FIVE WEEKS ON THE ROAD

On May 9^th, 1998, we left Corpus Christi, Texas to embark on our great adventure westward. Our first stop was Comanche, Texas. That's where Erv's mother and other assorted relatives live, and that's where we planned to celebrate Mother's Day. We had a wonderful week there, visiting with friends and relatives and helping Neita and Richard (Erv's brother and sister-in-law) finish up a job for their trophy business (a sideline business that takes up a lot of their time). We parked our Airstream travel trailer right on his Mother's yard and hooked up to their water and electric. After we blew several circuits turning on our air conditioner and other electrical items, Richard and Erv installed a special circuit breaker just for us. It was smooth sailing from then on. Erv got to see some of his old high school friends. They reviewed all the football games from the late 1950's and how they won or should have won each one. He went to high school in Mullin, a town with less than 200 people. The high school is so small they play in a league in which each football team only has only 6 men on the field. He loves to tell about the time they went to a basketball game with only 6 men and when two had fouled out, they finished the game with 4 players. He never says who won. In the café, we talked to Erv's retired teacher, who recalls the bull riding and how Erv's brother couldn't be found when it was his time to ride.

May 17^th and time to move on. We left Comanche and headed for Odessa, Texas. I was so excited. I had read several books and articles about Odessa, and each one described the town as the "armpit of the world". The thought of such a town fascinated me, and I looked forward to seeing a two-lane dirt road lined with fallen down buildings on each side. Old rusty oil drilling machinery would greet me at the entrance to the town and tumbleweeds would blow across the road in abundance. NOT!!! There must be another Odessa, Texas somewhere, because the one we drove through was a modern, thriving metropolis with one of the best Chinese restaurants I have ever eaten in (not counting Chinatown in NY, Phila., and San Francisco)! The streets were wide and beautiful, and there was a big university at the edge of town. All in all, it looked like a great place to live. Anyway, we spent two nights at a KOA campground in Midessa (half way between Midland and Odessa).

The first full day there, we went to the Confederate Air Force Headquarters. The headquarters used to be in Harlingen, Texas, where we had been many years before during one of the Pearl Harbor attack shows. We had seen the only flyable B-29 (Fifi) there and had hoped to see her again on this trip. Alas, most of the aircraft were out on tour. But, the museum was still well worth seeing and there were still many aircraft left on the grounds to view. We spend a good 4 or 5 hours in the museum.

The next day we ventured to Monihans and Sand Dune State Park. I had never heard of it and didn't know what to expect. What I got was a place that resembled the Sahara Desert. Dune after dune after dune of hot, white sand as far as you could see. You could picnic there, bring your RV or just rent a sled and slide down the dunes. It was a very unique place, but not one where I want to spend a lot of time.

Erv was getting antsy to start his hang gliding adventure, so on May 19^th we headed to Hobbs, New Mexico. We were amazed and completely awed at the number of oil fields we saw along the route. Mile after mile of pump jacks. Pump jacks look like forlorn grasshoppers left on their own to bring the oil up from the ground. You almost feel sorry for them - left out there all night to just pump in the darkness. Even the air was different. You could just smell the oil in the air and when there weren't oil fields to look at, there were oil service yards filled with pipes and oily trucks. Everything during that 2-hour ride pertained to oil. There were cattle grazing, but they had to share their grazing land with the pump jacks. I want to add a little something here. It may have been a 2-hour drive, but the speed limit is 70 mph, so we are talking about miles and miles of oil, oil, oil.

Hobbs was in sight and we pulled into a campground about 4 miles out of town and across the road from an old WWII B-17 training base that was to be Erv's school yard, and was also the site of the National Soaring Association (sailplanes). Erv can better describe this section to you, it was his big adventure. I may comment on his landings at the end of his narrative. But, again I was surprised at the modern, clean city. I had expected Hobbs to be a dirty, little oil field town. During our stay the Airstream decided to "act-up". A water line came loose two or three times soaking an area in the bathroom.

In the middle of the hang gliding lessons, we took a day off and drove to Carlsbad to see the famous caverns. The caverns far exceeded our expectations. At 830 feet beneath the ground, the temperature remains a constant 56 degrees (take your jacket). One room, filled with huge stalactites, stalagmites, and columns, was so big; it was like being in another world or like standing on the set of a Walt Disney movie. We got there early to beat the rush - which we did, but unfortunately, even after taking all of the tours and eating lunch, it was still mid afternoon. Carlsbad's most famous residents, the Mexican Freetail bats, inhabit the cave in spring, summer, and early fall. At dusk, the colony of over 300,000 bats takes anywhere from 20 minutes to 2 hours to exit the cavern. We didn't feel like waiting around for them.

Here are Erv's words on hang gliding: On a previous trip, after having watched hang gliders launching off of Sandia Mountains and then climb so high they looked like circling buzzards, I knew that hang gliding had to be the purest form of flying, and I wanted to try it. A full time, professional instructor in Hobbs offers lessons. Since Hobbs has no mountains, he launches the gliders off the back of a car and then tows them like a kite as high as 2,000 feet. The course consists of ground school, a simulator in which Curt drives around the airfield letting students fly from a long bar, tandem flights where he instructs in the air, and finally solo flights. If this sounds a little "on the edge", it is, but the barren, flat landscape of an old WWII airfield is a perfect site for the operation. There is no better feeling then flying a kite alone to a safe landing. This requires skillful planning and execution because there's no chance to "wave-off" and try again. I'm not an adrenaline junkie, but I did enjoy the excitement. Overall, I flew 11 times including 4 solo flights documented on videotape by my travelling companion. I would have gotten in more flying, but the winds have to be near perfect for a beginner. So, we did a lot of sitting around the hanger or in the New Mexico sun while the wind blew across the ghostly old, deserted airfield. (Hobbs has a real airport several miles away.)

So how does someone make a living at a hang gliding/paragliding operations in such a remote area? Well, while we were there, a steady stream of people came through with their gliders in bags on their cars. Curt not only gets paid for towing them, he gets paid for going out into the desert to retrieve them. In fact, the record was set in Hobbs for a flight of 308 miles, but while we were there most only made it 12 miles and one made it to Seminole, Texas. In the past, he's had people from as far away as Japan come for weeks of flying. Boy, I'm looking forward to going off a mountain someday.

On May 24^th we decided to leave for Albuquerque. I would like to have seen Erv get his hang gliding rating II - but we had other things to see and do. We decided to take the route through Roswell, site of the famous Hanger 18 and the farm where the aliens actually??? landed. There are 6 museums in Roswell dedicated to aliens -- but, alas, we saw not one (museum or alien). We made it to Albuquerque after stopping for lunch at a little café along the way that seemed to be the only business open in a small Indian town.Something like the "Twilight Zone" -- a long, long, road of endless hills and valleys with nothing but great scenery for what seemed like an eternity -- AND all of a sudden, there's a little café. We were sure glad to see it though.I know that by the end of this report, you will probably be tired of reading about how we were mesmerized by the scenery -- but, truly, it was like something out of the movies. In fact, every turn of our head brought phases such as: "Wow, look at that." or "Did you see those snow covered peaks?" or "This way, look over there, isn't that beautiful!" You really had to be there. Even though our pictures turned out great, they just can't capture the beauty of it all.

In Albuquerque, we checked into a wonderful KOA campground complete with hot tub, pool, game room, and laundry. Each night we had dinner with Erv's cousins, Suda and Doug, and each day we made day trips to see the local sights. We spent one whole day on Sandia Peak. Since there was a tram to take us up and down the mountain, it was an easy trip.It's the world's longest aerial tramway as it lifts you 2.7 miles to the 10,378 foot Sandia Peak. We had lunch at the restaurant and hiked through the forest. The trails were mostly covered with snow, and although the snow was packed, it had many places were it did not support us and we ended up to our waists in snow. I had trouble with the altitude at first, but eventually was able to hike through with no problem. Erv had to help a family with three preschool children get back to the main road. They went out into the woods, totally unprepared for the cold and snow. The children had on shorts and sandals. It may have been quite warm at the bottom of the mountain, but it was cold and damp in the woods. They had started into the woods and by the time we came across them, they were cold, wet, and lost! We decided on the best route to the road and Erv and I started hiking out. We turned to find the family well behind us, children screaming and crying because their feet were wet and freezing. Erv went back into the forest when he realized they were in a crisis situation and carried one child on his back, while each parent carried another child. He was a hero for the day.

On one day trip, we went to an area south of Grants, NM to see Inscription Rock, or officially known as El Morro National Monument. Before the railroad was built, Inscription Rock was a way station for travelers, first Native Americans, then the Spanish, then Mexican expeditions, and after the war with Mexico, American survey teams and settlers used the rock. The rock is a thousand feet high, sitting in the middle of the desert with a water pool at its base. Anyway, while these people rested near the pool, they made elaborate inscriptions in the rock to record their passing, giving dates, names, and short verses. The rock is 7200 feet above sea level and so the altitude can be a problem when hiking. The trail is rather flat at first, and we were given a booklet describing the most famous of the inscriptions left on the wall. After about a 1/2 mile, you are given warning to turn back or prepare for a steep climb. We, of course, took the climb, and are happy we did. The Indian ruins on top of the rock are worth the climb. We were so taken by the area we returned later in the trip and spent two nights there to see El Malpais, but more about that later.

After Albuquerque, off we went to Durango, Colorado. Here we checked into the best campground ever. It was 12 miles north of Durango on the Animus River. The campground had everything including a restaurant. Each night we sat around a campfire, next to the river, in jackets. Each day we made day trips to see the old mining towns and, of course, ride the famous narrow gage railroad to Silverton and back. We visited a ski resort, Purgatory, where Erv had skied before. (No, they weren't skiing, but the scenery was just as pretty in the spring.) Of all the sights on the trip, nothing was better than the drive over Red Mountain Pass between Silverton and Ouray. The old truck performed wonderfully over the 11,028 foot pass and we were really glad not to have the trailer with us as we came down hairpin turns, some with speed limits as slow as 10 miles per hour, no guard rails, and a straight drop down the mountain side. But, the snow-capped mountains made the best scenery ever. We spent a long time at the pass overlook to breathe the thin air. This mountain pass surpassed the railroad gorge crossing seen on posters and postcards that we saw the next day on the Durango-Silverton railroad.

The train ride was fun and neat because it was a big steam locomotive (which of course meant that you got soot all over you - but that was okay). It was kind of a let down though because we had driven the route by truck the day before and it seemed more exciting the first time through. It's a very long ride (3 hours each way) and by the time you're half way home, you've about had it. Fortunately, we met very interesting people (don't we always) to speak to. A newlywed couple from Atlanta, 2 women from Kentucky, and one child that seemed intent on getting into every picture I tried to take.

We didn't spend much time in the mining towns: Silverton, Ouray, and Telluride, but we really loved them. Of course, they're tourist attractions now, not mining towns. But, people from the campground, took their jeeps to real mining towns that are now ghost towns and can only be reached by 4 wheel drive vehicles. Some of them had a population of 3,000 and now not one person lives there. Since we didn't have a jeep we attempted to arrange a trip with one of the tour operators, but he said it would be two to three weeks before the snow melted enough to let him start his operation.

The next day we ventured to Mesa Verde National Park and felt like we went back in time almost 1500 years to discover a lost civilization - the Anasazi. They were formally a nomadic people, but became "cliff dwellers" at Mesa Verde. They lived in the cliff dwellings for less than 100 years and by about 1300, Mesa Verde was deserted. But while they lived here, the population was believed to be several thousand people. The cliff dwellings range in size from one-room houses to villages of more than 200 rooms - Cliff Palace. An Indian guide told these facts to us as we traversed up and down the mountain and in and out of the cliff dwellings, sometimes on steep uneven trails and wooden ladders. Park roads are scenic drives with sharp curves, steep grades, and reduced speed limits. As the mesa is several miles across, it is the largest mesa that we know of. There is a very nice campground, motel, and restaurant within the Mesa Verde park boundaries.

Leaving Durango, we dropped down to Farmington, NM and down a lonely state highway that crosses the eastern edge of the Navajo reservation. There are few places in the world where such sparsely populated, wide-open spaces can be found. That's what we liked most about New Mexico.

We checked into an RV park just off of I-40 in Grants, NM. A hot, gusty wind was blowing, and desert and mountains were the only view. Our objective here was to see the El Malpais, the IceCave and Chaco Canyon.

El Malpais, Spanish for badlands, is an area over 20 miles across, covered in lava from eruptions 2000-3000 years ago. The scenery is very dramatic and the name is very descriptive. It's even difficult to walk through, and in some areas there are large boulders of lava, canyons, and caves. The caves were formed by the flow of lava. For some strange phenomenon, ice stays in some of them year around. Years ago people used them as a source of ice. The park service has a visitor's center, but allows you to go into the area on your own. There are a few "trails" that cannot be followed because the lava doesn't show signs of the trail, so the park service used cairns, small stacks of rocks every so often, to mark the trail, but it's easy to get lost. Erv went into one of the caves by himself, but he didn't stay long. The darkness, except for a flashlight, and the strange sensation of being alone deep under ground, soon brought him out. There are volcano craters that look like mountains that have a collapsed center. Of course, the mountains are black with lots of lava. Pine trees have grown over most of them. We drove out to the Sandstone Bluffs Overlook, a ridge of sandstone offering excellent vistas of El Malpais lava flows and surrounding countryside. It was very windy while we were there (and we were the only people there). Erv insisted on going way out to the farthest cliffs to get good pictures -- I just knew he was going to blow off the cliff, but something held him in place and he survived yet another adventure.

The IceCave / Bandera Volcano tour was an experience in contrast. The land of fire and ice, situated on the Continental Divide at an elevation of 8000ft has been called "the most moon-like expanse of country on Earth". The ancient lava trail leads you to a collapsed lava tube. Inside the IceCave, the temperature never rises above 31 degrees. Here, the natural layers of perpetual ice glisten blue-green in the reflected rays of sunlight. You leave the IceCave and continue on the trail to the crater. The Bandera Crater rose up in volcanic fury some 10,000 years ago. Approximately 1000 feet across and 800 feet deep, Bandera is one of the best examples of an erupted volcano in the country, and one of the most accessible. Here too, we were the only people on the trail. We unknowingly planned this trip at the best time possible. Most sites were open and accessible, but most people hadn't started their vacations with their families yet. We had most places to ourselves -- just the way we like it.

We spent one day going to Chaco Canyon. Tucked in the narrow canyon, are ruins of an ancient Indian village. The ruins have most of the rock walls standing which is amazing since they didn't use any concrete to hold them together, and they've been there over a thousand years. Chaco was protected from civilization because it's difficult to get to. It's about 50 miles out in the desert, the last 20 miles being a horrible, dirt road, that would seem impossible to drive an RV across. They do have a campground there if you're brave enough to chance it.

We left Grants and, because we were so close, spent one more night in Albuquerque to see Suda and Doug. We had dinner with them and then just sat in the hot tub and relaxed to prepare for our next leg of the trip to Alamogordo. We chose a lonely route along a state highway so we could see Salinas Pueblo Missions, ruins from the Spanish era.

Alamogordo is a wonderful desert town set in a basin between two mountain ranges. We spent most of one day in the space museum. We also took-in the IMAX at the museum. "Voyage to MIR" and "Antarctica" were the two features and we decided to see both. They were both great, but I think that Antarctica was a little more exciting. We saved the White Sands Monument until the evening when we took a guided tour into the dunes. What a sight! Actually it's not sand but gypsum, and it doesn't get hot in the desert sun. The ranger went into great detail about how the sand got there, how the dunes move, and all about the plant life. We stayed for the sunset and talked to people from the East Coast about their trip.

Climbing out of the Alamogordo basin, we encountered the steepest grade of the trip. Finally at 8,600 feet we reached the pretty town of Cloudcroft and the summit. It was all down hill or flat the rest of the way home.

During our-stop over in Big Spring, we camped in a state park at the top of a very high bluff overlooking the city. Soon a strong wind came up and we learned we were under a tornado watch. We couldn't have picked a worst place to be during a storm, but no storm developed, just a buffeting wind all night. I didn't sleep the entire night, afraid that the winds would blow us upside down. I was ready to get out of the trailer and take a sleeping bag down to the ladies room (which was made of stone) to sleep. Erv had no trouble sleeping. I would awake every 5 to 10 minutes shaking and scared to death, and Erv just snored and ignored me. Luckily, we survived the night --and, we were off to Comanche the next morning.

Since Comanche has a very pretty lake, surrounded by parks, we checked into a park and got a site on a low bluff above the water. It was perfect for swimming and shaded for hanging out in a lawn chair. But after two days, we moved into town to be with the folks. On Saturday we had the family reunion. That was fun with dinner, piñata, and the Chinese Christmas. Erv was in charge of the Piñata and, of course, had his eye almost poked out by a small boy flailing his stick around trying to break the piñata open.

We left Comanche early on Sunday, June 14^th, for the six-hour drive home. Wouldn't you know it, this was a record hot day, 106 degrees. At one rest stop, I'm sure it was 120 degrees on the parking lot. As always, we were glad to get home, unload the trailer, unpack, and have our first night in a house instead of the trailer. But, I must say, the trip was simply great. The truck gave no problems, the weather was perfect, friendships were renewed, and most of all, it was a safe trip. We, of course, are already trying to choose between Utah and Alaska for our summer trip next year.