Working Our Way North

Our last days in Parker:

I have never been a fan of  Chihuahua's but these little rascals stole my heart.  They are the pups of Neil and Gail and yes they are yappy little creatures but they do have wonderful personalities.

This is Bingo the eldest of the bunch and as you can see she is blind.  Bingo did lots of snuggling on my lap, of course it was said that she liked me only because she couldn't see me...HA

And TidBit-the little bi**c.  Seriously, she is cute as can be and went to everybody except me...ME the biggest dog lover there is.  She weighs maybe 1.5 pounds and where she is snuggled in the picture is her favorite place to snuggle (except under a nice warm blanket of course:)

Petey is the lover of the crew and as is usual, he preferred David over the rest of us.

Buddy is the poppa to TidBit and Petey.  He's also the guy with a shadow on the left and a shadow on the right ;)

We had the dogs and their people over for a good bye lunch prior to Neil and Gail's leaving.  That would be 7 dogs and 5 people in our yard and everyone (even the people) got along very well :)

All winter long David and I had been wanting to take the drive on the Black Meadow Landing road where friends from MN were lucky enough to spot a bunch of  desert bighorn earlier in March.  Go figure we didn't see any bighonr but we did run across a family of coyotes.  By the time I got my camera up this was the only one that hadn't disappeared behind the hill.  They grow em big in Arizona?

The desert was coloring up quite nicely given the rains that they'd had.  It seems tho that the Black Landing drive is predominantly yellow in color

With a splash of purple here and there

This was probably my favorite picture of the day. 

David liked the desert oasis sprouting palm trees

Our first stop after leaving Parker was a real shit hole RV park near Holbrook AZ.  And being the hole that it was this is what we woke up to the next morning.

Once the sun came out we decided to take a drive to the Painted Desert/Petrified Forest.

Good gosh it is so pretty

The colors

And the topography

This looks like it is blending right into the sky

I couldn't get enough of the place

Even saw some Pronghorn in the valley below

This red plant was pretty striking against the blue hues

The area is called the Blue Badlands-aptly named.  Does anyone else see any faces in these rocks?

The petrified forest part certainly certainly was not as beautiful but is very interesting.  According to the information, at one time the area was a huge flood-land.  Large giant amphibians and small dinosaurs lived in the water and tall conifer trees grew on the banks.  The trees fell into the water and were buried by salt, mud and ash; which cut off oxygen to them slowing their decay.  Groundwater that was full of silica seeped into the logs and replaced the original wood tissues with silica deposits.  Eventually that silica crystallized into quartz and the logs were preserved as petrified wood.  We saw lots of 'trees' laying on the ground that seemed to have been hand sawed because they were perfectly 'sliced'. But that is not the case,  we were told that they just broke into these perfect sections as they lay on the ground. 

Most of the pieces have some great color.  David really really had to resist picking a small piece up!

That snake head poking out of the rock is actually a petrified log.

There are hiking trails that we would had loved to go on however given the 60 to 70 mile an hour wind gusts...we decided against it.

And then we were back on the road again through the beautiful mountains of New Mexico-note the one ahead of the motor home.  Since I was driving I missed a ton of great pictures.  It was a foggy day and the mountain tops were striking but you will have to take my word for it.

We stayed at a not bad park (we have been staying at Passport parks, inexpensive but not top of the line).  David met a fella that lives at the park year round and fishes everyday.  He asked David if he wanted to go fishing the next morning...ya think.  They brought home a couple of meals of walley and it was delish.

After two days there, we were off to or next stop at Kinsely Kansas.  This is an overlook that we stopped at for a doggie break.  Only in Kansas, cow country USA, do they have an overlook of a cattle feeder station for pete sake.  So this is the largest processing center in the world.  Cows are brought in at 6-800 pounds and then fattened up to 1200 pounds in a few months time...and then of course off they go to the grocery stores from there.  I know that there is a process to how we get our meat but I don't want to know ...if that makes sense.  I guess Kansas is proud of this (probably for good reason I don't know) but I think it's a dumb place for an overlook.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Here we sit at a not half bad park in the nothing to do town of Kinsley Kansas.  The park is nice in that it is dog friendly and has a large field that they can run off leash in AND it does not have those sand stickers that the last park had!  Our intent was to leave here this morning for Norfolk Nebraska but the weather has held us up.  We are warmer here than we would be in Norfolk so here we are.  The current plan is to stay here today and tomorrow and Wednesday take off for Norfolk.  We will stay there for a day or two and are hoping no longer than that.

However this has to be gone before we get home 

And as I am writing this the tragedy in Boston occurs.  My thoughts are with everyone affected by this horrific act.