks, the Leveling Lady decided that we were good!

          We went for walk around and to check out our new neighborhood. We found that there were other like-minded folks in the area and that made us feel good. They are probably looking over at us and wondering who the big jerks are that drove a Giant Class A Coach into the woods.  Spying our Jersey license plates, I am sure they just shook their heads in understanding. Can’t wait to get the Texas tags on!

          Back inside, dinner, some cards, and now some Zzzzzz’s.