19
Jul

2009 summer vacation: day four

by HML

We’re slowly catching up with photo uploads:  watch Philmont gradually appear in the Gimlet Gallery.

After spending a night in Pagosa Springs, Colorado, we were up early so we could check in to Philmont by 2:00 pm.   Most of the drive was through winding, mountainous terrain.   We stopped at the visitor’s center in Chama to get our bearings (and make a souvenir penny), but after that we didn’t stop until Taos.  As we approached the Rio Grande Bridge we were stopped by a police roadblock.  The officer was friendly and we soon realized that a movie shoot was taking place:  a large, old, boxy RV drove back and forth over the bridge, swerving in and out of its lane, as a helicopter equipped with a movie camera swooped and dove around it to capture the shot.  After a few back-and-forth passes with the RV and helicopter, we were permitted to drive over the bridge ourselves; the bridge was scenic, but our passage over it was nowhere as exciting as the RV.

After a quick stop for gasoline the Gimletmobile crawled along the very picturesque (but very narrow and congested) road through Taos to begin a corkscrew journey of about fifty miles along the Enchanted Circle to Cimarron.  The narrow, winding road was beautiful, but not very forgiving to the easily motion-sick.  Luckily Thing Two slept through most of the drive.  At 1:30 pm, a woozy Team Gimlet pulled in to Philmont Scout Ranch and the fun of settling in began.

How do you tell the story of a week at Philmont?  We’ll try to give you an idea by giving each Team Gimlet member’s perspective on the week.  First, The Gimlet will share his Strictly For Scoutmasters program, followed by Thing Two and Your Humble Narrator’s experiences.  Thing One’s Mountain Trek will finish out the Philmont blog posts.  After that, it’s time to get back on the road again and turn west to Santa Fe and Albuquerque, the Grand Canyon, and points beyond.

Related posts:

Driving into the sunset
Springtime in the valley
No phone, no pool, no pets

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This entry was posted on Sunday, July 19th, 2009 at 7:13 am and is filed under scouts, travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

2 Responses to “2009 summer vacation: day four”

  1. masha
    July 19th, 2009 14:41
    1

    How many pennies do you have now? Just curious.

  2. HML
    July 22nd, 2009 07:12
    2

    Good question. ;-) I keep track on a spreadsheet, which I didn’t bring with me, but off the top of my head I would guess that we have at least one penny from about half of the 50 states. We have a lot of pennies from some states (like our home state) and maybe just one or two from others (e.g. places The Gimlet visited on business trips and brought me back a souvenir penny).

    I haven’t gotten all the pennies from every place we’ve visited this week: for instance, there were three penny machines at petrified rock shops in Holbrook, AZ but I only got pennies from two of the machines. I like the pennies that have something to do with the area — mention where they’re from or what they commemorate. One of the penny machines didn’t have any of that info so I didn’t get any of those pennies.

    I have a pretty good little bag of souvenir pennies from this trip; you’ll have to take a look tonight or tomorrow depending on when we make it into town. :-D