Saturday, July 23, 2005
Riana COE Campground, Abiquiu, NM - July 20-23
This is a lovely campground at Abiquiu Dam. It was great seeing friends Pat & Dennis again. We will travel with them for several weeks before we have to go our separate ways again. We enjoy playing games, especially the card game "Oh, Hell", which Willie never wins but Doug usually wins a lot. So far, his luck isn't so good. Our first day here was spent shopping, since we came away from Chaco with empty cupboards. The most important stop was at Trader Joe's in Santa Fe.
After that, we were able to sightsee and enjoy the Abiquiu area. We visited Ghost Ranch, owned by the Presbyterian Church but open to all for hiking and enjoyment. Georgia O'Keeffe had a small house here as well as a larger house in Abiquiu. Many of her paintings were of the surrounding area. There are several hiking trails & museums, as well as complete guest services for people staying here.
We hiked on the trail to Chimney Rock, which is shown in many O'Keeffe paintings, as well as those of other artists. We also enjoyed a delicious lunch here and visited the Anthropology & Paleontology Museums. It was interesting to learn that many dinosaur bones were (and still are) found here.
From a visit to the local visitor center, we learned of an Islamic mosque that had a badlands area called Playa Blanca, which was open to the public for hiking. The day we went, the mosque itself was closed, but we were still able to hike in the lovely white rock formations. We hiked beside tall cliffs and up narrow canyons, all of the same white rock. We found a trail back that went over the ridge and down the other side of the formations.
# posted by Doug and Willie @ 8:44 PM 
