Here are some pics I took of Angel Peak about two years ago. I just now uploaded them to Flickr. Angel Peak is a rock formation in the middle of some beautiful badlands in the Southeast area of San Juan County, New Mexico. Because of the lay of the land, it's visible for about a hundred miles in every direction, making it quite the landmark.
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I went for a solo hike today out in the Hood Mesa area, north and east of Farmington. Strix and I had been here before geocaching, but didn't go very far into the trail itself.
Today, I kept on and walked a very long distance. Still, the trail beat me. I took two bottles of water, and after finishing off the first one I kept going as long as I could stand it before opening the second. When I opened the second bottle of water, I turned back, and still had to down another bottle when I got back to the truck. I don't know exactly how far I hiked, but I'm guessing about ten miles, total. My arms are sunburned, and I have blisters on my feet. All in all, it was a good hike.
The ubiquitous oil well, spotting the landcape on almost any hike in this part of New Mexico. New Mexico: Keeping America running by destroying our own scenery!
I'd love to live in this house. The mountain peak to the left of the house is Angel Peak.
The mountains of Colorado in the distance.
A typical view here in the high desert. You know why I brought water now, don't you?
This plant is called Mormon Tea, and was brewed by the Native Americans and early white settlers for it's stimulant effect. It contains natural ephedra.
An enormous rabbit hole. I know it was a rabbit hole because I just saw the enormous bugger go jumping off into the Juniper trees. He was too fast for me to take a picture, so I took one of his home, instead.
Hide the well in the little green shed. I can still hear it.
This is how my tongue felt by the end of this walk.
Iron mosquitos
Will suck the Earth dry until
The last drop is gone.
A bit of petrified wood.
A sign I saw on the path, warning people not to disturb any Native American artifacts they may come across. This trail was on BLM land.
Yet more petrified wood. I wonder would could have scared all those trees so badly.
This little guy was jealous because I had a spiffin' hat, and he didn't.
Looks like part of a grinding stone. It was smaller than any I had ever seen before, so maybe it's not, but it's shaped like one.
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Here are some old photos of Chaco Canyon I just now got around to uploading to Flickr.
Originally posted on my old blog on February 24th, 2006:
We went back to the White Sands National Monument to take the Sunset Stroll, a ranger-guided tour that didn't start until about an hour before sunset. Before the tour started, we got some more shots of the dunes.
A sand pedestal.
Picnic benches in a sea of white sand.
Shadows on the sand.
Sunset itself was somewhat ruined by the clouds. But I liked the way the sun looked behind the clouds here.
Mountains to the north at sunset.
The clouds finally cleared a little after the sun had gone down, making the mountains look like their on fire. [Edit: I had the pic on the right blown up to poster size and framed it as a Christmas present to my grandmother.]
]]>Yesterday: Blue Mesa
This continues the documentation of our recent trip to the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona.
This is a pull-off north of the Blue Mesa area in the park called Tepees. There are no actual tepees here, but I guess someone thought that the badland formations here looked like tepees. They are somewhat pyramid-like. This is also a virtual geocache, so I took a pic of Strix standing in the foreground holding our GPS to prove we were there.
Our next stop was Puerco Pueblo, which is a small ruins area in the park. No, I don't know why it's called Pig Village, though there is a Rio Puerco that runs through New Mexico and joins into the Colorado River, which of course runs through Arizona. But then the question is why is the river called Pig River? There are some questions we are not meant to answer.
The ruins site is not much to see after you've been to Chaco Canyon, but it's still interesting.
Petroglyphs found at the Puerco Pueblo site.
This is a detail of one of the pics above. This has to be the most humorous petroglyph I've ever seen. Strix calls this one, "I said put me down!" Did the "artist" mean for it to be funny? Was it a horror story about a thirty-foot tall bird that ate humans? Is, in fact, this an attempt at perspective, and the man is actually supposed to be in the background? We'll never know.
Tomorrow: Route 66 Monument
]]>Yesterday: Crystal Forest
This continues the documentation of our recent trip to the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona.
Probably the most beautiful area of the park that we saw was the Blue Mesa area, which is a looped drive that you have to leave the main road for, and has a couple of trails in it. Of course, all this beautiful scenary around us, and I decided to take a picture of my shadow first.
Much cooler than my shadow, admittedly.
In this area, erosion has created badland-like features, but at the same time it has uncovered large pieces of petrified wood. The petrified wood is harder than the sedimentary rock beneath it, so it remains even as the mountain is washed away beneath it. Eventually, this petrified logs will roll down the side of the formations and crash into pieces at the bottom.
Just in case you were thinking of taking a step off a five hundred foot drop.
There are signs in the area commanding visitors not to feed the wildlife, but it I think it's clear that someone has been feeding these birds. Two ravens adopted us and followed us from pull-off to pull-off, showing very little fear of humans. Of course, they looked about thirty pounds and had little cause to fear anything. Or maybe they just liked the PT Cruiser.
I ignored the warning sign and walked out onto a sheer ledge to take these shots, much to Strix's dismay, but I got some great pics. If I had fallen to my death, the camera may still have been salvagable, so it would have been worth it.
Strix getting up close and personal to get a picture of one of the ravens. She's about two feet from it here.
Tomorrow: Tepees and Puerco Pueblo
]]>Originally posted on my old blog on February 23rd, 2006:
We started the day at White Sands National Monument, south of Alamogordo. If you're not familiar this White Sands, its the world's largest gypsum dune field, encompassing 275 miles of land, some of which extends into the White Sands Missile Testing grounds.
The edge of the dunes.
Images from one of the trails. It looks just like snow, and this morning it felt like it could have been. It was just a little over freezing, not that there was any moisture to freeze.
The sand is very fine and captures perfect tracks of whatever walks through it. These appear to be the tracks of a kangaroo rat.
These tracks look like they were also made by a hopping animal of some sort, but I couldn't tell you what. No thumbnail of this one, since a smaller version of it would just look white.
These are bird tracks, which were all over the place. In a few places, the prints were much larger and there was a lot more space between them. Those prints I imagine to be from a roadrunner.
A number of plants grow in the dunes. Some of the larger ones, like this one, have extensive root systems that anchor the sand. The dunes move slowly over time, being shifted by the wind, but when a plant's root system anchor the sand a pillar is left behind.
Certain trees could also live in the dunes. In the interdunal areas, the water table is only 18 inches below the surface, but on the top of the dunes, like here, the trees have to extend their roots as far as 25 feet to find water. [Edit: I since had this photo blown up to poster size, had it framed, and gave it as a gift to my brother at Christmas. It's probably my favorite from this trip.]
Here and there, you can find dunes that are sprinkled with small particles that are actually crumbled particles of fossilized plant root systems. In some cases, the particles are actual fossils, which no longer have any wood fiber in them. In other cases, the fossilization process is incomplete and the particles still have wood fibers in them. The center of this shot shows a larger piece of a root that is still being fossilized by exposure to the sand. Some of the smaller particles around it are fully fossilized.
It was still early in the day, but one of our goals for the day was to go to Mexico, so we left the park with the idea that we would return the next day for the Sunset Stroll, which is a ranger-guided tour.
]]>Yesterday: Agate House
This continues the documentation of our recent trip to the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona.
Crystal Forest is another trail area in the PFNP, strewn with pieces of petrified trees.
This sign describes what scientists think this area looked like during the Triassic period. It was a hell of a lot wetter, and when the forests that were here were submerged in silty water, they were infused with the crystaline silicates that resulted in them becoming petrified.
Strix thought the shadow side of this formation looked like the outline of a camel, so it was thus named.
Tomorrow: Blue Mesa
]]>Yesterday: Rainbow Forest and Museum
This continues the documentation of our recent trip to the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona.
If you park at the Rainbow Forest Museum and walk across the small bridge to the north, you come to the trailhead for the Agate House. This trail connects with the Long Logs Trail, too, but we didn't have time to take that one, and opted to see the Agate House, which is a Native American archaeological site similar in construction to structures built by the Anasazi elsewhere in the Four Corners area, but made entirely out of petrified wood.
This trail is fully paved, making it an easy hike.
The Agate House. While similar, the construction is different than you see in Anasazi ruins, particularly in that you don't see the layers of varied stone size, and there's a lot more mortar involved here. Difference in materials is probably to blame. The stone used at other sites is softer and easier to chip into different sizes, whereas the petrified wood is pretty hard stuff.
Just some whitish deposites I saw on the way back to the main road. This whole area is all very interesting geologically.
Tomorrow: Crystal Forest
]]>Originally posted on my old blog on February 22nd, 2006:
After lunch, we went west on highway 380, then south on 54 to Three Rivers, and from there to the Three Rivers Petroglyph Site. This is short mountain which has over 21,000 glyphs drawn on what seems like every sizeable rock all the way up the to the peak. These glyphs were drawn by the Jornada Mogollon over 600 years ago.
Three Rivers Petroglyph Site
No glyphs here, but I liked the way this outcropping looked. The rocks here are so black that they shine, which is probably why the site was chosen by the Mogollon for their canvas.
There are steps for the first half of the trail, with the steps at the bottom of the hike being much wider than near the halfway point where teh steps disappear entirely. I don't know who laid these stones - whether they were arranged like this by the Mogollon or by explorers later on.
The rocks in the foreground have have the first glyphs that we saw on the hike. In the background, you can see the parking area where we started.
Some of the petroglyphs at Three Rivers look very much like other New Mexico petroglyphs, but some of the Three Rivers glyphs are surprising. The depiction of human faces are among those that look suprisingly modern.
The symbol in the second and third shots is one that is seen at a number of petroglyph sites. According to the guide pamphlet at the Three Rivers site says that in Mesoamerica, the symbol is associated with Quetzalcoatl, but that other researchers suggest that the dots represent corn or a population count. I doubt that the symbol represents a particular deity, since it is found in the glyphs of a number of different Native American cultures, but I believe it probably does have a religious significance. If it was a population or harvest count, I'm not sure why the Mogollon would have painted it on a rock halfway up a mountain.
