May June 2011, New Mexico to BC, Part 1 New Mexico

Petroglyph National Monument
Cliff Dwelling at Bandelier National Monument
Vietnam Veterans Memorial State Park
Crossing a high mountain pass in New Mexico

New Mexico

On Mother’s Day we landed in Albuquerque, MN after leaving Maui the previous day. From the airport we took a cab to pick up our RV from storage. That’s when we noticed a large puddle of oil under the generator. It turned out that when we took our RV in last January to a FL RV service center to get our 100 hour service done on the generator, they over tightened the drain plug and cracked the drain plug housing. This resulted in a slow leak which we had not noticed until the RV sat for 10 weeks. We wasted several days getting the generator checked out. They found the problem but were not able to fix it. Getting work done on an RV in the spring is difficult, because every place is booked up for weeks servicing RVs that have been in storage all winter. The fix would have to wait until we got to UT.

It was nice and warm in Albuquerque, so we packed away our winter clothes and got ready for summer. We visited Petroglyph National Monument and were amazed at the number of petroglyphs in the area. We toured the Coronado State Monument which contains the ruins of a Pueblo village which was occupied in the 1300-1500s.

We left Albuquerque and headed north to Bandelier National Monument. In addition to many hiking opportunities, the park is best known for the cliff dwellings and ruins left by the Ancestral Pueblo people who began to settle here by year 1150. We spent several days exploring the area before heading to Taos. By now we had unpacked our winter clothes as the days got colder the further we moved into the mountains. At times we were driving through snow storms.

We didn’t spend much time in Taos, but we did do the Enchanted Circle Scenic Drive and visited the Vietnam Memorial State Park. This memorial was started by Victor Westphall as a tribute to his son and the other 15 Marines that died with him in battle. Now it is the only state park dedicated to all Vietnam Veterans.