Day 23 - Tuesday, August 11 (Drive from Santa Fe to Canute, Oklahoma)

This is the part of our trip that abounds in long driving days and comparatively few play days. Yet the drive is often a memorable part of our travel experience, and not merely a nuisance to be endured. While it's true that the AC has been inoperative since Salt Lake City (but for a brief - and expensive - respite between Moab and Grand Canyon), we have each made our peace with the experience of the wind roaring past the open windows at 70 mph for hours on end. We're not sure what we're going to do when it rains, but as we parallel the historic Route 66, we feel a kinship to those earlier explorers who braved the territory without the buffer of air conditioning.

Truth is, we can live without it. And this morning, we learned that we are going to live without it for the rest of the trip. The shop I drove to at 7:30 this morning in Santa Fe found the leak: a couple of O-ring seals in the condenser. To replace them requires several hours of labor, and since we had the AC system overhauled for this trip, I believe the repair might fall under warranty in Wilmington. At any rate, we did not have time to wait out the lengthy repair, so we opted to mush on across New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma sans chilled air.

And we survived.

We had lunch at a Micky D's in Tucamcari, New Mexico with a bunch of folk headed for Fresno, California on a Trailways Bus. Then we drove into Texas and a new time zone - as well as totally new topography. Gone were the mountains of New Mexico and Arizona (as well as 5000 more feet of elevation above sea level). Texas was flat as far as our eyes could see. We passed loud and proud Christians - notably a "Jesus is Lord (not a cuss word)" Truck Stop, the "Largest Cross In The Western Hemisphere"(!) and a silhouette of a cowboy kneeling before a cross. Though we blasted through towns with names like Conway, Groom, Wildorado, and Gruhlkey, it took a while to drive through Amarillo, home of the 72 ounce free steak (free, that is, if you can wolf it down - along with shrimp cocktail, salad, roll, and baked potato - in 60 minutes without throwing up!).

We gassed up at Shamrock, Texas, and got some ice cream, 65 miles from our destination. The 21 gallons of gas brought our total for this trip to 290 gallons, or $750 at an average $2.55 per gallon (more in the west). We've averaged just under 18 mpg tugging the trailer up and down mountains for lo these 5443 miles (with more than 1600 to go!). We made it past a last bit of road construction and pulled into site #42 at the KOA between Elk City and Clinton, Oklahoma, where we'll bed down for the night.

Vicki fixed a great supper of ham and sweet potatoes on the grill, and green beans, and we enjoyed a beautiful sunset "sooner" than we thought possible (heh, heh). Tomorrow it's back on the road for a short leg to Lake fort Smith State Park in Mountainburg, Arkansas (a piddly little 300 mile jaunt), and a day to explore the Ozark mountains. Then on to Nashville, Virginia, and home!

As I close today's blog entry, I can hear the sounds of trucks rolling along I-40, not more than several hundred yards from where we have set up camp. It's just as well, for this memorable month, the highway has become our home. The highways we have traveled have opened up a storehouse of treasures across America this summer, as we have driven past (and marveled at) endless lakes, breathtaking mountains, and vast prairies and fields. We've been able to stop and savor a small percentage of what we have driven past along the way. I have been reminded on this trip of the riches that abound in this country - far beyond the time any of us are given to explore and appreciate them.

Day 22 – Monday, August 10 (Old Town Santa Fe, NM)

Today was another rest and refit day for the first half of the day. We enjoyed a big (for us) pancake breakfast, after which I found a place to look at the AC leak in the van. I was too late in the morning for them to look at it today, so Vicki and I decided to get the van looked at early tomorrow morning before we leave for Oklahoma. While Joy and Eli read and relaxed, Vicki and I sorted, washed and dried three loads of laundry – the fourth time we’ve done laundry this trip.

The campsite here is dusty and beautiful. At night, we can see the dusty streak of the Milky Way before the waning but still strong moon rises over the trees. Vicki has been reading about the town of Santa Fe, home to 60,000, which perches on the 7000 foot high foothills of the Rockies, and which claims to be the oldest capitol city in the country (ca. 1610). After we finished the laundry, our books (and Joy and Eli complete a photo and video montage), and lunch, we piled into the van for a trip to Old Town.

Don Pedro Peralta, the Governor-General, surveyed the site and named the city “La Villa Real de Santa Fe de St. Francisco de Assis" which means "the royal city of the holy faith of St. Francis of Assisi” as Spain's new capitol of Nuevo Mexico. The Spanish called the original inhabitants (who had lived in the area since 1000) Pueblo, which means “town” or “town dweller”. To this day, the architecture of much of the city apes the tan masonry dwellings used by the “Pueblo” natives centuries before Spain claimed the area. Even parking garages.

The oldest part of the city is the Plaza, a park ringed by shops, outdoor musicians and vendors, and churches. We spent some time in two of the churches, St. Francis Cathedral and Loretto Chapel. St. Francis dates from 1610, though the present building (the sixth on the site, was begun in 1870). The interior reminded me a lot of St. Hedwig’s in Wilmington – a colorful journey back to a European, 19th century faith experience. We saw a rare 15th station of the cross in the nave (the one celebrating the resurrection), and a “Conquistadora Chapel” where we saw statues of Jesus that bore a Spanish influence and banks of prayer candles.

On our way to the Loretto Chapel (Our Lady of Light), we met a sculptor from West Africa who showed us his handiwork. The Loretto Chapel was built by the same laborers who constructed the final version of the St. Francis Cathedral, in the late-1800’s, for the Sisters of Loretto, whom the Bishop had invited from Kentucky to start a school for girls (which they ran for over a century, until 1968). The chapel is most famous for is miraculous spiral staircase to the choir loft, which makes two 360 turns without a center support, and dates from 1880, when a mysterious carpenter built it in 6 months and disappeared. Later, another carpenter added a handrail (I couldn’t imagine climbing it without one). We had heard about the staircase. It was definitely a thought-provoking structure (and a bargain at $3 a person!). The Loretto Chapel, unlike the St. Francis Cathedral, was deconsecrated and is under private management.

We wondered out of the chapel and through the Plaza, passing a politically incorrect monument denouncing southerners as “Rebels” (and natives “Savages” until a vandal defaced it in 1973). A bronze plaque in front of the late 1800’s obelisk attempts an apology/explanation. A band was tuning up, but we went to a Five & Dime to get water, ice cream, post cards, and chili pepper lights for the trailer (the usual). Sufficiently fortified, we returned to the Plaza and found a spot to enjoy the outdoor concert by the “Pleasure Pilots”, a jazz/swing troupe that got nearly everybody dancing before they finished. A woman near us judged that we had saved the best for last when she learned about our itinerary. After enjoying the outdoor concert in the picturesque town, she may have been right.

We returned to the van and immediately got on our cell phones (Vicki with Ruthann, me with my Dad, Joy with Abbey, and Eli with an imaginary friend) and the din was so loud we could barely keep up with the conversations. We drove to Harry’s Roadhouse and enjoyed another wonderful meal, before returning to the trailer to string up our new chili pepper lights (they look marvelous – Joy arranged a stirring red-green-yellow-red pattern) and get ready for bed.

Day 21 – Sunday, August 9 (Drive from Grand Canyon to Santa Fe, NM - via Petrified Forest NP)

Vicki and I got up early this travel morning in order to watch the sunrise over the Grand Canyon. We got up quickly and dressed in the chilly pre-dawn at 5:15 to get to the overlook nearest us before the 5:40 sunrise. Several dozen people had already gathered at the overlook we chose, and we were both struck by the religious quality of the quiet that pervaded the gathering of people from many different nations who had come to watch the dawning of a new day. The moment the sun ignited the canyon rim to the east of us, everyone voiced an involuntary “ahh!” that transcended all of our language differences.

We felt we did not miss worship this day – and Vicki texted Ruthann, who would be preaching at Skyline soon, three hours ahead of us in the east, to assure her of our prayers and to tell her about the worship we had been involved in before the sunrise, as strangers assisted each other taking photographs of families and couples, accompanied with expressions of gratitude in many languages. We walked thoughtfully back to the van and drove back to coffee, breakfast and packing up to go.

After letting the kids sleep in a little, we pulled away from site J-66 at 9:45, driving south 50 miles to I-40, where we turned east for the final week-long leg that will take us home. We have much enjoyed the fantastic sights this trip, but we will be grateful to return home to friends and familiar places and patterns of our lives. By the end of the day, we will have traveled 3800 miles, not including another 1100 miles while sightseeing. And we will have another 2000 miles to go.

Today’s trip is a bit longer because of the lack of AC as we cross the desert in 95 degree heat. On the bright side, we are driving much of the old historic Route 66, and we play oldies above the roar of the wind with the windows rolled down in order to get into the spirit of America’s Highway. When we pulled off of I-40 at Holbrook, AZ, to make a side trip through the Petrified Forest National Park, we passed the Wigwam Motel (with rooms in the shape of teepees) and went nuts laughing and trying to get a picture.

The Petrified Forest was fascinating, if hot. Joy looked after Skye while we strolled through 200 million year old trees that had been gsathered by an ancient river and turned to quartz when they were covered with sediment and volcanic ash, and then broke apart and exposed in the uplifting of the Colorado Plateau beginning 60 million years ago. We also stopped to see 1200 year old petroglyphs in an area dubbed “newspaper rock” because there were so many of them. Then we drove through the painted desert before resuming our trip east on long, flat I-40.

We arrived at our campsite outside of Santa Fe just before the office closed, and set up in a record 15 minutes in order to get to an area restaurant called Harry’s Road House that served up some wonderful Mexican food. We watched the moon rise on the short drive to our new home for the next 36 hours, and made some online updates for the first time since Moab, thanks to the WiFi at the campsite.