This morning Trish surprised us with another successful culinary experiment:

There’s always something:

We’ve traditionally stored our leveling blocks in their included storage bags.  The bags recently fell apart, so we switched to straps.  A couple days ago we realized that the blocks fit perfectly on their sides in their compartment without bags or straps:

We dropped of the RV at a tire shop to replace the tire that we punctured on Day 932.  I had used a plug kit to seal the hole, but it started to leak.  The tire shop suggested that we replace the tire as it had minor belt damage around the hole, so we decided to play it safe and replace the tire.

We had a few hours until the tire was ready, so we decided to try complete the Junior Wagon Master workbooks we picked up at Fort Union National Monument.  The workbook, nearly 100 pages long, contains activities for the entire Santa Fe Trail, divided into four geographical sections.  Today we worked on the “Western Terminus” section.

Following the instructions in the workbook, our first stop was this sculpture of travelers on the Santa Fe Trail:

Our next stop was the Santa Fe National Cemetery, where we needed to copy the inscription on the tombstone of Charles Bent, first Governor of the New Mexico Territory.  In 1847, he was scalped alive and then murdered during the Taos Revolt.  Bent’s tombstone is to the right of the large obelisk:

Our last stop was the Santa Fe Plaza, where we had to identify two mistakes on this marker for the western terminus of the Santa Fe Trail:

Santa Fe Plaza:

One side of the plaza is bounded by the Palace of the Governors.  Built in 1610, it’s the oldest continuously occupied public building in the US:

Since the 1930s, Native Americans have sold their homemade wares on the porch of the Palace:

The kids completed their Junior Wagon Master workbooks, and we tried to have them checked at the Palace of the Governors, but they only had one patch left:

We drove to the Santa Fe NPS office, where we received a second Junior Wagon Master patch from the author of the Junior Wagon Master workbooks, as well as a general patch for the Santa Fe Trail:

We returned to the tire shop, where I removed a wheel to have the tire shop do a camber rotation.  The rear driver-side tire wears on the inside edge due to a poorly aligned or less-than-straight axle.  The solution is to have the tire removed from the wheel and re-mounted the other way, so that for the second half of its life the tire can wear down what used to be the other, unworn edge.  Here I’m remounting the rotated tire:

Next we stowed the new tire that replaced the punctured tire:

We tried really hard to find a place in Santa Fe to park for Shabbos, but none of the area synagogues could host us, so we drove north about ten miles to overnight at the Camel Rock Casino on the Tesuque Pueblo.  After dinner we played a rousing game of Mexican Train dominoes:

See the trip map for today’s drive and our current location.