Well we have been on this journey for over a month now. Just to recap. We set out from Ottawa about March 1, 2011 on a two month tour to the SW US in our Roadtrek 190. We had now visited 10 States and driven about 6000 km or so. We are not quite half way through. You may recall we sold our home by cell phone when in Oceanside, CA. What we did not explain then is that we had given an early exit date – May 24. So we had about 7 weeks left to complete our trip and move out of our house in Ottawa to somewhere. Time to pick up the pace a bit…
But the beautiful desert scenery in eastern Arizona and then western New Mexico kept holding us back. We drove thorugh small towns called Hotevilla, Shongopovi and Second Mesa in the painted desert Navajo Nation lands.
Then we drove through Winslow with the Eagles song playing loudly. We did not know it at the time but Madonna House Apostolate located in the Ottawa Valley in Combermere, ON operates an outreach house in Winslow.
Next stop was the Petrified Forest National Park. Wow what a neat experience to wander though the stone age trees that had literally turned to stone. Just a note on National Parks. We like parks but the US National Parks we visited out west are absolutely the most amazing parks we had ever seen. Banff National Park and Jasper in Canada are definitely in this category too.
We passed the continental divide and headed east for Albuquerque. We would have liked to go to Santa Fe but we turned south instead.
We stopped in for a visit at Fr. Richard Rohr’s Centre for Action and Contemplation. Richard Rohr, a Franciscan friar and author is one of the world’s most popular spiritual writers and speakers. A lot of Catholic’s we know follow him daily and read his books. Non Catholics and disaffected ones too. We dropped in unannounced. It was funny. The receptionist greets us warmly and we casually ask if Richard is in today. No he is not here today and besides, you can’t just drop in and expect to see Richard….Then she smiled and gave us a nice cook’s tour. It was really fun.
It had been a long couple of days so we headed south for a peaceful evening in Elephant Butte Lake State Park.
mattersofthemoment 