Springtime In The Rockies

As the temperatures began to climb, many of the plants, native and otherwise, of the desert began to bloom.  Except for a couple of old and fairly tired rose bushes, we don’t have any interesting plants in our yard but we have neighbors who do and so we got to enjoy the spring-time extravaganza without the hassle of ownership.  We aren’t yet familiar with the names of most of the plants, everything is still “a cactus” whether it is or not.  Here’s a photo of a neighbor’s cactus – the large white trumpet-shaped blooms only lasted a few days but were magnificent to see (and smell) for that brief period.  The next stage was vaguely pornographic and the final stage left the furry brown withered blossoms scattered about looking like so many dead mice.

This next photo is one Rochelle took with her camera phone (or is it a phone camera?).  Our best guess is that the tree is a Joshua (or at least some sort of yucca relative).  The flower stalks shot up almost overnight and then the heavy silk ivory flowers began to open, giving the entire plant the appearance of an ornate candelabra, something that might have once graced Liberace’s piano.

It wasn’t long before the thermometer was creeping up into triple digits and we decided to head uphill toward cooler weather.  Just the short drive to the Verde Valley found us enjoying considerably cooler weather.  The highlight of our stay was a visit to a not-yet-open-to-the-public museum, The Copper Art Museum in Clarkdale.  Our friend Pat arranged for us to tag along with the Anasazi Chapter for their tour of the museum and we are so grateful to have been included.  As best we can gather, the museum is the brainchild of one man and his daughter as a means of displaying a growing collection of objects made of copper.  He selected Clarkdale as the home for his museum because of the town’s beginnings as “a company town” for the United Verde Copper Company.  The old high school provides a wonderful space to display his ever-growing collection of copper items.  There is a sizeable display of spent artillery shells, embossed with all manner of artistic motifs, large architectural elements such as cornices and ceilings, statues both large and small, and a wonderful array of kitchen equipment including a lobster pot large enough to accommodate Moby Dick.  My favorite was a white porcelain stove with glowing copper knobs and handles; it made a person want to whip up a tasty meal or two.

According to the owner/curator/tour guide the museum is currently open for group tours by appointment and will be open to individuals on a regular basis by September.  For those visiting the mining town of Jerome, the museum will be a wonderful add-on to a day (or more)  of exploring Arizona’s copper mining history.  And Clarkdale itself is worth a look-see.  The town was built to the specifications set forth by William A. Clark who purchased the United Verde Mine in 1888.  He wanted his 7000 employees to live someplace less chock-a-block than Jerome and so Clarkdale was born.  The smelter which dominated the town had the capacity to produce 4.5 million pounds of copper monthly which made Mr. Clark an extremely rich man – he apparently had so many business holdings that he couldn’t  begin to name them all from memory.

Of course a stop in Albuquerque was required so I could resupply my stash of beads at one of my favorite shops, Bead Obsession.  They have a wonderful selection of delicas and Japanese seed beads and it’s so difficult to confine one’s purchases to just those colors needed for specific projects.  I spent lavishly and consider it a birthday present to myself.  Howie felt he deserved a treat, too, so on a bright clear day he took himself off to the Sandia Peak Tramway for the trip up the mountain.  The air quality was such that the overview of the city was a bit hazy and that’s probably the case most of the time.  Except for those of us with vertigo, the tram ride is a not-to-be-missed adventure.

While camped at Tijeras, Howie thought he recognized the folks moving into a site quite near us. He was so right.  We first met Betty and Bob (and their dog Belle) in Georgia back in 2009, spent a few days camping with them in western Pennsylvania later that same year and haven’t seen them since.  But we have kept in touch sporadically by email so knew they had abandoned plans to head to Alaska this summer and were heading “back East” to attend to some family matters.  We just never expected to bump into them in Tijeras!  Our visits to the area only over-lapped by one day but we took advantage of the unexpected meeting to drive north on The Turquoise Trail to the funky little towns of Madrid and Carillos where artisans peddle their wares from the front porches of old mining shacks.  Betty and Bob had never visited Tinkertown and so we made a stop there on our way home.  One of the featured displays at Tinkertown is the mechanical fortune-teller, Esmeralda, who once resided at Riverview Amusement Park in Chicago.  Betty had many childhood encounters with Esmeralda and her memories were not good ones.  As a child she found Esmeralda mean-looking and threatening.  Negative memories aside, Betty bought up all the Esmeralda-themed postcards to send to her siblings.  She couldn’t resist the temptation to say “Look who I found!”

Working our way northward, we decided to stop before climbing up to Raton Pass, not after.  We had rather low expectations for the town and had planned only one full day in the area.  It was a mistake not to have scheduled more time!  We had to skip several of the area’s attractions but we did have the opportunity to spend time at The Raton Museum which turned out to be an absolute gem.  The curator, Roger Sanchez, offered to give us a guided tour and we jumped at the chance – having a guide is always preferable because they have interesting tidbits which never make it to the storyboards.  Roger warned us that the tour would take an hour and a half.  And he wasn’t kidding.  But there can’t be any better way to spend that amount of time.  In addition to the area’s historical importance as a stop on the Santa Fe trail, as a railhead for the shipment of coal from nearby mines and some range war action, the museum has received some wonderful collections from private donors:  a collection of hatpins which are miniature works of art, a display of mechanical toys and a marvelous collection of dolls, including a Shirley Temple doll which has never been removed from its box.  Roger is justifiably proud of “his” museum and his enthusiasm is contagious. 

Except for Amtrak, the railroad now bypasses Raton (in favor of an easier flatter route) and the cars whiz by on the Interstate headed for bigger towns both north and south  but travelers who skip Raton are missing out on an opportunity to visit a bit of Americana that is fast disappearing. 

As we were preparing to leave Raton the next morning we couldn’t help but notice a stream of motorcycles exiting the Interstate.  We were hoping we weren’t going to get in their way.  And vice versa.  Once we started up the highway we began to see cars parked on over-passes or along the shoulders, everybody waving small American flags and we thought we’d found ourselves in the middle of a military funeral procession.  We were about halfway up the pass when a group of cycles passed us and they were followed by a van decked out in shrink-wrap advising this was the “Run To The Wall”, a caravan going from L.A. to Washington, D.C. paying homage to the nation’s military along the way.  A check of the Internet showed the bikers were taking several different routes across the country and we didn’t see any heavy concentrations of bikes after Trinidad, Colorado.  We hope they all had a safe journey.

We made a four-day stop in Greeley, Colorado.  The campground in Loveland where we had stayed previously had gotten some really bad reviews of late and so we opted for a different spot.  It was pretty awful, too, and we won’t stop there again.  Luckily, on short notice we were able to get together with Gary and Phyllis for lunch and a chit-chat before they had to head off to attend to various grandparent-y things.  Gary and Howie lived across the street from each other as kids back home in Indiana so there is always lots of catching up to do when they get together. 

Our next stop was Cheyenne where we tucked in for several days to avoid traveling over the Memorial Day weekend.  We had pretty much “done” Cheyenne on a previous visit so we took this opportunity to head west on I-80 to see a bit of Laramie.  We thought we had already toured all the territorial prisons still open to visitors but apparently not.  We’d missed Wyoming!  Shame on us.  Before reaching Laramie, the highway climbs to  8640’ where there is a rest area/museum/visitors center devoted to the subject of U.S. 30, the so-called Lincoln Highway. Believe it or not, the Lincoln Highway was a privately funded project.   I-80 and U.S. 30 share the roadway along this portion but you can still see where the old U.S. 30 reached its highest point when it was the only “highway” in the area.  It’s a lovely spot scented with pine, snow-capped mountains to the south, birds singing and still a nip in the air at that altitude.

 

Then we made the downhill run into Laramie and quickly located the Wyoming Territorial Prison Park.  We like to avail ourselves of guided tours, if available, but learned that we had missed the morning tour and that the afternoon tour was several hours off.  So we set off on our self-guided tour, poking our noses into the warden’s home which serves as the first tour stop.  It seemed quite luxurious for a frontier abode.  As soon as we entered the handsome cream and red stone building which was the main portion of the prison, we heard voices and realized we’d caught up with the tour group.  So we hurried along and made ourselves part of the pack.  There were a number of bad boys who graced the cells and their photos continue to glare down from the walls.  The most famous inmate was none other than Butch Cassidy and he was incarcerated there long before he became famous.  At that time he was nothing but a plain ol’ horse thief.  This photo was taken after he became famous; the Sundance Kid is on the far left and Butch is on the far right.  Nice looking young men, aren’t they?  They even look a little like Newman and Redford.

The prison was able to bring in a little spending money thanks to a broom-making factory on the premises.  The convicts were quite good at their craft and the prison supplied brooms to several companies on “the outside”.  The broom factory is still in operation but the brooms are now made by volunteers and sold in the prison’s gift shop for well above what you might expect to pay for a corn broom.  If I recall, the regulation-sized broom sells for $35, credit cards accepted.  There are several other buildings in the park, unrelated to the prison, including a church which was moved to Laramie from Rock Springs and the remains of a frontier-themed amusement park. 

Laramie is home to the University of Wyoming.  Graduation had already occurred and so the campus was pretty much deserted.  I’m not sure if this is the cowboy and bucking horse which appears on Wyoming license plates.  If it is, nobody is sure who the cowboy was but the horse’s name in Steamboat.  Wyoming is one state which has its priorities straight.

 

Our next stop was Gering, Nebraska for a look-see at Scotts Bluff National Historic Monument and the nearby Chimney Rock National Historic Site.  Our campground, owned by the city of Gering, was very nice with wide grassy spaces between parking pads, cable t.v. and wi-fi.  All the comforts of home, along with a fine view of the bluffs just to the west of us.  Several disturbing weather patterns were brewing and it was quite an experience watching the sunlight come and go on the bluffs, the clouds shifting and swirling.  According to The Weather Channel, tornadoes were possible to the north of Scottsbluff but we survived the night with just some screeching winds and jiggling about.  (I quickly added Dramamine to my shopping list!)  The weather reports indicated that afternoon storms were possible for the entire length of our stay so we got moving fairly early on Wednesday for a tour of Scotts Bluff NHS.  A short film at the visitors center gave us an overall view of the site, then we took off on the 1.8 mile drive to the top of the bluff.  We did a few short walking trails which afford panoramic views of Scottsbluff in one direction and Gering in the other.  Originally various Plains tribes used the river valley to get to their seasonal hunting grounds.  Then this area is where the Mormon, California and Oregon Trails converged, funneling the pioneers along the Platte River.  It later gained fame as a Pony Express route. 

Chimney Rock is a few miles east of Gering and is said to be the most recognizable rock formation along the Oregon Trail.  After miles and miles and more miles of flat and empty grassland, imagine spotting this unique monolith in the distance.  We watched a brief film, checked out the gift shop and admired the rock from the safety of our car…the U.S. Parks service did not chintz on the number of “Beware of rattlesnakes” signs – they were everywhere. It was much too cold for them to be out and about but why tempt fate.  There is something about Chimney Rock which reminds me of The Alamo…it’s what gets talked about but is actually dwarfed by its surroundings.

On our way back to Gering we made a quick stop at the North Platte Valley Historical Museum.  In addition to the museum proper, there’s a sod house and a log house on the property.  Talk about cramped quarters…the two-room log house was occupied by a man, his wife and their four sons.  But the space did boast this wonderful bathtub in the kitchen.  Running water was available, thanks to a hand pump in the kitchen sink, and could be heated by the kerosene heater on the tub.  I never thought to inquire how the tub got emptied once the weekly baths were done. 

We are about to launch into a trifecta of RV rallies so it may well be quite some time before we get around to making another posting.