SouthWestSlide: _{Spring 2004}

Phase Five_(a)
Up Western New Mexico

Once past the VLA site with all those huge radio-telescope antennas, western New Mexico is pretty low-tech. Lots of trees, and sometimes they're on fire. Breathing can be difficult.

But head northwards and you'll find living and dead pueblos and civilization centers, hosting ancient technologies that have nurtured survival for a long long time. Don't forget this stuff - high-tech may not last forever.

Day 54: Apache Creek to Mogollon
(Saturday 22 May 2004)

MORNING, Apache Creek, New Mexico, Where Apache Creek hits the Tularosa River is a nice Forest Service campsite, no services, no fee, quiet, cool. We're in ponderosa pine country here, and bear country, and elk country; but one thing it ain't is Apache country, now. It used to be.

We're at the turnoff to Quemado. If we'd taken the Datil-Quemado road we've have gone thru Pietown, which beside reputedly having good pies is also supposed to be near a huge radio-telescope, not visible from the road and ya can't get there though. Bother.

This campsite's overlooked by a bluff with a lava cap. Off the slope with the campsite, we're back in piñon'n'junipers. Big cottonwoods along the river. In just a few miles more we'll cross the San Francisco River at Reserve, then the Tularosa River flows into the San Francisco at Middle San Francisco Plaza aka Middle Frisco. We shall take an excursion up the San Francisco Plazas and imbibe the atmosphere of Elfego Baca country. For those of your who don't know who Elfego Baca is, look him up. On the other hand if any reader here remembers or has material relating to the old Disney program on Elfego Baca, please contact me.

We cruise through Cruiseville listening to ZapMama and beholding not just the usual old adobes but even log cabins, old ones. Ah, that Finnish architecture! And more lava caps.

FRISCO PLAZAS: We drive up the Negrito Creek past all the San Francisco Plazas. Upper, Middle and Lower Frisco all have definite presences, but Lower Frisco doesn't have much of a plaza. However at the edge of town there's a wide spot to turn around. And as we're about to do so, here comes a pickup coming the other way, and a woman is turning, and she's using the same wide spot to turn around and go the other direction. So we're spinning in circles around each other in the road. Whoopee!!

Ah, the Negrito Creek valley is just gorgeous. Add some rain and chicken buses and we might think we're in the back country of Guatemala. Adobes, frame houses, some modulars and new buildings - oh, that one's an art gallery. Little missions in more-or-less repair, and cemetaries; horses at the fence hoping to be taken away. Piñon and juniper and cottonwood. Some adobes with tin roofs, brand new steel-roofed verandas, the supports are rough logs. Stone buttresses with niches for Virgin Marys on another adobe.

RESERVE: In Upper San Francisco Plaza, now know as Reserve, the Trading Post slash Senior Center slash Visotors Center, Tah-Nee Trading Post, is fixing itself up as a museum, with some work by *talented* local artists and artisans. It'll be good to get back here and see it when they finish the enhancements. Other places in town have been tarted-up to attract tourists; and like bees to honey, here we go.

In Reserve we brunch at Ella's Cafe. The food is tasty, greay and cheap. The atmosphere is smoky. It's clean, and the TV's turned to CNN but the sound is down, so yer not too much bothered by the events of the world if ya just turn yer head. On the news, the same stories as when we left California: Martha Stewart case, Iraq war, Mohamar Qadafi, Iraq bombings, Afghan war. Yup. Nothing changes.

So we buy a little more overpriced gas and head on south, through rocky rocky canyons here. Great slabs rising high above us. Lava layers visible. One big boulder across the way looks like pumice. Something else though that's white, holes have been hollowed-out by erosion.

Day 56: Mogollon to Apache Creek
(Monday 24 May 2004)

MIDMORNING, Clifton AZ. We just can't stay away from Clifton.

On Saturday afternoon just above Alamo we left the highway, turn off to the east to the lively ghost town of Mogollon {Muggy-YONE.) We climbed steeply for the first mile, up to a flowered treeless mesa; then a couple miles across the mesa, then another steep climb. In the rocks you can see the bullet holes from various holdup attempts. Mogollon was one of the very RICHEST silver camps in New Mexico history. After this steep steep climb up, and another steep descent, we arrived in town (which is very nicely situated in a narrow canyon beneath towering cliffs and conifers).

MOGOLLON: Great buildings, restored it's an artists' colony now. A beautiful little hotel slash B&B, could be Tuscan, with the singing Pie Lady. She says she put the pies in Pie Town but there's no pies there any more. There's a museum which is wonderful, collections of collections, photos and old hardware and a GREAT set of old pottery - Salado, Mimbres, all stuff that was, lots of the Mimbres was found in local river valleys. And a garralous caretaker who tells the history of the place. Further up in Mogollon, a couple art galleries, a couple stores, all in historic buildings. And then the newer stuff starts, going up the canyon.

So in Mogollon, who'd we meet that's memorable? Kathy the pie-baker at the Silver City Inn which looks like it could be Tuscan or Neapolitan, it has this great little patio. And Dick the guest curator at the museum who when I gave him my card about the Harry Oliver Scrap Book, Desert Rat Scrap Book site, sez he KNEW Harry Oliver but his older brother knew him better. He told the story of the road up beyond Desert Center that had a sign up saying ROAD NOT PASSABLE NOR JACKASSABLE. And Nils, the woodworker who does cabinetry but dislikes it because it's all straight lines, he much prefers curved stuff. Nils, from Copenhagen to Mogollon via Maui and who knows where else? And further up-canyon, Dan the old cowboy artist who's PRETTY good but who had an over-inflated estimation of his worth.

THE CATWALK: That night we camped in a nice thicket below Mogollon. The next day (Sunday) we laid around in that thicket half the day, then took off down the road south to Glenwood and the Catwalk, which is an elevated walkway above a creek. And that doesn't sound like much but this is in, well the guidebooks call it a box canyon but it's more like a narrow and narrowing slot a few feet wide and many many many yards deep. The new walkway is pretty solid; the old walkway leaves a bit to be desired. But it's certainly spectacular, wending its way up the creek, under overhangs, through the rocks.

And Sunday evening we continued on south through the usual spectacular landscape to the pass over Mill Creek, stopped right at the Arizona-New Mexico line in a wide spot to camp for the night. Very little traffic, road not recommended for trucks; and the sky so absolutely clear, it was great for the stars. the Milky Way, they're all looking down on us. No UFO apparitions however.

CLIFTON: Now, this Monday morning, the 24th of May 2004, we are in Clifton Arizona doing laundry. Clifton is an old mining town just below the more active newer town of Morenci (Mo-REN-see). Ah Clifton, we've been here before, it's cut in a slot in the mountains; the historic district is, dare I say it? QUAINT! And summer here are, dare I say it? HOT! I just checked the climate data - Bisbee is one of Arizona's cooler places in the summer, and Clifton isn't.

At the Sunrise Laundromat in Clifton there's swamp cooler blowing, and machinery's chugging along. We remarked to the proprietor, a very weathered Chicano, that the machines look like they've seen a lot of service. He said, "Yes, they're getting old, just like me." He came over to make sure everything was working OK. We said, "Yes, the machines are still operating, that's good." The driers only have high heat. It takes one 25-cent load for them to warm up.

I pick up a pile of biblical tracts in English and Spanish. Those darn Mennonites...

Just before we cross the San Francisco River bridge delineating Clifton from the south a ringtail just ran across the road in front of us. Brown-gray, looks like a big squirrel with a long ringed tail. Wasn't expecting to see HIM in town. Maureen says he's supposed to be asleep now - I guess his alarm isn't working.

On a cooler day I'd like to come back with a camera and stomp around through all the historic stuff snapping pictures, but even now at 10 in the morning (Arizona time) it is approaching HOT. Most of the historic district is abandoned, all the windows boarded up on these old brick buildings. This is a brick town, not adobe. It was once a prosperous mining town, a century ago or less. A few adobe structure outside the dead central business district, bypassed by the new business highway. Some adobes, some clapboards, newer modulars.

This could be another Bisbee if there were enough people looking for a quaint escape, if there was enough of a population center nearby and folks who gave a shit. And if it was a couple thousand feet higher up in the air. Clifton's at 3500 feet; Morenci, the Phelps-Dodge company down just above it is at 4000 feet; a little more liveable, if you like company towns. And if you worked for the company.

Check www.FreeCreditReport.com

Mid-Afternoon, Granville Arizona (which doesn't exist) 20 miles north of Clifton. So we started driving up through the Arizona high country, the White Mountains, and there's a sign saying ROAD CLOSED - FOREST FIRE and we go on up a few more miles and we're told by an evacuee, "Yeah, there's a forest fire and the road's closed - ya can't go any further." We pulled into the Granville rest stop for a rest and devour another poor helpless avian victim (BBQ chicken) and our choices at this point are distasteful.

[A:] We can either go back to Guthrie, the crossroads for the border route, and go west across the San Carlos Apache Reservation to Globe and then up the steep-in-both-directions Salt River Valley crossing, up towards the Mogollon Plateau, which'll be at least 240 miles.

[B:] Or from Guthrie we can backtrack the way we came in New Mexico and turn off below Reserve, head over to Luna and get up to the other end of the Whites that way, which is half the distance. These are are our only reasonable routes to Zuni.

So we are doing the latter, retracing our steps, running with our tails between our legs like cowed dogs (Maureen laughs), afraid of the flames. BOW-WOW, YIP YIP YIP YIP YIP!!

RETREATING: So we retreat down this beautiful canyon, rocky palisades and spires, and then on to the VAST open copper pit mine abpve Morenci. It extends for miles, makes the Lavender Pit in Bisbee look like a smallpox scar compared to a vast gaping ulcerous maw. Same corporation, Phelps-Dodge, they just have more room for expression here.

Look up mortality figures by mining district in Arizona.

The maps show a community just above Morenci called Sargo. We drive through, all the houses are boarded up, fenced off, signs say PRIVATE PROPERTY - NO TRESPASSING. And it looks like that part of the mountain is due to be eaten away pretty soon. The houses are all the same so it's obviously a company town and the company needs the mountain now more than it needs the town. Well, it needs the mountain chewed up into itsy-bitsy pieces. spat out as canyon fill.

CLIFTON AGAIN: We just can't stay away from Clifton.

Going out through Clifton - one thing we hadn't noticed before: there are BIG STEEL GATES on the south edge of town that can be closed to block off the town completely. Rail, road, everything. So, look up the City Gates Of Clifton Arizona.

FOREST FIRE: Early evening: we're cutting north past Glenwood and the Mogollon turnoff. Up ahead it looks like nice clouds in the sky, then we realize that's smoke from the forest fire that has blocked our intended path. The fire is up around Hannigan's Meadow - those Irish are at it again. (Maureen laughs.) And we're approaching the Reserve Airport and the turnoff that'll take us back to our westerly route and hopefully up north of the fire and smoke.

Cruising along here, the canyon is narrow and twisty, the road is narrow and twisty, the speed limit's 40. There's three cars behind me, a Jesus Jag and a couple of minivans, and they're all dying to pass, and finally the road's wide enough. And THERE GOES THE WHITE JESUS JAG, and THERE GO THE DARK MINIVANS and then the minivans are passing the Jaugar, And a couple miles further there's one of the minivans pulled over to the side of the road with Mommy holding a young child out the door who is barfing his ass off. They had a nice thrilling ride there, passing that big slow motorhome, yes indeed. That was really worth it, wasn't it?

So as it happens we're taking the westerly fork, to take us past Luna and Head Of The Ditch and Alpine and Springersville - although we wouldn't be going as far as Springersville. And we're gambling that the wind will not come out of the south. This route has us climbing through steep rocky ravine up into the San Francisco Mountains, heavily forested with big pines - do they look like ponderosas? Hard to tell in the dark but Maureen sez no, they're not ponderosas. The trunks are too dark. I'm glad SOMEBODY paid attention to the tree guides!

And 100 miles from Morenci on this westerly tack, we see that the smoke does not appear to be getting any thinner to the north. So it's back to the other plan - we'll skip the High Country of Arizona on this trip, go over through Quemado and Zuni.

Late Monday night, back in Apache Junction at the free campground. When we were here Friday night we heard an elk call, we hope it was an elk and not a bear. And if we're lucky we'll hear some wild beast tonight. It's lovely outside, the Moon's a little silver crescent, the stars are big and bright, the smoke is fairly thin.

CAR NOTES

We've been talking about upgrades and modifications for the old Ford Explorer to make it worthy of forays into Mexico, across Mexico into Central America. Some ideas we've come up with:

• ** Maybe a small safe welded to the frame, same as in an expedition Land Cruiser.
• ** Definately a lockable carrier secured to the roof which will contain a spare can of gas and whatever goodies we pick up along the way.
• ** A small inverter for charging batteries for our electronic devices.
• ** A cigarette-lighter-powered ice chest, a cooler with coils.
• ** An extra spare tire, maybe in the rooftop carrier.
• ** Five-gallon water jug stashed away inside.
• ** A little portable electric light with a long cord - we understand that many older sleeping establishments are illuminated by one bulb in the center of a high ceiling, it would be better to have a little more flexibility in the lighting.
• ** Soft pillows and extra blankets and sleep sacks.
• ** A single propane burner and a few extra bottles of propane. And a basic messkit.
• ** My beard trimmer. I guess the inverter should be powerful enough to provide juice for the trimmer.

Otherwise we'll pack about the same clothes and gear that we took with us to Guatemala, minus the wedding suits. Before leaving we'll make sure we have good all-weather tires all around; have the engine retuned for running at elevation - inquire about this.

BLEND IN: Tint the windows. Get reflective letter stickers to spell out appropriate slogans along the tops of windows. And when we get to Guatemala we'll get somebody to install a car alarm as a horn, just so we blend in. And we'll put on the stickers of the Virgin of Guadelupe and Che Guevara and Tweetie Pie, the three main cultural heros.

Be sure to haul along good supplies of hand cleansers and baby wipes. And get vaccinations for all possible ailments. And get all drugs we can legally here for what we might get there. And when we get there get all the drugs we need there that we might need for recovery on the way back.

Maureen says it's not possible to live on Revivé and juice! Ah, poor baby!

Take along adequate supplies of Lomotil and Kaopectate and gringo toilet paper. And a 3- or 5-gallon plastic bucket with a closeable lid to use as a bumper-mounted clotheswasher along the way. Find our waterproof bag for sticking electronics in, for use when we go riding around in launches.

Day 57: Apache Creek to Zuni
(Tuesday 25 May 2004)

Morning, north of Apache Creek, New Mexico. We whirl out of the Apache Creek campsite and up Apache Creek itself, past a Deaf Youth Camp with Sign Language School, and then up through country - well, whatever I was expecting, this isn't it. Apache Creek cuts through a lava cap, forms at first a box canyon, then a slot canyon through vast overhanging volcanic layers. And above that we're just, it's a little stream flowing amongst all the pines and rolling mountains. We're headed for Quemado now, and again I was expecting that this would be flat dull country. The map doesn't show a lot of relief. The map is deceptive.

PLOTTING: And we are still evading the smoke plume from the nearby forest fire, and still plotting forays through the SouthWest and southward after we relocate to Bisbee. We'll probably spend a couple a couple weeks at a time in Bisbee, then go out on a foray for a weekend or a week or whatever. Some of those forays will be into Mexico, we can do staged explorations - first drive around the border area, see what's available around there - then do a trip down to Mata Ortiz - working our way down through Chihuahua and Durango. The purpose for these trips is to accumulate furnishings and goodies for both the new Bisbee house and the old Volcano house.

And then sometime after January, put up the Bisbee house for short-term rentals and take a longish trip, down the length of Mexico, into Guatemala, and beyond that, ¿quien sabe?

Looking at the map we see that there are but three roads into Guatemala hrom the north and one of them is dirt or worse from Belize so we won't be taking that. Of the other two, one, the Pacific coastal road, forks just before Guatemala into one road that goes along Guatemala's Pacific lowlands, and another that goes thru Xela and Guatemala City.

The other road, the Pan-American Highway further inland, goes through Huehuetenango; and looking at the map I have a scheme about taking that one, getting into Huehue, then catching the east-west road that goes out through Sacapulas. Oh, and we know where to eat and stay in Sacupulas! And then out to Cobán. Do that while the weather's still good, then head back up to the highlands, see how long we want to stay in the highlands, see if we want to proceed onwards or return home with our looty, booty, loot - yeah, loot booty, looty boot. (Maureen laughs.) Oot oot oot

Stops along the way in Mexico: San Miguel Allende, and that town (Paracho) west of Mexico City that's renowned for producing guitars. And of course we will - now this is just scheming from imperfect knowledge, we have to dig up the latest Mexico guidebooks an work things out a bit - and we're fantasizing about, yeah go to Antigua, rent a house for two or four weeks - and Jalapa and San Miguel Allende, same thing.

WILDLIFE: Ah a few miles further we pass a female elk grazing by the side of the road, looking at us like like, with less interest than a llama would. A big piece of grass hanging out of her mouth. DU-UH.

The landscape here is sagebrush, juniper-piñon woodland, the - I'd call'em hills because they're not that much higher than we are, but - they're mountains, rising around us. A plateau off in front of us as we head north. Where are we here? 18 miles from Quemado. Which according to the paper we saw a couple weeks ago, their graduating class of 2004 was 12 students.

And we're passing some white-capped mesas, buttes, little islands in the sky. From a distance they look more like layered limestone, with trees on top and crawling up the sides. These buttes, mesas are right near the Quemado Lake Recreation Area.

QUEMADO: We brunch in downtown Quemado at the El Serape Cafe - a high ceiling, rustic decorations, animal heads up on the walls, serapes - they advertised New Mexican Food. We each have a combo plate, with a pollo enchilada and a carne taco and a carne adobado tostado, with two sopapillas included, hot rice and beans. Maureen thought the rice was slimey, I'd call it creamy. The rice was spicy, everything was good. I thought it was slightly overpriced but this is way out in the middle of nowhere, so it's to be expected I guess, Our thumbs are waggling upwards. It woulda been better if there hadn't been a couple on the far side smoking.

So now we head north through more eroded country, a juniper-piñon zone. Gray sage on the flats. Smoke pall in the air. The Albuquerque paper says the fire season has started in New Mexico but the fires it lists there ain't the one that's providing smoke here. And the smoke cloud seems to be inducing natural cloud formation also, so at least when we get to Zuni it won't be blinding sunshine. At least that's the current fantasy.

Some ways above Quemado Resevoir, right where the road tees, one direction going to Pie Town (no pies) and Fence Lake (no fishing) - we finally get onto the AAA Indian Country map. We wind around the Continental Divide, a fairly flat Continental Divide, for quite a ways, turn north at Fence Lake, and now we find ourselves on the Zuni Reservation er Nation. And along the way, bunnies and conies have been running across the road and just ahead of our wheels. Suicidal rodents.

And finally we're in the valley, off on the right we see the Zuni Buttes and off on the left is Corn Mountain, the holy mountain. And dead ahead, Zuni village, pueblo, city. Lotsa new suburban housing out here in the Zuni burbs. The sky is still overcast with cloud and smoke. Ah, will the horno smoke in town have that familiar tinge of cedar and burnt tire? We'll see.

EARLY EVENING: We ran the gauntlet of the craft shops in Zuni and we were beaten and bled mercilessly. No, we don't smell burning tires and cedar in the wind. What we can see of the old pueblo looks like it's been upgraded, new stone facing over the old adobe. The whole community looks pretty prosperous. New windows, new stonework.

As we were going through the shops, and coming out, there were more guys out in front of the stores offering to sell us carvings. More guys than there were last time, eight or ten years ago. But their quality isn't good.

And now the sun is low, the clouds and smoke are still overhead though it doesn't smell as smoky. And we're heading out to the Zuni campground at Ojo Caliente resevoir just as we did eight or ten years ago.

LATE EVENING at the pond at Ojo Caliente: Dozens of folks, mostly guys, around here in their pickups, fishing in the pond. Oh, gals too. I brew up our chicken chile dinner, the sun goes down; guys keep on fishing, sitting by the lake with truck headlights on them. A few guys trying to set off firecrackers, not easy in the wind. A sliver of crescent moon rises, the air is clear - well there's clouds but the air is clear, and the partial moon is bright. And it's quiet and peaceful and we like it here. So stay away.

Day 58: Zuni Nation to Chaco Canyon
(Wednesday 26 May 2004)

MORNING, Zuni New Mexico. Oh, get up early at Ojo Caliente lake, watch the grebes floating around, the swifts swiftly darting after bugs, the early fishermen coming out. Yesterday the cloud cover was extensive; today there's a lot less, it will be a brighter and warmer day.

For those of you who don't know, Zuni is at the western edge of the piñon-juniper zone in mesa and butte country overlooking the Painted Desert to the west. This is a fairly lush land, not the Cibola of the Seven Cities of Gold that Coronado came looking for a few hundred years ago, but a pretty fair civilization for its time all the same. Off to the east from Zuni are the Ramah Navaho reservation and El Morro (Inscription Rock) and El Malpais (lava badlands) and then Acoma Sky City and the Laguna nation, and then the Rio Grande. But we're not going that direction this time. Just as well, since we got pretty well financially scalped yesterday. (Maureen laughs.)

NOONISH, rolling westward out of Zuni. Well we got scalped again but we love it. And the air's clear, just a few puffy clouds around, the wind's picked up, a delicious day. Unfortunately the old mission is closed and deteriorating, and the museum is overpriced, While we were at the Zuni Arts and Crafts Center the director was talking about how there are political problems with the tribal council. Since the lease on the mission went from the diocese to the tribe, they haven't been putting any money into it. And the museum is closed on some weekend days. And the director's idea, which mirrored our own, was that y'know, gee, if they just get those and some of the archaeological sites presentable, these would be ATTRACTIONS, they'd get more free-spending tourists here, the nation would be directly enriched. But as it is now there's not much to do in Zuni except shop and drive through.

MID-DAY in Chambers Arizona between Gallup and Holbrook. We lunched at a newish eatery half-mile off the InterState called Apple Dumpling - very cutely decorated, and a pretty good feed. If only they'd had the men's room toilet fixed firmly to the floor, it would have been much more comfortable. Mmm. But they'll probably fix that before anyone reads these notes.

For now we're heading north into the Rez - well we've been on the Rez but further, deeper into the Navaho Reservation, towards Ganado and the Hubbell Trading Post. Last time we [think we] came on this route, which is US 191, we had gone through Ganado and were heading east - we started to go up to Window Rock but it was snowing and the old RV was sliding all over the pavement, so we turned around and headed south for warmer climes and went to Zuni instead. As I recall, further up here, maybe around Klagetoh (famous for its rugs) there are awesome cliffs. Pretty soon we'll see if they've gone anywhere.

The road past Klagetoh, which is a scattering of houses, up to Ganado, is NOT as I remembered - no magnificant cliffs - where the hell did they go? At Ganado, Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Park was a splendid as I remembered and considerably warmer than the last time we were here. We're now rolling east towards Window Rock - rolling hills, piñon-juniper-etcetera, sage - blue sky, white puffy clouds, 7000 feet, 65 miles per hour, a splendid day.

GANADO: At Hubbell Trading Post we lucked onto a guided tour of the Hubbell family house, given by a Dutch guide who said 'well' a great deal. She was only moderately pierced. But a wonderful little tour of rooms FILLED with rugs and paintings, and baskets nailed to the ceiling. Indian baskets from all tribes, nailed to the ceiling.

And here we have horses just walking around in the road in front of us. Further up the Defiance Plateau it's more forested, fewer junipers, more and bigger pines. We're approaching the elevation of Mexico City but without the smog. And this kinda looks like the area where last time, eight or ten years ago, I gave up driving the old RV through the snow. Maybe that road I recall with the wonderful cliffs that we took south for relief is old Reservation Road 12, St Michael to Fort Yellowstone.

Now we're around 7500 feet. Maureen remarked that this looks like the terrain around Klamath Falls, Oregon. 800 miles north, 3000 feet lower. It's the old elevation versus latitude equation. I wonder how high up we'll have to be in the Sierra Madre for it to look like this?

Further note: My surmise about Reservation Road 12 was incorrect, so I don't know WHERE the hell we were then. I guess that means we'll have to go exploring some more.

Correction to the previous correction: I do believe that WAS Highway 12, Rez Road 12. The canyon here looks familiar. So one of these days we'll have to retrace that route and take picture.

Please note: At Hubbell Trading Post they have auctions, in May and August. Stay tuned.

WINDOW ROCK: The town of Window Rock itself looks like a suburban town with tract houses, modulars and hogans. Ah, and there's the Window Rock, aha, it IS a big window, a big hole in the rock, just as advertised.

In Window Rock we looked for the Tribal Museum and Visitor Center, can't find it. Turns out all the maps indicate it's in the wrong place, or are wrong in indicating where it is. We did see the Window Rock itself, a very nice hole in the very nice big rock. Oh that's right, I already mentioned that. OK. Got pictures. Went shopping. We come over the rise heading east and we're definitely on the dry side of the Chuska Mountains now.

Let's see, what's common around here? Lots of bible schools and institutes. They just can't stand leaving those poor savages alone, sez Maureen. We notice on the map and on roadside signs the presence of CHAPTERS in various locales - Rock Springs Chapter, Klagetoh Chapter, et cetera. I should probably find out what a CHAPTER is in Navaho society, whether it's the equivalent of a community council or clan or what.

Further on chapter houses: we notice that many are on the Rez and some are not. There are apparently communities out here, not on the reservation, that are still Navaho communities, with whatever social infrastructure they have. I assume that means if there's any problems, they deal with sheriffs and county courts rather that tribal police and courts. I also suspect that from time to time, some of these communities might or might not petition to be annexed by the Rez. That would be a federal issue, wouldn't it? So, more research: look at the, find out what some of the dynamics are for differeces between communities on and off the reservation.

YA-TA-HAY: We passed Ya-ta-hay, we swung north on Highway 666, the Highway Of The Beast, except I think New Mexico wimped out and changed the number. Swinging east again past Coyote Wash, Coyote Creek? Coyote Canyon, and Standing Rock - the country becomes more like I expect of the Navaho homeland - going up and down, very low mesas, more or less grass-covered. Lava caps and standing rocks. The surface is predominately green, with gray. The rocks are red. Blue shadows in the distance. Blue sky and fluffly white clouds like fleets of cotton caterpillars in the sky. The occasional juniper.

More chapter houses, more Christian academies. A Navaho woman jogging on a trail beside the road. Every here and there. scattered buildings, frame hogans, houses - a modular or stone or adobe. Across a wide wash, studded with baby junipers. To the south, a wider wash cutting through dark red rocky ramparts. Three guys trotting by on horseback, a fellow waves his coiled lariat at us and smiles. Riders in tee-shirts and jeans and baseball hats.

We top another rise and there against the cliff is Crownpoint, home of the Crownpoint Institute of Technology and airport and agency school. Beyond there, Borrego Pass - different Borrego. I wonder if around here they joke about it as Borrocho Pass?

This great wash cutting through the mesas is the Rio Puerco, extending for many miles on down past the Rio Zuni and eventually depositing its load in the Grand Canyon.

Now now for the rugged road into Chaco Canyo National Cultural Park. Wish us luck.

I AIN'T A COWBOY

I ain't a cowboy, I never been one
That ain't a real horse; this ain't a real gun
That ain't real bullshit you're steppin' in now
This ain't no real bull; that ain't no real cow

There's nothin' peaceful 'bout home on the range
It's never homely, it's only strange
Only a moron sings "Yippee-ki-yi-yo!"
Only a moron with nowhere to go