To Our Winter Quarters – Red River New Mexico
After spending 1 1/2 months in South Fork, Colorado so we could explore the southern Colorado area (see the video here – it was awesome!), we pulled out Oct 15th, 2017 headed for Red River NM – the long way around through 4 states!
Be sure and watch the video for images of the trip at the end of the post.
From South Fork, the only way west is SW over Wolf Creek Pass and down through Pagossa Springs and on to Durango. From Durango, the road we chose heads SW toward the Grand Canyon but passes through some amazing rugged, remote, scenic parts of the West that we frankly were not expecting!
We stopped overnight in Cortez, and were up and out early the next day heading for Lake Powell. I took Shelly there in our old Scout II in 1982 when we just started living together so we were excited about coming back.
We stopped in Bluff Utah for the night and ended up staying three days. Bluff was used as a base camp for exploring and almost getting into BIG trouble. (See the video!) All is well, with important lessons learned and extreme adventures. The town itself has some amazing history.
We could have spent weeks here seeing Canyon of the Gods, Monument Valley, Hovenweep, and much more but it was time to head to Lake Powell, the Colorado River and Page, Arizona.
The same wind you will see blowing the words from our video on Horseshoe Bend blew 45 – 60 MPH that night at our camp on the beach. With the sand blowing in curtains sideways we were very happy not to worry about an anchor that night!
On to Lee’s Ferry – another awesome part of our history is found at Lonely Dell founded by Mormons in 1880’s to get people across the Colorado River and its canyons from Utah into Arizona. When the ferry sank or was otherwise not operating, it added over 500 miles to go around! Another worthwhile story about it here.
Then we drove to Flagstaff for the night. We wanted to visit Sunset Crater and Wupatki National Monuments but it just didn’t work out. Another time for sure.
Back on an interstate (I40) (for the first time in 3 months!) in Flagstaff and a short day on nice fast, smooth highway to a very remote RV park outside Petrified Forest National Monument so we could spend the rest of the day exploring. See the video for more! (This place blew my mind!)
On to Albuquerque to see our friend Steve, do some maintenance on the RV, and work the Sandia Mountain Ski Patrol ski swap. It was fun – and we found some great buys on winter ski clothes as well!
It was very exciting to head north to Santa Fe, then stop at a winery (Black Mesa Winery) where we had stayed in the summer for a nice tasting and bottle for dinner!
Up through Taos and the 45 minutes up through the mountains to our winter quarters for skiing! Red River, NM is a very small (pop 500) ski resort in northen New Mexico and we are very happy to be here.
With the river literally out the door and the ski slope easily seen from the same place, we feel blessed as usual. Our RV park hosts are Tim and Liz and we could not have found better people to spend the winter.
It is 11 degrees outside this morning and they are making snow like crazy for the opening in four days. Let’s go skiing!
Google Maps is really good at providing visuals of your travels.