New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada

01 Jun    Fort Supply, OK - Angel Fire, NM      371 miles     8 hours

We covered a lot of miles today. For most of the trip we were on highway 412, not a busy interstate, mostly one or two lanes and the roads were pretty smooth. There was a couple of tolls through Oklahoma, something we're not used to but totally worth it. 

It's a beautiful natural area where the road follows the Cimarron River through a narrow canyon with rocky pinnacles. The views are awesome. We didn't have time to stop but this is one area that I want to come back to and explore. 

View from Angel Fire Resort

Angel Fire RV Resort is nestled among the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in Northern New Mexico and is part of the Enchanted Circle at an elevation of 8600 ft. Its a luxury RV resort and I'm so glad we decided to spend a week here. A little pricey at $539 for one week but this resort offers a lot. The site are spacious and clean, and there's rubbish pick up every morning. There were waffles delivered to our rv on the weekend, and a lot of planned activities. Pickleball lessons, yoga, line dancing, wine tasting, ice cream socials, painting, karaoke, smores, and live music. There's a walking trail that circles the property lined with beautiful flowers. We love it here.

Our site    

    

Beautiful views on our morning walk

Made a new friend    

01 - 7 June    Angel Fire, NM

 We spent our week here relaxing and enjoying the cool weather before heading back to Las Vegas. We even got hail one afternoon. We didn't leave the resort too much because we were so busy enjoying the activities here. 

Pea size hail    

Then the sun came out    

We did take a drive around the Enchanted Circle one day. A beautiful drive with 84 miles of incredible scenery. We made a stop and hiked Columbine Canyon. We crossed 4 well maintained bridges as the trail followed the creek through scenic forests and meadows with many waterfalls and direct access to the creek. Awesome hike!

We also drove to Taos one day to go to the farmers market. Still early in the season so not too many vendors but still nice to walk around downtown Taos. We had lunch at Michaels Kitchen, a family run restaurant and bakery. The line was out the door and it took about 30 minutes to get seated but it was well worth it. I had the huevos rancheros and Joe had the stuffed sopapillas. Everything was so fresh and the servings were huge. We also bought some pastries to go. Everything was sooo good!

8 Jun    Angel Fire - Grants, NM       230 miles      6 hours

We made several stops on our way to our Harvest Host location. I did some shopping in Santa Fe while Joe picked up his medication at CVS. That was my first Home Goods store and I went a little crazy. 

Junkyard parking

We're staying at Route 66 Junkyard Brewery in Grants, New Mexico. This is another Harvest Host location with excellent reviews. It's an actual junkyard and also a brewery. When we pulled up, Joe didn't want to stay here because we were in a dirt lot surrounded by junk. I talked him into going into the brewery and having a drink. After a few, he didn't care where we spent the night!

There were two other Harvest Host campers that came in a little later so we felt safe spending the night in a junkyard. The beer was actually pretty good. 

Inside the bar    

     

9 Jun        Grants, NM - Williams AZ      283 miles       7 hours 40 minutes

We have reservations at Kaibab Lake Campground in Williams, Arizona. On the way we stopped at Petrified Forest National Park. We've passed this park numerous times in our travels but never made the stop. I'm so glad we did. We ended up spending over 4 hours here. 

Petrified Forest National Park is one of the largest concentrations of petrified wood in the world. Scientific studies show that the petrified trees found in the park date back 211 to 218 million years.

We did a short hike around Crystal Forest Loop. The Crystal Forest Trail provides one of the best opportunities to see a huge collection of stunning petrified wood deposits all in one place. Plus, the fossilized trees and crystalized wood in this area have an unusually high concentrate of additional quartz and amethyst crystals inside the trees.

Petrified wood    

 

I wanted to hike Blue Mesa but it was getting pretty hot. At the overlook we saw beautiful views overlooking multicolored hills and petrified wood. Bands of bluish Bentonite clay are layered with shades of pink, brown, red, and orange from minerals like manganese, carbon, iron, potassium, sodium, calcium, and aluminum. 

1932 Studebaker on Route 66

Painted Desert    

After exploring the park we had lunch in our RV that was parked at the Visitors Center then finished the drive to Williams, Arizona. 

Kaibab Lakes Campground sits among the diverse landscape of Kaibab National Forest in northern Arizona. We're spending 1 night here in Loop D, site #53. The rate for full hookups is $34 but I had to pay an additional $10 for a change I made. 

Kaibab Lake    

Our site #53    

10 Jun   Williams, AZ - Las Vegas, NV    

 215 miles   4 hours 15 minutes

We are back in Vegas and its freakin HOT! Well over 100 degrees for the next few days that we're here. 

We're staying at Las Vegas RV Resort, the place we always stay off  Boulder Highway, past Sam's Town. We'll be here for four nights, $147.00.

10 -13 June   Las Vegas

We spent the last few days cleaning and getting the RV ready to put into storage. We caught up with friends, went out to eat, and gambled a little. It's very hot so every night we end up in the pool. One night we got kicked out at 10pm because they were closing. 

14 Jun      Las Vegas RV Resort - Henderson, NV       6 miles

Our trip is winding down. Everythings cleaned up and RV and Kia is put back in storage until our next trip in September. This trip has lasted 4 months. We put 6,448 miles on our new RV and added a few more states to our map.

 

14 - 16 Jun  New York, New York

We spent the last couple of nights in Las Vegas at New York, New York. Comp rooms but still had to pay the resort fee. First time staying at this hotel, we had a pretty nice room. 

Back to Hawaii and start planning our next adventure........

 

KY, MO, OK

23 May      Dandridge, TN - Golden Pond, KY          331 miles     9 hours

Our campsite in the woods

As part of America's great outdoors since 1863, Land Between the Lakes Recreation Area manages over 170,000 acres of forests, wetlands, and open lands on a peninsula between Kentucky and Barkley Lakes in Western Kentucky and Tennessee. The family friendly recreation area offers one of the largest blocks of undeveloped forest in the eastern United States. 

Another major delay on the interstate so we took 9 hours to get here. We're headed back west so we gained an hour. 

Hillman Ferry Campground in Land Between the Lakes Recreation Area offers 374 lakefront and wooded sites for a variety of camping units from tents to large motorhomes. Basic, electric, water, and sewer sites are available. There are also cabin rentals. 

We are staying 4 nights and our site has full hook ups, cost $174.00. 

24 May   Kentucky Dam & Locks

The Kentucky Lake Lock & Dam is part of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) which manages several dams along the Tennessee River Valley. It provides hydroelectric power to local power companies.

We parked our car and walked about a mile across the dam and enjoyed the views. Once we got to the other side, we found that the visitors center was closed, so bummed! 

But we still got to enjoy the area. We walked out on a concrete pier and got a great view of the complete dam. 

Then across the parking lot we stood on the bank and watched the barges and tugboats that work their way through the locks. It's a very slow process. The best view we had was on our walk back, we stood on a bridge that said "no pedestrians."

25 May  2 hikes today

Our first hike was on the Hematite Trail. Nice hike around the lake with boardwalks around the swampy areas. Very well maintained trail, scenic and peaceful. Little hills here and there but nothing too strenuous. 

At the end you have to go across cement stepping stones. What a great hike! 

Then we did a short hike called Center Furnace Trail. An interpretive trail where we saw evidence of how this busy community thrived over 150 years ago and the impact the iron industry had on the land and its people. 

Hearth

To produce charcoal, hearths like these were made of 50-60 cords stacked timber, covered with a thick layer of dirt and leaves. The wood would burn slowly until it became charcoal Once lit, a single charcoal hearth would burn for about two weeks and produce about 2,000 bushels of charcoal, almost enough to fire the furnace for 24 hours. 

This oak tree may have been 20 to 30 years old when the furnace first opened in the late 1840s. 

26 May  Elk & Bison Prairie     

This is a drive-thru attraction. You pay $5 per car to drive through the Elk & Bison Prairie 3.5 mile loop. Elk and bison roam free within this 700 acre enclosure.  Once you enter you can go around the loop as many times as you wish. 

The best times of the day to visit the prairie are in the cooler times early in the morning or in the late afternoon or early evening. 

Herd of bison

We got up a little early on this cold and windy day and was at the gate at 7am. It was a slow start but about a mile in we saw a herd of bison. Beautiful, massive animals. We parked and watched the herd as they grazed. 

Wild turkey

We continued the drive around the loop going very, very slowly. We saw a lot of wild turkeys, they're all over. Then as we turned to go out of the park we came upon a couple of elk grazing a little ways from the road. We parked and watched as they continued to graze and make their way closer to us. Then more elk started to come out from behind the bushes and trees. They ended up crossing the road right in front of us... so cool!  

   

Elk grazing

   

Paying $5 to drive around this loop was worth it. I'm so glad Joe had the patience to drive very slow and kept looking for the animals. 

No, it's not Custer Park, or Yellowstone, or Grand Canyon where there's an abundance of elk and bison but it was so cool to see these animals thriving in Kentucky.

27 May     Golden Pond, KY - Mountain Grove, MO      268 miles     6 hours 20 minutes

Our plan was to drive all the way to Springfield, MO and spend the night at another Harvest Host location. This was another brewery and I was looking forward to it. But as we drove into Missouri I checked the weather and found there was a severe weather warning for the area. Lots of rain and wind, possible hail, possible flooding. We decided to pull off and hunker down at a Walmart in Mountain Grove. We pulled in around 1:30 pm, went to Burger King to eat, and it starting raining around 2:30 pm. Our plan was to wait a couple of hours and if it cleared up, continue on to Springfield. It never cleared up. Kept raining with thunder and lightning so we just ended up camping for the night in the Walmart parking lot. 

Walmart parking lot

28 May     Mountain Grove, MO - Fort Supply, OK       479 miles     10 hours 15 minutes

We had a very long drive today. We stopped to fill gas and we went shopping at Costco. By the time we checked into Fort Supply Lake Campground it was almost 6 pm. 

Our lakeside site

We lucked out at this campground. The original site that I booked was no hookups but when I checked the other day, a lakeside site was available with water and electric. This is Memorial Day weekend so we're very lucky that someone cancelled at the last moment. The weather forecast is not very good so I guess that's the reason for the cancellation. For four nights we paid $96. 

Canadian Geese

This campground is very crowded for this holiday weekend. The first two days was nice with lots of water crafts on the lake. Our lakeside site was wonderful. We had a front row seat to all the activity and every morning and evening there would be Canadian Geese swimming right pass us. 

 We did a hike to the top of the dam. The scenery was    beautiful overlooking the lake and the campground. 

Beautiful views

Sunday night the weather changed. We started getting weather alerts for flash floods and severe weather. Our camp site is right next to the water so we were a little concerned. Then at about 8pm we noticed our neighbors getting ready to head out. We went out to talk to them because earlier they told us they live about 1/2 hour away and if the locals were leaving, that's not a good sign. They assured us it was safe to stay and they were leaving because the forecast was rain through tomorrow so might as well go home.

Sunrise over a misty lake

Around midnight the rain came down. Thunder and lightning...Joe kept getting up to check if the lake was starting to overflow. It rained all night and on Monday it was very gloomy. Most of the campers left early in the morning because of the weather but we got one more night here. 

    

Dark skies

   

  It seems like we're always having to check the weather on this trip. It also seems like we're dodging these terrible storms. Cross our fingers, we're almost back to Vegas.