May 10-14, 2015 – Aztec, New Mexico

Sunday morning we hit the road again and headed to Aztec, New Mexico where we are staying for a few days visiting with Nancy’s Uncle Lonnie and Aunt Roylene.  We are staying at the Ruins Road RV Park which is just a few blocks from Lonnie and Roylene’s home.  Once again it is raining and we get to set up in the rain. 

Tuesday afternoon we drove to Farmington to visit with Nancy’s Aunt Luella.  She has had some health issues and was not doing really well but we were able to spend a few hours with her.

Wednesday was finally a nice day so we took Lonnie and Roylene for a drive to Navajo Lake.  On the way back we stopped at the Wines of the San Juan winery.  A quaint winery along the San Juan River.

After sampling, and buying, some of their wines we walked around the grounds enjoying the lake, gardens, peacocks, ducks, geese, turkeys and even an emu.

There were peacocks in almost every tree but we did not get to see one spreading its beautiful feathers.

These two little guys were very interesting with the red flaps hanging from their cheeks – we did not find out what kind of fowl they are.

After using the porta-a-potty you can wash up here.  We enjoyed our visit to the winery and walking around the grounds – and especially the wine!

On Thursday Lonnie and Roylene took us to the B-Square Ranch – a 12,000-acre ranch with a wildlife preserve, experimental farm, and two museums.  The ranch is owned by the Bolack family and the museums are the private collections of the family.   We met our guide at the parking area and drove to the Bolack Electrical/Mechanical Museum.  On the way we drove along a small lake, crossed the San Juan River and by the farm operations.  The Electrical/Mechanical Museum is located in three large buildings.  The facades of two of the buildings are built out of petrified wood found on the ranch property.

While we were waiting to enter the first building Rex found this little lizard on one of the pieces of equipment sitting in front of the building.

 The buildings are full of electrical and mechanical stuff of all kinds.  The first two buildings held an extensive collection of all things electrical – transformers, control boards, switchboards, power plant equipment, computer equipment, just to name a few of the thousands of pieces of equipment.

The collection of insulators was mind boggling – there were about 4 of these shelving units full on both sides and two large piles outside.  They are supposed to have at least one of almost every type of insulator ever made.

While we were looking at some of the drilling equipment outside Roylene almost stepped on this local resident – a 5’ long bull snake.  That really got everyone’s attention!

Mr. Bolack senior had this DC3 flown onto the property and it has not moved since.

This tank was in the third building along with some Civil War artillery, a Wells Fargo Stagecoach, an F5 trainer, a nosecone from a KC97 trainer and several vehicles.  The boxes behind Rex are a small portion of a collection of 45 records that was recently purchased to supplement the already large collection.  The recently purchased collection has 15,000 records but we did not find out how many 45s were already owned – what would you ever do with this many 45s.

We left these buildings wondering what the purpose of collecting all this stuff is – they had multiple pieces of almost everything.

We had a break for lunch before touring the Museum of Fish and Wildlife. We found this beautiful peacock beside the parking lot when we got back to the ranch.

The Museum of Fish and Wildlife is in the original ranch house.  The swimming pool has been converted into a fish display with fish from all over the world.  The wildlife portion is a display of all the game Mr. Bolack senior had shot over his lifetime.  There were many rooms of animals from all over the world.

 We had a very enjoyable but tiring day.   

We have really enjoyed visiting with Ronnie and Roylene and are glad we were able to see Luella while we were here.