June 21, 2009 Sunday
We get an early start and head to Taos, quiet in the early morning and we find the Unity Church located in an alternative school and have a lovely connection with like-minded new friends. We talk to Jenny the singer performing today about the famous "Rainbow Gathering" and she says she is going. She tells us more about it and wets out appetite. You can read more about it on their website – amazing concept! No money involved, no leaders, rainbow of light warriors etc. etc. http://welcomehere.org/

We go to the "Summer of Love 2009" Festival in the Taos Plaza. People dressing like hippies having lots of fun dancing to 60's music in the background.
We then head to Santa Fe to see what it is like. A friend in Taos tells us there is no reason to go there, but we go anyway. As We arrive in the Central Plaza as Myia's sisters call to have our weekly conference call. I ask them if they know where I am and they guess. They say "Isn't that where Father Earl lives?" Fr. Earl is a life long priest friend of the Wannemiller family in Indiana and moved out "west" for his health and to retire some years ago. They don't know where he is but suggest I call our Parish Church to find out his info. They give me the number and I call getting a Sunday answering machine. We also find the historic La Fonda Hotel, which was "The Inn at the end of the Santa Fe Trail". Lovely Spanish architecture, so much history here. Here was one of the paths early pioneers came to this land. We celebrate Father’s Day by having dinner at one of Sunset’s prize winners we stumble onto the Whole Hog BBQ restaurant – delish!

We take a little look around Santa Fe before the setting sun calls us out and back to our river camp by Taos.


June 22, 2009 Monday We awake on our riverside paradise spot and head up toward Taos. As we are driving the "High", mountain road (vs. the low river road) the Sister from the Indiana parish calls and gives us Earls’s contact info!! We phone him and surprise him. We make a plan to go back to Santa Fe to see him later that day! We find out the Visitors Center has wireless, so we spend some time handling affairs and getting out some blog editions. You lucky folks, you! On the way to Santa Fe Gerrit notices that the van's tires are bulging and looking at the rest think it is time for new ones! Good to notice!!In Santa Fe we find Myia's dear friend, Earl.

They haven't seen each for so many years and it is a fun reunion talking about M's childhood days and Earl sharing her secrets and stories with Gerrit. Also catching up on his life and how he LOVES living in Santa Fe, the nature, the people, the space, the sunsets, the mountains, his work as a part time priest and his life as a professional metal sculpture artist. He had been fooling around with "Junk" sculpting" since Indiana, but got serious with a teacher etc. when he came out to Santa Fe. Now he is selling his work. He is very active in the peace movement thru the Catholic Church.

We go to the tire shops to find out about tires. At first good news that we may be able to get some for $40/each. A bargain in our thoughts and experience with this van. As we progress in understanding we find that these are different from the ones we now have and with our heavy load etc. we find we need SPECIAL tires, thicker walls. Of course! And they cost more. Of course! So we decide to call early tomorrow to sort it out and hope to make this a short repair shop. Fr. Earl shows us around town and takes up to one of the best “New Mexican” cuisine at restaurant, La Choza. Really good! In this world they have green (milder) and red (hotter) or “Christmas” (both) salsa. We catch the end of a beautiful sunset and spend the evening having fun talks about politics and religion encountering again the deep kindred spirits we are.

June 23, 2009 TuesdayA good sleep in a bed that doesn’t move, a hot shower, washing clothes, a wonderful visit with an good friend gives us a renewal on traveling. Headline story in the local newspaper is about “Arrests at Rainbow Gathering” and it hasn’t officially started! Story explains later that these are for no seat belts, marijuana possessions, etc. We call around the tire shops and find out that no one has our tires in stock! One says he has to order them from Louisiana and it will take till the end of the week!! But a couple say they can get them nearby and they will be in later today. About $200 vs. the $40 we heard yesterday. And we are glad to get them! Earl takes us to “his” church on the edge of Santa Fe. A marvelous large adobe building which has won so many awards and has some beautiful artwork, much of it done by the parishioners themselves.

One of the sisters at the Church talks We meet our friend Lainie from our SF coaching class for lunch, so good to see good friends, and introduce her to Earl and she takes us to a great lunch restaurant called Counter Culture where we enjoy sitting outside like in Europe. Also very good! We have taken the van into the tire shop for the tires and we get out with literally new wheels for the rest of the trip!! They the rains come. Again, it is early for the “monsoon” season which they can get in these areas, but the cloudy and overcast day makes for easy relaxing and working again on the computer.

Mesa Verde, Chaco Canyon, Jemez Mountains June 17,18,19,20 2009

Does this look like us? It is not!! See other people are more creative with traveling space. This is stacked up man high on the top of the van!!

June 17, 2009 Wednesday Went to Visitors’ Center when they first opened to book 3 tours of the ruins– the only way to see them now. We go on the first – Balcony House. A smaller site probably with 2 family clans living here. Myia has client hour from Amsterdam - no phone reception but with internet we were able to Skype and see and visit with the person half a world away. Modern life is truly amazing. Driving a while on the top of this Mesa top, curvy and up and down, taking quite some time. Then The Long House. Then a museum visit.

Then another tour to the “best of the ruins” Cliff Palace. At the Cliff Palace tour with the ranger we meet a fascinating family from Rhode Island traveling the West in a rented RV. Six adults, 3 brothers and three sisters traveling together! And they are Native Americans from the East Coast! I was asking myself as I told Gerrit what I know about Native American History, what happened to the East Coast Indians. Now I know. Some are living in Rhode Island and other places I am told. Very interesting getting to know and share with these people their experience of living in the US East coast and of visiting Native Sites in the West. They are going to Chaco tomorrow and we hope to meet up again!Then we go back to the campsite for a quick cooked dinner in the van and then to bed – a long, blessed day!

June 18, 2009 Thursday Up early again to plan the next adventure. On the way past the Park Myia sees a curious rock on top of another by the roadside. No, it’s not a rock, it’s an animal, a dark headed and dark tail Beaver!! Never seen one before. Very exciting.We have decided to go toward Santa Fe and Taos. And we decide to take a detour to “America’s Most Beautiful Road” – the million dollar highway – from Durango to Silverton in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. We go into steep mountains and over passes thru the most spectacular picture perfect mountain scenery. They call this America’s Switzerland. We go thru the cute silver and gold towns of Silverton and Ouray.

Fellow travelers have told us about a clothing optional natural hot springs, quite a few in this area. We stew in the lovely warm/hot waters for a while with the Rocky Mountain Peak view relaxing you. This is a welcome treat since Myia has apparently pulled a muscle or pulled something else out going thru one of the ruins small doorways! We get nearby Chaco Canyon Cultural Historical Park this night and sleep peacefully off the highway 550.

June 19, 2009 Friday We wake up to find ourselves in the middle of nothing. Yes, I mean nothing! Well, being culturally sensitive as we are we would say that it is a vast flat field of sage brush and deserty plants for miles and miles around. It is amazing as we have been in mountains and valleys so much. This is in New Mexico and reminds me of when I visited here the vast flat “nothingness” of parts. We travel down 16 miles of dirt road (Whew!) and move onto Chaco which we find out was a center of the Ancestral Puebloan Peoples from 800 – 1200 AD. They had a high degree of organization and built “Great Houses” in a special form with a “D” configuration. They were excellent astronomers and charted the path of the sun and celebrated solstices and equinoxes much as Stonehenge did. They are having big festivities tomorrow, June 20 and 21st for the solstice. We decide to stay for the sunrise and watch the sun knife blade between 2 rocks and land on the petroglyph or alternately shine thru a doorway and into a special wall niche in one of the Great Houses.

We watch an amazing sunset in this amazing canyon full of ancestral energy. We head out of the park, since the campsite is closed.Then while traveling out on the dirt road, doing our best to miss the many cows and washboards on the road, we almost run into a pair of porcupines who seem to be doing it right “on the road”! We have seen so much wildlife so far on this trip. We add these to the list.We stay at a place of the dirt road, close to the park entrance. And sleep nearby quietly till 5am! June 20, 2009 Saturday We get up early for Solstice Rituals.

The neighbor Akima Indians, who also claim the Chacoan area as the place where they origin from, come to dance the sun up and celebrate the longest day. The only thing is the guest of honor is not visible. The sun is clouded! The dancers are great and there is a large lovely crowd of fellow sun worshipers though. We decide to take the mountain road past Cuba (Gerrit always wanted to go there!) toward the Jemez Mountains, Pueblo and land toward Los Alamos, where the Manhattan Project secretly planned the Atomic Bomb in WWII. Picking up a local paper as Myia likes to do, she gets very excited to find out that the famous “Rainbow Gathering” will be held nearby. The paper is “warning” local residents to expect the crowds, forestalling fear and dread. We wanna go!! We’ll see how our plans can work. Today the weather has continued cloudy and now rainy – unusual for this area and time of year, the story we have heard many times on this trip. We are so delighted not to have hot temperatures at this time of year. Thank you again for all your prayers for we are having the most blessed trip. We got to the Los Alamos Library to put things on our blog for you all and then head down into the valley before we head up to Taos. So many beautiful views all around. And then we start up the Rio Grande Gorge toward Taos. We stay overnight in a private place we find right on the river – a room with a view!

Canyon de Chelley

June 16, 2009 Tuesday Canyon de Chelley We go the Visitor Center early and watch a video of the Puebloan Ancestors or Anasazi as they used to be called.

We hike down this large three-fingered Canyon to the “White Hose Ruins”. So called because of the white plaster used on the outside. This is now the only hike we can take on our own. Otherwise one must hire a Navajo guide so that you do not disturb the local cultivations and residents that now live in the area. Again like so many places this is different than we expected from our readings and the pictures we have seen. This Canyon is sculpted yellow sandstone with high Mesa’s on top and BIG. In some ways similar to the Grand Canyon. The mesas on top of the Canyon are where modern Navajo now make their homes.

In the Canyon we talk to the local people who sell jewelry at White House about their life now and then. They talk about the current organization and how violations of the law are handled only by tribal courts. It is special to connect with people who live her and whose ancestors have for many generations before. We buy a special sandstone carving of a healing hand with a spiral on one side reversible to other side of dancing figure, kokopelle with flute playing for rain and a the sacred corn plant next to him, petroglyphs found in this Canyon. The Native artist is Burb (from Burbank) and has a backpack with Maui on the outside that he traded from a tourist. And so the visit continues. He hopes to come to Maui one day. We hope he will too.

We stop at an overlook at the other finger – Canyon de Muerto - and at Massacre Cave, where the early Spaniards shot a cannon into a cave where people had gathered to escape them. They said they killed 90 warriors, accounts from the Native peoples say more and mostly women and children. We rest here in the midday, napping before the next car journey. After we pack, ready to leave, the car won’t start!! The battery is dead. Like this Canyon, muerto. It is now 4:30pm and as we wait for the next tourist to come we realize that we are the end of the less traveled canyon and late in the day and there may be no one else coming here today!! AND we have no phone reception so no AAA! We decide to go back to the main road and look for help, so Gerrit takes the bike with a vow to return with help. The help comes with him shortly after – so nice to meet the helpful Native American grandmother who comes to show her grandkids the Massacre Cave which they have not seen before. She helps us.

We get on the road again. On the way we take another of the famous navigation’s better short cuts over a high mountain pass which the car is barely able to get over, unlike all our previous runs. Our reward for getting over is this mystical bluish landscape of a valley with peaks sticking out, one a bit like Devil’s Tower in the Close Encounters film!! As we approach closer and closer we think it is called Shiprock which had been recommended to us. It is amazing jagged roundish crown of a rock with a high point reaching to the heavens. And the rest of the trip continues like this with exciting buttes and ranges of stone mountains, more whitish than Arizona and Utah. This is New Mexico. We get to Mesa Verde on the edge of Colorado late at night.

Escape from car repairs

June 14, 2009 Sunday We spend the day “church hopping”. We first went to Unity for the lecture given by a beautiful Black woman whom we found was from the church we were going to later – “World Peace Gathering”! After Unity we went to the LDS Church of our friends we were staying with. We were late and didn’t know were to go. There was lots happening. So we left quietly not wanting to disturb. We later find out there are 3 “wards” having service there that morning and so there’s a different group in the main hall every hour. After taking a drive around in this beautiful area for awhile we head “home” for a fun evening of a new game called Settlers. Gerrit had won (he always wins, Myia tells them) the night before and they sought revenge which they get!


June 15, 2009 Monday. Begins early with another car day – Day 6 for us of not having our car and home. We told the owner we would open the shop and here we are. Today they won’t forget us. Today is the party for Gerrit’s parents 55th Wedding Anniversary and he has arranged with his tech-smart brother to “visit” the party via Skype at an appointed time. We head to the beautifully equipped new library to sit in our private study room where we can access the wireless with our laptop and wait for the Skype video call. It comes immediately and we are again grateful for the amazing world we live in where we can literally be half a whole way celebrating his parent’s anniversary and in this old west town in Southern Utah. Ah, Life IS miraculous!
And then back to this realm and the car! They work on it for another 2 hours and finally we test drive. The cruise control doesn’t work now! After another search and questions, “Did it work before?”, they find a loose wire and we are very gratefully on our way.



Get gas, supplies, back to our friends, which they certainly are after all this! Giving of presents and saying goodbye, we are off to further parts unknown!! Freedom again. We didn’t know how much we depend on it now.













We go thru Durango and go to a movie set museum. This is where the wild west movies were made. We meet my all time favorite stars – Tonto and the Masked Man!! We escape to Canyon de Chelley sleepily arriving late in the evening to the campground.