Red Rocks and Craters

Last night we were in Gallup and stayed at the Red Rocks Park. It previously was a state park, but when they wanted to shut it down, the city took it over. It is hard to believe they would close this beautiful venue which includes a campground, rodeo grounds, convention hall, and a hot-air balloon launch field in addition to red rocks which are beautiful and lit at night. The red rocks were just gorgeous. They have been here since the dinosaurs roamed the earth. They form three sides of the park and are totally awesome. The biggest problem was dust and the wind was blowing, of course. Neal does not handle wind well and will take forever to do his business if it is windy. While I was out with him last night, I saw a coyote strolling through the parking lot at the office. It was far enough away that I would have been able to scoop Neal up quickly and toss him in the coach. Hah!

Today we headed out for Meteor Crater to view the depression left when a meteor slammed into the earth 50,000 years ago. The crater is 700 feet deep and 4000 feet wide. It is a bit surreal to stand at the top and look down. It is a big hole, no doubt, but you really don't think of it as deep as it is until you look through the telescopes at things down in the meteor. Wow! At one time it was thought the crater was the result of a volcanic eruption, but a scientist dispelled that theory when he found rocks and minerals that were clearly meteors. They drilled down in the crater in three different places in order to ascertain the layers that lay beneath the surface and to again confirm the theory. It is a most impressive site.

While rolling down I-40 we started smelling something hot, like wires burning. One thing no RVer wants is a motorhome fire. Once we realized the smell was us and not another vehicle, we pulled to the side. Terry got out and inspected front to back and underneath. He could not find a problem. When he got back in the coach, he looked over the inverter stats on the control panel above and that is when he noticed his AC meter (which is always plugged into an outlet) pegged in the red zone. He immediately turned off the inverter which was pumping out too much voltage to the outlets. We continued on and the smell dissipated, so we apparently have an inverter problem, which is no small problem, but one that won't keep us off the road. We just have to find a qualified service company to deal with it. He has put in a call to Tiffin and has some things to try and also has a message in to Xantrex, manufacturer of our inverter. Hopefully we will get some direction tomorrow. At least we are able to go somewhere to get it fixed and it should be warm once we get out of the frozen north.

Ahhhh yes, the weather. Well, we are warm during the day, quite comfortable. It is cool to cold at night but dry. It will be cold at the Grand Canyon, so we will probably just be there a day. That will have to do, but we can see a lot in a day.

So tomorrow we will probably be off to Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon.

Till next time. . .

Dale