Deserts

Liam and Charles had an enormous sandpit in the dunes at Death valley. They climbed the sides of mosaic canyon.
We camped under a tree in Death Valley, in summer this would be essential I imagine, the tree had very long bent over branches which created lovely tunnels big enough for tents. Liam and Charles had a great time playing under there own tree as a secret fort.

We left Death Valley and stayed the nigh t in the Mojave Preserve. Heading for Joshua Tree National park. We camped at Jumbo Rocks where the boys again scaled the boulders.

More of the vacation meander

We had a great time in Moab, Merewyn and Josh's climbing sparked a theme for Liam and Charles which continued most of the trip. Arches National Park was spectacular and Junior Ranger badges were completed. While the weather was clear there was dfineately ice in the wind when we went for a short walk to view some of the arches. Mostly we looked from the warmth of the car.
We visited one of the areas of Canyonlands NP and viewed the canyon created by the Green River the climbing the day before was on the Colorado River, I've found this on the web which is of geological interest.
Many National Parks have campgounds and they are mostly in very scenic locations, Canyonlands one was nice, we had lunch there, in the snow.

Our initial plan was to camp in Valley of the Gods, but we revised this plan and found a motel in Bluff (mentioned in a book by Tony Hilleman I discovered in when I read that far in Tucson on the way home.) We used their hot tub and noticed that when the water splashed on the ground, as it does with small boys in a full hot tub, it froze.

We drove though Valley of the Gods the next day awand also saw Goosenecks state park and Monument Valley, another lunch picnic in snow provided the boys with a sledding oportunity on a found mirror. It was funny picnicing in snow in the campground which we had needed our mats because the ground was so hot.

Big drive to Williams foor Grand Canyon, we decided to walk down one of the paths into the Canyon, Cedar Ridge,which was excellent, and gave quite a different perspective. Liam walked all the way there and back, doing math squences with Aunty Mere on the way up.

Spent another night in Williams and went driving around back roads before managing our firsts night camping. We had a campfire and enormous steaks for dinner,then Josh managed two enthisiastic boys and prickly pear roasting, Madeline was very keen on eating the results, hard to describe really, kinda slimey not much flavour.

Next morning involved dropping Merewyn and Josh off for their return trip to the north. Madeline was not impressed about loosing her travelling companions, but slept most of the way to Las Vegas, waking at the Hoover dam.


We stayed on 'the strip' in Las Vegas and had two nights in the city before heading for Beatty on our way into Death Valley. our first stop in Death Valley was Scotty's Castle where the boys played in the spring and Liam managed to fall in!

Off on the Adventure

It sort feels like cheating to be writting this having arrived back in Santa Fe, but anyway on the 27 of December our troup set off for an adventure. Our first destiation was Durango and a steam train ride to return Santa to the north pole. We sang carols, had hot chocolate and nougat chocolates on the train and santa gave all the children a bell. There was plenty of snow on the ground in Durango but it was the next day, after finding a wonderful french bakery, an indestructable coffee pot and some hiking boots, that we encountered our first snow storm. We were driving down the hill from Mesa Verde where we'd had a picnic lunch (discovered just how good that bakery was) and visited the Spruce Treehouse for a Ranger talk when the snow hit, and the sunset, a slow drive down the hill. We were heading for Moab Utah that night so assumed we'd be later than we thought but we out drove the storm and found our house in Moab without any trouble.

So this was how Xmas happened

I know, its the end of January and Im finally writting about Christmas ! It was buzy! We had all our travellers arrive from their far flung residences with various amounts of complication. It seemed simplier to arrive from NZ rather than Canada.
Christmas Eve involved baking cookies at a friends place, and icing them which the children had a lot of fun with. Pierre created a feast involving Teriyaki pork and chicken after which we all went to Canyon Road for the Farolitto walk. We had hot chocolate and toasted marshmallows on a bonfire one of the places had. We returned home and some of us went to the neighbourhood party, a bonfire down the road.
Christmas day dawned with stockings for the kids, we had Breakfast then presents as we had others coming to join us fo lunch. The menu was prawn cocktails, raspberry glazed ham, stuffed turkey breast, passole and beans followed by christmas pudding. Passole is a New Mexican dish, a special type of corn is boiled with pork and green chilli is added, its very tasty.

A thigh

Madeline and Charles compare themselves to a Brontasauanrus leg, probably more than we need for dinner. At New Mexico Museum of natural history.

Working on the Christmas feeling

It's very strange you know this winter Christmas thing. My normal resistances to snowflake decorations are gone. Santa Fe definately does Christmas, lights and decorations all over the place. Liam and I have made snowflakes from beads, and 3-d paper snowflakes. But I don't get Cuisine magazine here so I haven't been thinking about the food, till yesterday when I finally thought I really should. So now I have fruit soaking for the cake and a recipe for the pudding, but I haven't make a ham or turkey decision. I am also aware that I don't have a 26cm cake tin or a pudding bowl. I think we have enough plates for 10 for Christmas but I know I broke another wine glass, three doesn't seem like enough of those.

Gone now

These icicles were on the spout at the front of our house. Liam and I were watching them grow. We discussed stalactites But today was warmer so now our icicles are tiny stubs again. 

Snow Day

Today the schools were closed for a snowday so we went with friends sleding at a park in Santa Fe, it was crisp and clear and COLD but the sleding was a blast. Madeline's interest was limited by her feeling cold. So we headed foor hot chocolate after which was enjoyed by all.
I felt not crashing the car was one of my biggest achievements for the day especially consideering how often the ABS felt the need to come on. It was fine, everyone was driving in slow motion on the iced snowy roads. Corners were when I had to remember to turn slow aand wide. 

We woke up to this today. So encouraging getting dressed and coats on wasn't as hard as it can be some days.
The whole town is transformed from a brown dusty desert to a lumionously clean puffy white place. There's no wind so snow balances on the wires and sits on the tops of the abode buildings like icing.

Once of the activities at school was dye droppers into roasting pans of snow.

It's snowing on and off and as Madeline and I walked out of school she was bothered by the snowflakes on her eyelashes.

Preparation

Since sunday the weather forecasters have been telling us that we might get snow on tuesday night and wednesday. I thought getting some warm coats for the kids would be a good idea. Liam especially needed a new coat. Now thwy just need the snow! 

It's definately getting colder

This weekend we finally ventured south. We went down the turquoise trail to just south of Alberquerque, and the salt missions trail there were little old Spanish style villages and lots of ruined houses. We headed into the Manzano Mountains and did a short walk on the 4th of July trail. The campgrounds are closed now, 'for resource protection'. We found another campsite and pitched our tent. The boys collected firewood and then I lit the fire. We cooked our dinner on the fire. I was cold going to bed until I realised my mat was flat, once I moved onto the inflated mat we all spent a pleasant night. Sunday we drove on to mountainair and the Salinas pueblo mission National monument.

So we spent several days in Fort Collins, it's a very pretty town. I enjoyed the bungalow style houses, it unusually, has a train track running down the middle of the main road, not the most convinent thing for traffic planning I would have thought, but my children enjoyed seeing the trains.
our first day was spent at the discovery center where we looked at and played with all sorts of science things one of which was building a stegosaus skeleton about 2 metres long and 1 metre high. We spent a day at the park, museum and library and our last day we drove to Estes Park and visited the Rocky Mountain National Park, it was just a quick look and drive through, but we managed to complete the junior ranger program and get the badge.

We drove down to Denver for the weekend and visited with several of Richard's collegues who live there. We also visited Joseph and his family. We'd meet Joseph when had came to New Zealand to do some GIS workshops with mum. It was lovely to meet his family, and our kids enjoyed playing with his girls mostly unraking the leaves in the yard.
We had a look at red rocks and some dinosaur tracks. But to soon our time was up and we drove back to Santa Fe.

Local customs must be observed

Richard felt the need to try on Liams costume. I think it looks better on Liam.

Madeline had some practical additions to her fairy costume given the almost freezing temperatures. Our neighbourhood is supposed to be 'good' for trick or treating but we had arranged to go with friends in their neighbourhood. Now we have too much candy, and we only did about 1/2 hours trick or treating. Madeline thanked everyone, thou she didn't manage the trick or treat bit. Liam enjoyed going with his friends, and the other adults made for an interesting walk.
We left straight after for Fort Collins, 7 1/2 hours north

Hide and hide?

The problems with playing hide and seek with your two year old sister seem to be, you need to hide fast, since she doesn't count, and you need to hide often, since she only seeks. If your happy with these constrains the resulting games brings much squeeling and lots of running around the house.

Almost a month ago now we drove up to Canyon de Chelly. We left as usually on friday night and headed up to El Morro National monument, which has camping and related to it being in the Navajo Reservation the camping is free. El Morro is a Large rock outcrop with a pool that is not big, but about 12 foot deep when completely full. It's feed by runoff from the rock and is the only water source for about 30 miles. So in the early days everyone stopped here for a drink. While they were here they left their mark on the rock so it has inscriptions from indian petroglyphs and Spanish commanders some in very elaborate script, so I guess they remembered to bring the stone carver with them. Madeline was our guide. From there we headed to Gallup and on through Window Rock along some BLM roads to Canyon de Chelly, we got a flat tyre which ment we were back onto the space saver tyre, this didn't slow us down any since the roads weren't up to more than 50 miles anyway. Our first lookout on the canyon rim was spider rock, in Navajo legend this place is home to spider woman who taught them to weave.
The guard rails on lots of the outlooks in National Parks don't really seem designed for safety all Liam and Madeline want to do is climb on them. So Madeline spent most of the time getting in and out of the backpack. Liam was really good about holding hands and keeping safe.
We camped at the campgrounds of the National Monument which we nice the weather however was not. We had thunder, rain and hail just after we got the tents up. There had been weather like this the previous day as well so we decided it would be better not to do the walk down into the canyon to the white house ruins. We viewed the north rim view sites and headed for Shiprock in hopes of finding a tyre repairer for our flat tyre. There are plenty of tyre repair places in and around Shiprock, we were lucky thou to find one who was open so with new second hand tyre on the car we headed on to Farmington and cottonwood campground on Navajo dam.
We were the only tenters but there were plenty of others in their RV's. Liam helped some ladies who were fishing in the river and enjoyed playing in the sandy arroyo at the back of our campsite. We had a campfire which we cooked our New Zealand lamb chops on, very tasty.
We had our first frost while tenting in America. I biggest problem was getting the tents dry in the morning. We looked around at the lake at Navajo Dam and saw house boats out on the lake befor edrrivinng back to Santa Fe for dinner at Tomasitas

hoi poli

Richard and I ventured out the other night to one of his collegues from works place for a fundraiser function for Bill Richardson the New Mexican Govenor. It was an interesting evening they have a lovely house and there was a good mariachi band playing and the food was good. Some of Richard's other collegues were there and it was good to meet them too. We didn't go and shake the govn'rs hand, he can speak well (as you'd hope really) and it was a crowd of old friends and public service people so the speech was directed at what they had achieved in the last term and the goal for the current election. Richard's suit got an airing which it hasn't had since we've been here.

Oh for a quite life.

Why do I do this to myself. We have had teacher problems at school. Our new teacher and our old one don't seem able to communicate with each other. So muggins is trying to mediate and see if they can work together or if we should let the new teacher resign after less than a month.
It's very frustrating because I feel like the children are missing out on the talents avaliable in the new teacher because they can't figure out how to work together.

Up, up and away

There were plenty of beautiful balloon options avaliable at the Special Shapes Rodeo Mass accention which we went to this morning. It involved a 5am start so that we could drive to Alburquerque by dawn but it was fanatastic to see the Dawn patrol balloons going up as the sky started to light up.
By about 8am an amazing array of shapes had lifted off and floated by. Highlights were the cow, the horse and chillis, the space shuttle was pretty spectacular too.
The weather today was perfect, clear blue sky and almost no wind, so the balloons lifted up flew around the park and landed, some back in the place they started from. Following the rodeo event was a prize grab where the ballonists flew from a mile away to collect a tag from the ground and fly off. Great to watch as the huge array of colours flew in dropped and lifted and landed near by. There were balloons all over Albuquereque.

We had thought of going down on sunday and started out early but it was spittling and the rain got heavier so it was cancelled. I'm glad really 'cause I'd forgotten my camera. Today I took 235 picutres ( I won't bee posting them all) so should you NEED a picture of hot air balloons I might have just what you're after.

A picture

From hat

Madeline got a new hat in a parcel from Canada

These boots ...

Madeline got a parcel of clothes from friends here and we shopped for the boots - we think Aunty Megan might like to be allocated this gift. They are very popular.