A mid-winter trip South

To say I couldn’t wait to get my Jeep back from the body shop after we were hit by a deer coming back from Portland before Thanksgiving, is an understatement. We, Hubby and I, had planned a trip to visit his sister in Killeen, TX, meet up with our oldest granddaughter to disperse the last of her belongings, and meet her brother in Clovis, NM at the Air Force base where he is stationed.

When the body shop finally called and said we could pick up “Spitfire,” I started packing while Hubby started mapping out the route we would take to hopefully avoid snow.

We didn’t leave until 2pm the first day because Hubby had to load a hay truck before we could go. We made it to Ely Nevada in 8 hours. We were beat. I found a pet-friendly motel and we called it a day. Nia was happy to be out of the small area she had, because of the totes we were taking to our granddaughter. I didn’t think to take a photo of our load. But all she had for room was her kennel pointed to the space between the seats and the arm rest/console to sit on when she wasn’t in my lap.

The next day even though we had a good 12-hour day of driving planned, we stopped at all the places that interested us.

The first was Cathedral Gorge in Nevada. We were both intrigued by the deep, narrow gorge with red rock spires.

The next stop was outside of Touqerville, Utah. We did a little walk around the car to Nia sniffed around.

After that we came to Colorado City, AZ. I made Hubby turn the car around when I spotted a purple store with the name “Paty’s Place.” I told him it had to be my store with the name spelled the same.

At first glance, Hubby and I were taken with the breath-taking views and nice homes in Colorado City. We stopped at a grocery store that had a deli and purchased lunch. We let Nia out in the dog park in the corner of the parking lot, and talked about coming back and staying to visit all the things we saw in the distance that we would like to explore. However, as we drove around, there was something about the place that had us both asking lots of questions. Why were the houses all so big? Why were there houses that had been started but never finished and no for sale signs on them?

As we continued down the road, I looked up the town and discovered three Mormon fundamentalist sects were based there. And that the leader of one of the sects had practiced polygamy and he was sent to prison as a sexual predator. He had expelled men from the town and gave their wives to other men. It was a place we decided we didn’t want to return to. But we will stay elsewhere and check out the surrounding area.

After that we stopped at the Navajo Bridge that crosses the Colorado River at Lee’s Ferry.

I enjoyed traveling through the country that Tony Hillerman wrote about in his books. I am a fan and was giddy as we drove through the four corners and towns that I read about in his books. Not to mention seeing First Mesa and hogans. We spent the night in Gallup, NM. And going through Albuquerque the next day we saw hot air balloons.

The next day we continued and arrived in Killeen, TX at my sister-in-law’s about 7 pm. We spent a couple of days with her and her husband. She took us to the town of Hico, TX where we went through a museum about a man who claimed to have been Billy the Kid. He went by Brushy Bill. I didn’t see how the photos of him as an old man resembled how Billy the Kid might have aged. We also ate at the Kup of Koffee restaurant and went across the street to the Wiseman Chocolate shop. The lunch and the chocolate were delicious.

We bid them farewell early in the morning and got back in the car to drive to Clovis, NM to visit our grandson in the Air Force and his wife. We were pleased with the way they are facing life as adults. They took us to the Billy the Kid burial site and museum in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. After that we went back to Clovis and walked through the small zoo there.

Leaving Clovis, we backtracked through New Mexico and a corner of Arizona. At a roadside market and gas station, I had the good fortune to visit with two Pueblo women who were selling jewelry and pottery. I purchased a rhodonite and turquoise bracelet from one woman and a seed pot from the other. The woman who sold me the seed pot, told me that what I purchased was miniature put that was used to store seeds and to sow them. She also told me she was Acoma “Ah-kuh-muh) Pueblo and she was of the Bear clan. Along with her name on the bottom of the pot is also a bear paw. She also told me what the design on the pot depicted. The bold black represented mountains and land, the orange the sun, and the black lines rain. I am so glad this woman was open to sharing this with me.

Our next stop was Morristown, AZ a small town near Wickenburg where all the rodeo people go to stay in the winter. Friends of ours spend the winter there. We arrived before dark and settled into the trailer we rented for our stay there. The rain at night pounded the roof but we stayed dry. The following morning it was too wet for anyone to be roping so the couple took us to Wickenburg to see the roping grounds, the stores, and do to some laundry. Then we went to Surprise for lunch and rummaging around in the thrift stores. I came away with 6 red dresses to send to an artist in California who puts up an outdoor display along a highway to promote the MMIW (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women) movement.

The next day we checked out a secondhand store in Wickenburg then drove up into the hills to Yarnell, AZ. We went into a gift shop and a secondhand store there before heading back to Wickenburg and having a late lunch at the Ornery Pig BBQ. There the men went back to where we were staying, and my friend and I went back to Surprise so I could get a case of my favorite wine. It was half the price in Arizona as in Oregon and they were having a sale on it! I call that a win!

The next day we headed back home, making it to Winnemucca, NV just after dark. We ran into snowy roads about Tonopah and decided to not try to get all the way home. The first day of our trip, we’d stopped in Winnemucca for dinner and ended up at Wingers. It has really good food, so we had dinner there on our last night of our trip as well.

That was our first trip of 2024 and while it put me behind on writing related things, it was a fun trip and I’m glad we decided to do it.

Have you taken any trips so far in 2024?