A Travel Post—New Mexico Part 2

As I was last saying, it was a beauty of a drive around this Los Alamos area on Rt. 4.  I haven’t really included about the weather yet, but generally while we were there, it was cold at night, in the 30’s, and crystal clear and sunny during the days, maybe around 60-some degrees.  It wasn’t hot like I was expecting out West would be.   We were at a high elevation and it is desert and just the start of Spring.  In fact, we saw snow along the high roads here as you’ll see below.

 

This pointy triangle visible in the lower center is a communication thingy for Los Alamos.  Gary wanted a picture of that. 

 

I’d had him take his own picture of it, but he kinda needed to focus on driving since beyond this shorty of a railing is a sheer drop off of I-don’t-even-want-to-know.  We were pretty high up. The Corolla was not the best car for these roads.  Little, yes, but not very mighty.

 

These are scenes within Bandelier National Monument.  We are up high here, looking down onto the bottom of the canyon where we are about to go see Pueblo stuff. 

And now we are down.  But actually I am kinda up high.

For perspective, see the little people right here on the ground?

 

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This is the second climb where I was sorta noticing the less- oxygen- air.

These are the cliff dwellings used by the ancestral Pueblos and we actually went inside.  Shockingly cool inside and room for fires and everything. 

  

New Mexico=No bugs, no sweat, no humidity.  So Southern Illinois opposite.  I was loving it.  But you do really have to carry water around with you.

We didn’t stay long in Bandelier since we had more great things to do.  We saw mule deer along the road.  We noticed that they didn’t seem to mind the Los Alamos National Lab signs along this fence that said

KEEP OUT  --   EXPLOSIVES.    

Brave deer.

Here’s some snow on our drive as we travelled on towards Jemez Springs. I think this is at about 10,000 feet.  Or at least somewhere I read we were at that elevation.  There are some peaks at 12,000+.

We planned to go there but suddenly seemed to just happen upon the Valles Caldera before we expected it.  It’s this collapsed crater of a long, long ago volcano that now looks like an immense grassy meadow area.   It was so out of place for the mountainous and/or forested terrain we had been driving through.  I wish I had snapped a shot with a barn in it so you could judge the expanse of ground this covers.   It is a 15 mile diameter. 

Here are elk we spotted within the crater valley, just below the tree line.  No antlers yet.  Gary looked with his binos.  Maybe that’s why our suitcases were close to the 50 pound limit.  We brought a bunch of stuff.

As we drove on, Gary spotted this site with this weird cattle like chute and the picturesque river and rocks.  He parked the car, and said “We are hiking in there.”  No discussion.  It was an order.  It turned out to be his favorite site of the whole trip.

 

We had to hike in briskly considering it was getting towards night and we didn’t know much about what we were getting into except for beautifulness.  We saw a family leaving as we started off and they looked at our shoes and said “I think you’ll be ok.”  They warned us there would be snow and ice.  We walked so fast, but carefully, too.  Luckily it was flat and pretty easy.

   

We crossed the river on a log to get to this point where the canyon kinda just closed in and the river really narrowed.

It took me a few minutes to work up the nerve to cross, but so glad I did since the view was so cool.  I originally was having a hard time with the idea of hiking all the way back with wet feet or worse yet, wet clothes.  No worries, though, after all.  Plus, Gary found me a stick so that made me feel much more stable.

We came upon a group of campers and there were to be waterfalls on further, but we ended our adventure here since it was going to take awhile to hike back out and it was going to get dark very soon.   

We now just wanted to get back to our nice homey place in Santa Fe, but we had to keep on driving in the mountains to get out.  After a certain length of time, you can get tired of winding and the inclines and declines.  Especially in the dark.  The drive through Jemez Springs would have been unbelievable, I could tell even in the dark.  The sheer and colorful mountain cliffs of the mesa walls were the backdrop for the little homes in the village alongside the road. I didn’t know it (since I was busy snoozing), but Gary had to drive another two hours to get us back to our place, even after getting out of the mountains and on to the highway.   We had really covered some ground that day, I guess.  Long way home.

Oh yeah, can’t forget this.  We were really super tired and it was getting late and wouldn’t you know, once we finally got to our place, we were locked out.  Both of our key cards were demagnetized.  Lesson learned:  Don’t keep your hotel key near your cell phone.  Gary had to call someone who lived about 20 minutes away to come meet us to get us new keys that worked.  No supper even that night since we were so wiped out, but we did crack open the Breyer’s for a quick bowl each before our eyes fell shut.

Part 3—the final part is coming.