On our way west to Arizona, we stopped at White Sands National Park. We decided a quick drive through was necessary. It was not the best time of day to take pictures, due to a very bright sun, but I did the best I could using a polarized filter. I am a bit sad that our timing could not get us there at sunrise or sunset. I can only imagine how the white dunes would glow in the dawn and dusk of the day. Hopefully, we will get a chance later on to experience that.
This national park is the world’s largest gypsum dunefield, covering 275 square miles of desert. It offers sand dune sledding, self-guided tours, and is super pet friendly. There are hiking trails and picnic areas to enjoy a meal with incredible views.
Our dog, Murphy, is part Siberian husky, and we adopted him in Washington State. So, he was accustomed to cold and snow. When he saw the giant white sand dunes, he got extremely excited. He thought it was snow. Aaron had him on a long, retractable leash, and he went running up the closest dune. Aaron could hardly keep up. Sadly, in his excitement, Murphy tried to eat the “snow.” Poor pup was spitting out sand and giving us a perplexed look. He still had fun running in the soft white powder.
The park is vast, with dunes of sand stretching as far as the eye can see. In this picture, in the distant right is a tree, and to the distant left is a person with a sled. When I was taking the photo, I did not even notice the person in the distance. The gift shop in the park sells sleds so that people can sled down the sand dunes. I think that is brilliant.
This is one example of a trail left by someone sledding down the dune.
The patterns in the sand mesmerized me.
This is one of the most dog friendly national parks, so it really made me angry to come across this bag of dog poop left on one of the dunes. If people continue to disrespect national parks, monuments, and national forests, they will ruin it for the people who actually care, that clean up after themselves and their pets. Sorry, rant over.
As we explored, we saw snake trails and other prints from animals that live in the dunes. It was like art that would change with the shifting wind and sand.
I also really enjoyed the reflection of the dunes on our Airstream. They looked very Vincent van Gogh. This work would have been titled The Sandy Afternoon instead of The Starry Night.
We had a great time briefly exploring White Sands, but we needed to get back on the road and into Arizona. Aaron had an office to get opened, we had family coming in for Christmas, and we wanted to get further south before winter really settled in.
We stopped at our usual Arizona standby, West Pinal County Park. We spent a few days here relaxing and working before heading up to Tortilla Flats just north of Apache Junction. My next blog will cover our time there and our Christmas spent with all three kids and my mom in a house…well, mostly in a house.
I would like to begin this post with a sincere apology. I have been absent from this blog space for way too long. I honestly am not sure why. I think I may have been a bit burnt out, and once I missed one week, it became easier to miss the second week. Now, it has been quite a few months, and I am attempting to get back into the swing of things. I am working on getting back into a routine with photography and my blog writing. I may post every two weeks instead of once a week, but we will see. There is a lot to catch up on. I suppose I’ll start with November.
Due to the needs of Aaron’s job, we spent most of the month of November outside of Kansas City. We found a really nice Hip Camp called Lake Georgia Sue to park the rolling house. We were surrounded by horse pastures on one side and a crop field on the other. There was plenty of space for Murphy to run, horses to admire, and beautiful sunsets.
The best part of our time in Kansas City was the time spent with our son, Mason. He was also there for work, and we had some great evenings together. Mason has a really cool hobby of astrophotography. He brought all of his equipment, and spent some time showing us how he finds his subjects in space to photograph. He really took some amazing pictures while we were all out there.
Some of Mason’s equipment.
This is the Heart Nebula that he took while we were there.
The following pictures are a few more from his collection. I don’t think he took these when we were together, but I just have to share them anyway. They are too beautiful not to share. (He gave me permission.)
The Jellyfish Nebula
The Orion Nebula
The Seven Sisters Nebula
We enjoyed several evenings around the campfire, sharing good meals together, and simply spending quality time with Mason.
Another good thing about being in Kansas in November was that we could drive about 5 hours and be in Iowa to spend Thanksgiving with my mom, brother, sister-in-law, and my nephew. Mason came out to the campsite, picked up Aaron, Murphy, and myself, and we headed to Iowa for a few days without the camper.
As usual, when with family, I forget to take many pictures. I was able to grab this one of Murphy playing with my brother’s dog, School Bus. Murphy and Bus had a great time together. My mom and Murphy also got along quite well.
We had fantastic food for Thanksgiving. My nephew, Will, and my brother, Chris, smoked a turkey and a brisket. They did an amazing job. Mom and my sis-in-law, Brenda, made all the delicious sides, and we had wonderful deserts. It was great to have this bonus family time with everyone.
After we got back from our Thanksgiving in Iowa, Aaron and Mason went back to work, and Murphy and I hung out at the camper. I looked out of the window and saw a horse on the wrong side of the fence. He had a halter on, and reins dangling from it, and he was just grazing away.
We got in touch with the property owner to let him know one of the horses was loose. He said it wasn’t a problem, and someone would be around to bring him back where he belonged.
He was a very handsome horse, and very sweet. I went and talked to him, and pet him for a while. He wandered into the field behind us, which is not fenced in. So, I went and grabbed his reins and brought him back closer to the pasture and camper. With multiple pastures and lots of horses, I didn’t want to put him in the wrong pasture, so I just hung out with him and made sure he didn’t wander too far. When one of the horse handlers arrived to take him to his pasture, she told me that his name was Murphy, too. She also told me that Murphy threw off his rider and took off. I guess he was not as sweet as I had thought. I enjoyed my time with the two Murphys anyway.
The weather in Kansas was starting to get cold, with snow in the upcoming forecast, and it was time for Aaron and me to hit the road again. We started driving southwest towards Arizona.
Our last stop on our way out of Kansas was in Meade City. It was free camping in the city park, with a cool small town holiday light display. It was a great park that also offered a free dump station and free potable water.
Our next stop was back to Santa Rosa Lake State Park in New Mexico for a quick overnight. We have been here at least twice before, and knew it would be a nice spot to spend the night.
After a quick night at Santa Rosa Lake, we headed southwest to Alamogordo, New Mexico. We stayed at Oliver Lee Memorial State Park. Alamogordo is home to the world’s largest pistachio. It was a beautiful town in the New Mexico desert.
We enjoyed our stay in New Mexico, but had to keep moving on towards Arizona. We had White Sands National Park to visit, a reservation in Apache Junction, Arizona to get to, and it was now December. Next week, I will share the pictures of our time in White Sands National Park and our stay in Apache Junction at the Tortilla Flats campground. I will leave you with a sneak peek of our drive through White Sands.
This post will cover all of our October travels. I am All of my Alaska posts put me a few weeks behind on our travels.
LZJ Ranch’s Hiawatha Hideout outside of Price, Utah, was our first time at a Hipcamp. Hipcamp is a camping version of Airbnb. Private property owners offer a variety of campsites for people to stay at. This one did not disappoint. Our site sat near old stone buildings from the 1800s and 1920s. There were rock walls from the original homesteaders and building remains from a brothel that was in business in the 1920s.
While Aaron worked, Murphy and I explored the campground. We had the entire area to ourselves for our stay, so Murphy had some freedom from the leash to explore. I also had freedom from holding the leash and was able to catch a few landscape views.
Just before we booked this campsite, I had started reading Pioneer Girl: an Annotated Biography by Laura Ingalls Wilder, annotated and edited by Pamela Smith Hill. This autobiography was not published in Wilder’s lifetime. It gave a more realistic view of her childhood than the series of novels she wrote for children (the Little house on the Prairie series). The reason I mention this is that the campground had old wagons, and that camp in the wild feel, that brought the book more to life as I was taking pictures of the types of conveyances she used in her lifetime.
Here are a few photos of the old buildings…one even had an outdoor shower for those adventurous enough to use it.
We even had three of the ranch’s cows pay us a morning visit.
There were even old tin cans from the 1920’s still in the dirt.
The campground had really cool decorations, and even a roping practice cow.
We had a great stay here in Eastern Utah, but we needed to keep heading east toward Kansas City. We still had to cross the Colorado Rockies before the first snowstorm, which was forecast to happen soon. So we packed it up and hit the road.
This was my first time in Colorado, and I was not disappointed. We spent one night at Rifle Gap State Park, and we both really want to revisit that area again.
It was October, and a big snowfall was headed our way. So we kept heading east to stay ahead of the storm. Neither Aaron or myself wanted to be towing the Airstream in the Rocky Mountains during a snow event. There was already a little bit of snow on the mountains; we did not want to deal with snow on the roads.
Aaron needed to visit another job site outside of Denver. We stopped at our second Hipcamp, this one on a family farm. For whatever reason, I did not take any pictures of our four-day stay there. It was a really nice spot, and the property owners were very friendly. It was an adjustment on the eyes. We were in the plains of Colorado, with no mountains in sight. After Aaron finished his site visits in Colorado, we headed east again. This time, we drove into Kansas. We were closer to our goal of Kansas City, but we still had a couple of days of driving to get there.
As we went down the road, we saw a sign for Salina, Kansas. Aaron’s mom and stepdad had lived in Salina for a while, and his stepdad, Jimmie, was buried there. Jimmie had grown up on the family farm there in Salina. After he passed away, Aaron’s mom, Barbara, moved back to Louisiana. Barbara passed away about seven years ago and chose to be cremated. We have been traveling with a small urn of her ashes with us. We decided to make a detour, pay our respects to Jimmie, and leave the urn with some of Barbara’s ashes there with him. Aaron and I left the cemetery with such happy hearts that they were reunited again after all these years.
Our next stop was in Wakeenee, Kansas, at a Harvest Host. This host was the Prairie Rose Inn, which also had a bar and restaurant. Just across the street was a dog park and a World War II Iwo Jima memorial with an old military jet on display. We parked our home, took Murphy to the dog park, and checked out the memorial and the jet before Aaron and I went inside to grab some dinner.
The shadows on the wall of the sculpture seemed to bring the soldiers to life for me. I am not sure if that was the intention, but it was very powerful to look at.
When we took a seat at the bar to order some food, we saw Space Camper Cosmic IPA. Aaron had to give it a try. He enjoyed the IPA with his dinner while I had a vodka and tonic with mine. The food was great, and so was the service.
After a good night’s sleep, we got back on the interstate and headed to our extended stay outside of Kansas City, Kansas. We were really excited to get there. Our son, Mason, was going to be in Kansas City working with Aaron, which meant we were about to have some family time! We planned to be there throughout November, so we found a Hipcamp that allowed extended stays in Ottowa, Kansas, just outside of Kansas City.
My next blog will cover our November adventures in Kansas with Mason, some horses, and a quick trip to Iowa for Thanksgiving.
Aaron and I spent four hectic weeks in California; this is just about the only picture I took. We started at Logger Campground north of Lake Tahoe. Aaron was needed for work in Jacksonville, Florida, so he flew out of Reno, and Murphy and I held down the camper while he was gone. I was only an hour north of Lake Tahoe, where Aaron’s cousin Ethan and his wife, Lara, live. Ethan was out of the country for his job, so Lara and I decided to spend a day together. It was just us girls and the dogs. I had a great visit with Lara, and Murphy and her dog, Tango, had a great time playing together.
Aaron returned from Florida just in time to move to our next campground, Anthony Chabot Regional Park, outside of Silicon Valley. He had planned on working at the office there in Fremont for a couple of weeks, but things came up with his job, and he ended up flying to Atlanta. Once again, Murphy and I hung out, took care of the camper, and even made a few new friends. This was about the time the aurora borealis was visible just about everywhere, so I tried to get a picture of it, only to realize that we were too close to San Francisco to get a dark enough sky.
Aaron made it back in time to move the camper to Coyote Lake County Park and take me to the airport. I needed to get to Iowa to take my dad to an unexpected doctor’s appointment. Aaron still needed to go to work at the office in Fremont, so Murphy got to go to a dog sitter and play with other pups. He really enjoyed himself.
I had planned a week in Iowa to spend time with my mom, my brother, and his family. Mom and I decided it would be a great time to go see the Bridges of Madison County. The bridges are historical and famous due to the book Bridges of Madison County, written by Robert James Waller, and the movie based on that book starring Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep.
At the height of covered bridges in Iowa, there were an estimated 100 just in Madison County. Most were destroyed due to fire, collisions, flooding, and demolition. We were able to visit five bridges and the really cool town of Winterset, which held a few surprises for us.
Our first stop was the Imes Bridge in St. Charles, Iowa. We were confused by the yellow canisters hanging inside of the bridge until we figured out that they were sprinkler systems in case of fire.
The next bridge we visited, Holliwell, was Clint Eastwood’s favorite and was used in the movie. It is located in Winterset, Iowa. It is also where I was able to catch my favorite picture of the day. A couple was walking the bridge, and I got them silhouetted in the bridge. It hit all the romantic feelings from the book and the movie.
This is also the first bridge we noticed security cameras and bird nests.
The third bridge we drove to was in the middle of the town of Winterset, in a fantastic park! This is the Cutler-Donahue Bridge.
Winterset City Park had more to offer than just the bridge. As we drove through the park, we saw beautiful wood sculptures. I could only get a photo of one of them, as I was driving most of our time in the park.
While driving around the park, I saw a sign that just said “tower” with an arrow pointing the direction. So, Mom and I decided we needed to see this tower. We followed the sign to a one-way road that wound up a steep hill. We finally made it to the tower, and it was awesome!
The views from the top of the tower were great. Sadly, the trees were not in their full fall color. One more week and the pictures would have been filled with yellow, orange, and red leaves.
As we were driving through Winterset, we saw a sign outside of a house that caught our attention. Winterset was the birthplace of one of America’s most famous actors-John Wayne. We decided we should visit the museum and home.
The museum contained movie memorabilia, a brief film introducing you to the museum, and a few personal belongings. One of my favorite pieces was his custom station wagon. He was very tall and did not want to duck his head when he got in and out of his car. So, the car was customized with a raised roof to fit his stature.
The following are shots I took with my cell phone camera of different items in the museum, including an Andy Warhol of John Wayne.
Outside of the museum was another cool thing I had never seen before. It is a Freedom Rock. There is one rock in each of the 99 counties of Iowa. The artist Ray “Bubba” Sorensen started painting Freedom Rocks to honor military veterans. The one in Winterset honors veterans, prisoners of war, John Wayne (even though he was not allowed to serve due to having 4 children), and Quilts of Valor. Quilts of Valor was started in Winterset. Volunteers create a quilt and present it to a veteran in honor of his service to our country. My father was fortunate enough to be honored with one of these beautiful quilts. The picture of Dad receiving is the quilt is courtesy of my brother, Chris.
After our detours in Winterset, we continued on to see the last two bridges. The next bridge was a nice surprise. We could actually drive across it! It is the only one available to drive. Of course, we did drive it! This is the Cedar Covered Bridge. It also had a nice gazebo and picnic area. This bridge was rebuilt twice due to arson.
The last bridge and finale of our tour of Madison County was Hogback Bridge. This bridge was situated on some farmland and it made a beautiful setting. It also had a journal for people to sign, share feelings, and experiences.
We had a wonderful day exploring the Bridges of Madison County.
Mom and I had more plans for the week, but they were cut short. Aaron’s job needed him to start heading east to Kansas City, with a stop in Utah and then Colorado on the way. I changed my flight, returned to California on Thursday, and Aaron and I packed everything up and started our drive east on Friday. Next week, back to Utah. We stayed at our first Hipcamp, Hiawatha Hideaway.
We said goodbye to Idaho and made our way into northeast Nevada. We set up the trailer at South Fork State Recreational Park just outside of Elko, Nevada. Elko is known for its gold mines and UFO sightings. We did see quite a few mines driving to the campground. Unfortunately, we did not see any UFOs, mysterious lights, or aliens.
The campground sits above South Fork Reservoir, a man-made reservoir for water-based recreation. Boating, fishing, and swimming are encouraged. Murphy and I spent quite a lot of time down at the water’s edge. He swam every day, and I took too many pictures of the beautiful landscape.
The campground is also close to the Ruby Mountains. They provided a gorgeous view every day, which changed with the light.
It was a quiet week for us. Aaron worked quite a bit, and Murphy and I enjoyed our surroundings.
Here are a few shots of the landscape, the ducks, and the dramatic skies. We did have some rain, which was nice.
The campground was never really crowded, but we did have neighbors with small kids for a few days. Murphy would watch them play from the windows of the camper. Once, he fell asleep watching them and gave me one of my favorite pictures of him.
After a week of enjoying our site, it was time to move west again. Next stop- back to Tahoe National Forest in California. We stayed there last year and decided it was the perfect stop on our way to Fremont, CA.
Wandering Cindi 