We liked the Wild Rivers Recreation Area where we stayed so much, we extended our stay – twice. After all it was only $3.50 a night! We were pretty far from anything (an hour away from Taos) but the isolation meant we were able to focus on getting some work done. Thank goodness for Tom’s T-Mobile service – the other two – Verizon and AT&T were useless out there.

Our campground was near (or in – I never quite figured it out) the Rio Grande Del Norte National Monument  on the tip of a mesa where the Red River meets the Rio Grande – just outside of a spot on the map called Cerro. We were literally a stone’s throw away from the edge of the gorge.

There are several campgrounds and  hikes in the area – all down – into the canyon. The one at the end where the rivers converge was closed due to trail damage (from flooding).

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You can barely make out the trail in the middle. The brown river on the right is the Rio Grande, the smaller one is the Red River. This viewpoint is as close as we could get.

We went on the hike out of our campground, the Little Arsenic. The trail was horse rated, and as we made our way down through the narrow and rocky switchbacks, I was wondering how exactly do they train horses to not be afraid of that? My horses would have never made it.  It was pretty steep. The hike down was beautiful but I kept thinking about the hike back up. Ugh.

The view down at the Rio Grande was worth it. There were tall pines and wildflowers and springs.

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There are trails all along the rims and down along the river. We didn’t go over to this one, but you can barely make out that there were buildings down there…cabins?

We decided to not go up the same way, but went further along the river and came up at a neighboring campground (Big Arsenic) then walked back up.

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This rock wall looks almost manmade, doesn’t it?

Going up wasn’t near as bad as I thought it would be! But I still prefer hikes where you head up, then down. I tend to not take many pics on the way down, but on the way up I don’t mind stopping frequently to play with the camera!

While we were camped there, they had a young Dena (Navajo) girl do a presentation on raising Monarch butterflies at the visitors center. She was a remarkable young lady and we were glad we went to give her our support. I was surprised by the attendance as we really were in the boonies.

I made the drive into Taos one day to pick up a shipment and re-stock on groceries. We also drove to an old bridge across the river. That was a beautiful area.

And one day we did a loop drive to Taos, up to Angel Fire, over to Red River, and back to camp. Those ski areas were so green.  We liked Red River so much, we made another drive up there on another day. 

It looked like a great place to take a family – there was so much to do. We were tempted to take a ski lift ride up the mountain, or an inner tube ride down, but we just watched others doing it! They also had a really cool Hidden Treasure Aerial Park that looked like lots of fun. IMG_4032Some day I’ll have to push my limits and walk across a rope bridge 4 or 5 stories high – but not right now!

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This is the finished product (cover).

While there was a lot to do in the area, we mainly took advantage of the solitude to get some major computer projects worked on. Tom had this great idea that “we” should write a book about fairies – featuring pictures of the fairies that I sell. So we did! During this time in “seclusion”, we were able to get it finished and off to the printer. Here’s a link if you’re interested in seeing it: How to Keep A Fairy on Amazon.

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This is our rough draft and our working pages.

Some days were getting pretty warm – our tin can house heats up quickly on sunny days! But there was always a nice breeze.  And the sunsets and passing storms were beautiful.IMG_3929 2IMG_3925 2IMG_3936

We’ve been really pleased with all of the good weather we’ve had. Especially compared to last year at this time where we always had to be plugged in somewhere to run the air conditioner.

While Tom is probably missing the social hours, I’m thinking of everything I need to get done before we hook up with people again. So I’m taking advantage of this down time between convergences!

Happy Travels,

Peace & Love, Joy

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PS – We finally decided to add an Amazon Affiliate link to our website. What this means is that you can choose to click the link at the top right of our home page (or on mobile at the end of the About or Contact pages) to go Amazon and make purchases (of ANYthing). This way it will help support us while costing you nothing more than clicking time. HaHa- by “support us” I think it means we may eventually get a dollar or two off of our Amazon purchases! But every little bit helps and now I can say our “blog is monetized” which makes me feel slightly more professional. LOL If you’ve read this far WE LOVE YOU!