Coyote Creek State Park

We left Tijeras this morning and headed to Coyote Creek State Park, northwest of Las Vegas. We found a nice spot that sits up on a hill overlooking the park that is fairly well isolated from other campers.


Miles driven: 165.8
GPS coordinates: N 36° 10.289' / W 105° 13.937'

We're back at Hidden Valley Resort in Tijeras for a couple of days so that we can do laundry and do grocery shopping.


Miles driven: 40.7
GPS coordinates: N 35° 06.304' / W 106° 20.267'

Salinas Pueblo Missions NM - Gran Quivira Ruins

More pictures from Gran Quivira. Note that the top left picture is looking down into a hole where you can see the original pueblo and the new one built on top of the older one.

Salinas Pueblo Missions NM - Gran Quivira Ruins

Various kivas at Gran Quivira.

Salinas Pueblo Missions NM - Gran Quivira Ruins

Gran Quivira, or Las Humanas as the Spaniards called it, was the largest of the Salinas pueblos, with a population of about 1,500, and an important trade center for many years before and after the Spanish expeditions.

Of the three pueblos in this national monument, Gran Quivira has been the most extensively uncovered. The early pueblos here (1200-1400 AD), were concentric circles with excellent masonry and mortar work. The later pueblo (1550-1670 AD) was built on on top of the earlier pueblo; its rock work and masonry are decidedly inferior. Note, too, that the rock available here to build both the church and the pueblo is not the red sandstone of the more northern Abo and Quarai pueblos.

Salinas Pueblo Missions NM - Abo Ruins

Larger than Quarai, with about 800 inhabitants, Abo also dates back to the 1300's. It's located on a pass opening into the Rio Grande Valley and was a major trading center. Like Quarai, the pueblo, and later the church, were made from the red sandstone of the area.

Fray Francisco Fonte arrived in the 1620's and built a small church, then began work in the surrounding pueblos: Tenabo, Tabira and Los Humanas (Gran Quivira). Fray Francisco de Acevedo, arriving in 1629, enlarged the church of San Gregorio de Abo to reflect its importance as missionary headquarters. The church, which was completed in 1651, employed buttresses, making it one of the few surviving examples of medieval architecture in the U.S.

Salinas Pueblo Missions NM - Quarai Ruins

More pictures from Quarai.

Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument - Quarai Ruins

Today we drove a few miles south of Manzano to view the Quarai Ruins, one of three pueblo ruins in the Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument.

Between 1100 and 1500 AD, the area of the Salinas Pueblos became one of the most populous Pueblo trade centers, located along major trade routes. Perhaps 10,000 people inhabited the area by the 1600's. They traded salt from the Las Salinas Valley; and maize, pinon nuts, beans, squash and cotton goods from the Rio Grande Villages, for buffalo meat, hides, flints & shells from the plains to the east.

Quarai was the smallest of the three monuments and dates back to about 1300 AD. The village consisted of compact apartments built around kivas and were built from the native red sandstone. Between 1626 and 1628, Fray Juan Gutierrez arrived and began the conversion of this pueblo's 600 inhabitants. The church of La Purisima Conception de Cuarar (now Quarai), was built by the pueblo's women and children around 1630, taking about five years to complete. The walls were five feet thick and forty feet high, and are considered the most beautiful in the monument.

Manzano Mountains State Park

We're now at Manzano Mountains State Park, about an hour southeast of Albuquerque. Two Lazy Daze owners are here: Kate & Terry Klein who are camp hosting, and Andy Baird, who is the moderator of the Life With A Lazy Daze Yahoo Group.

Kate and Terry came over for a brief visit after we set up...we'll see Andy a little later, I'm sure.

Miles driven: 40.6
GPS coordinates: N 34° 36.224' / W 106° 21.716'

Hidden Valley Resort

Today we left Villanueva State Park and headed for one of our Coast to Coast parks in Tijeras (east of Albuquerque). We're going to do some shopping at Costco and Camping World, and we'll take the truck in to have the oil and oil filter changed. I'll also do laundry while we have full hookups.

Miles driven: 108.0
GPS coordinates: N 35° 06.266' / W 106° 20.202'

More pictures of the San Miguel del Vado Catholic Church.

Villanueva State Park, Day 5

We drove back up to the San Miguel del Vado Catholic Church which we'd passed yesterday. It was built in 1803.

As we were standing outside taking pictures, two women drove up and offered to let us come into the church since they were going to be changing the linens. It was perfect timing for us because, otherwise, we wouldn't have been able to get inside.

On our way back, we stopped at the Madison Winery, did some taste testing, and ended up buying a couple of bottles of wine.

Villanueva State Park, Day 4

We drove into Las Vegas today to do some shopping at Wal-Mart and to get diesel for the truck ($2.999/gallon). We passed by an old church just before getting on I-25 that we'll have to go back and visit when we don't have a load of groceries that need to be refrigerated.

Villanueva State Park

After two nights of vicious storms, we decided to cut our stay at Ute Lake State Park short. (Friday night, we had some rain, some thunder and lightening, but mostly very high winds. We found out the next day that the area had been under a tornado watch/warning! While we do have a weather radio, we didn't have it on...it's a good thing, too, because as freaked out as I was about the high winds, I'd have been even more freaked out if I knew there was a possibility of a tornado! Saturday night we had a huge electrical storm with continual lightening, mostly up in the clouds rather than lightening that hits the ground.)

We left Ute Lake around 10:00 AM and headed to our next stop, Villanueva State Park. We stopped in Santa Rosa for lunch and for diesel ($3.099/gallon...we could have got it for around $2.899/gallon at either the Love's or the Travel America, but both were very, very busy with long lines).

Driving north on SR-3 from I-40 just before entering into the small town of Villanueva, there's a section of road that is narrow, steep, and with switchbacks. We made it down the hill OK, but we may go north on SR-3 with we leave here and head to I-25 rather than go UP that hill!

Villanueva State Park is located on the Pecos River and has many nice, wooded sites. It'll be much quieter than Ute Lake State Park with their many motor boats!


Miles driven: 159.4
GPS coordinates: N 35° 15.935' / W 105° 20.034'