Destination Unknown

Angel Peak

nobody@vox.com(Paxton) — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 14:02:15 -0600

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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Tepees and Puerco Pueblo

nobody@vox.com(Paxton) — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 20:46:36 -0600

Yesterday: Blue Mesa

This continues the documentation of our recent trip to the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona.

Geo-Tepees

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.

Puerco Sign

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.

Puerco Petroglyphs 3 detail

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

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Restaurant Review: Don Félix

nobody@vox.com(Paxton) — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 20:17:13 -0600

Originally posted on my old blog on February 23rd, 2006:

We ended up driving into La Mesilla, an old, historic village adjacent to Las Cruces. La Mesilla is beautiful, and well worth the visit all of itself. We ended up eating at a small café called Don Félix out on the patio. I had heuvos rancheros, and Stina had chile relleno. Both of us were very pleased with the meal, and the service was good.

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White Sands National Monument

nobody@vox.com(Paxton) — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 20:21:50 -0600

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.

WS Tracks

The sand is very fine and captures perfect tracks of whatever walks through it. These appear to be the tracks of a kangaroo rat.

WS Tracks 2

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.

WS Tracks 3

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.

WS Life Trail 4

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.

WS Life Trail 5

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.]

WS Life Trail 6

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.

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Crystal Forest

nobody@vox.com(Paxton) — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 11:49:53 -0600

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.

Crystal Forest

Triassic Display

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.

Camel Rock

Strix thought the shadow side of this formation looked like the outline of a camel, so it was thus named.

Tomorrow: Blue Mesa

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Restaurant Review: Margo's

nobody@vox.com(Paxton) — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 10:49:03 -0600

Originally posted on my old blog on February 23rd, 2006:

The sun was setting as we left the Petroglyphs, and we went back to Alamogordo. After some searching for a place to eat that wasn't a chain, we settled on a restaurant called Margo's. It was, you guessed it, New Mexican cuisine. I was at the point that I couldn't eat another tortilla, so I had the Fiesta Chicken, which was delicious, and Stina had a guacamole salad and quesadillas. The dining room was crowded, with too many tables crammed into too small a space, but the service was good and so was the food.

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Agate House

nobody@vox.com(Paxton) — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 00:28:02 -0600

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.

Agate House Trailhead

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.

Silicate Deposits

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

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Holbrook's Petroglyph Park

nobody@vox.com(Paxton) — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 21:14:28 -0600

Yesterday: Geocaching at the Rock Pile

This continues the documentation of our recent trip to the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona.

We used a quarter of a tank of gas looking for the road to get us to the next geocache, and were just about to give up when I saw a road next to the Interstate offramp and took it. We knew we were looking for the road that would take us to the city golf course, and this wasn't the right road either, but when we got to the top of the hill we saw a sign on the Interestate telling us that to get to the golf course we had to take a certain exit from the Interstate. Then it was a matter of getting back on the Interstate and taking that exit.

The exit takes you quit a way out of the city of Holbrook, but the property here is owned by the city. It's a very winding road around the base of bluff, and then to get the petroglyph park you have to pass the golf course itself.

Holbrook Petroglyph Park

The geocache site is somewhere in the area circled in red in the northwest quadrant of this Google Earth screenshot.

Anyway, the roads are rough and poorly maintained, and you feel like you've gone too far just about the time you actually reach the "park."

Smooth Runnings

This doesn't look much like a road to a city park, does it?

Warning Sign

A small and easy-to-miss warning sign near the entrance to the park. It says:

ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK.
STAY ON THE PATH.
DO NOT TOUCH THE
PETROGLYPH'S [sic].
WATCH YOUR STEP.
THE PATH MAY HAVE
SOME LOOSE ROCKS.
PLEASE BE CAREFUL.

After the rest of the warning, is "please be careful" really necessary?

Yes, that is a large petrified wood stump next to the sign.

High Security

The area is also rangeland, so it was gated with a little wire twist being the only thing keeping the gate closed. The sign on the gate just said to close the gate after you, so we figured it was okay to enter.

We found the cache pretty quickly, and then just explored a little and took pictures of the glyphs, which were pretty impressive.

From a Lofty Height

There are quite a few petroglyphs at ground level here, but there are some very clear and interesting ones much higher up the crumbling bluff. Strix wasn't quite adventurous enough to accompany me, but I climbed the steep rocks to get a closer look. This shot is of Strix waiting for me below.

Some of the petroglyphs I was able to shoot from my higher vantage point.

Strix took these shots. The one on the right shows me at the top of the climb.

The left is another shot of Strix from where I was. The right is a shot out to the horizon. The itty bitty blue dot in the center is Strix's PT Cruiser.

Must Be Why There Was a Warning

These rocks are as hard to climb as they look like they would be, which I'm guessing is why there was a warning sign advising me not to do so. Don't try this at home. The only part of the warning sign I followed was to not touch the petroglyphs (which of course, you should never do).

Delux Accomodations

A wooden plank thrown across a dry arroyo. This is state-of-the-art park engineering. Of course, the purpose of the park is probably more to preserve the petroglyphs than to provide a nice place for people to hang out.

I just took these because I found the landscape interesting. It amazes me to think that people actually lived here.

Oasis

Here's a picnic area, in case you forgot that this is a park. Oh, you'll have to machete your way through the tumbleweeds to get to it, but I'm sure it's worth it.

Bird Sign

Where the early bird apparently hangs out later in the day.

Patiently Waiting

And at the end of the adventure, Strix's Cruiser waits patiently for us, like a faithful steed prepared to carry us away.

Tomorrow: Rainbow Forest Museum and Rainbow Forest

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Boque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge

nobody@vox.com(Paxton) — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 22:09:31 -0600

Originally posted on my old blog on February 21st, 2006:

After stopping at Acomilla, we continued on down I-25, then turned left on highway 380. As soon as we turned onto 380 and entered San Antonio, New Mexico, we saw the sign for the Boque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge. We weren't planning on going there, but this was meant to be one of those vacations where you just check out everything taht interests you on the way, so we went on in.

It turns out that it is primarily a bird sanctuary, though they have other kinds of life, too. Here are some pictures from the NWR. Click on an image to enlarge it.

Crane Sculpture

One of several bird sculptures to be found outside the visitor's center as you enter the NWR.

Signpost

A set of signposts pointing to different parts of the refuge.

Cactus

A cactus outside the vistor's center. My hand is in the picture to show scale for the length of the stickers. Even though I was careful, I still came away with a small sticker in my finger. As defense mechanisms go, I think the cactus has hit on a fairly successful one.

Scorpion

A scorpion sculpture. Incidentally, the tree behind the sculpture was buzzing loudly. We couldn't see the hive, but apparently it was the home to several hundred bees. The NWR has a beekeeper on staff who actually collects honey from the hive and sells it in the gift shop.

Eagle

As soon as we entered the park proper, we saw this guy sitting in his tree in the middle of the marsh. I had my camera on its full optical zoom, and this was still as close in as I could get. I was afraid that, one, the camera would be too shakey for a clear shot and, two, that the eagle would be too small to see clearly. Click on the image to see the full-size version, but I think it came out well. I entitled it "Eagle," but knowing next to nothing about birds, I couldn't tell you if that's really what it is, or if it is some kind of hawk. Since the picture was taken on President's Day, however, I am willing to make the leap and call it an eagle.

Jersie and Eagle

We picked up a travelbug at the geocache in Bloomfield the day before. Travelbugs sometimes want to visit certain places or get their pictures taken with certain things. This one wanted "to have its picture taken with unusual animals." So, here's Stina holding the travelbug, Jersie, with the eagle in the background.

Hey, it's a bird sanctuary, so here are some birds:

Jersie and Cranes

Jersie again getting his picture taken with unusual animals, this time cranes.

All in all, the sidetrip into the National Wildlife Refuge was worthwhile. Apparently, if we had come a week earlier, we would have seen thousands and thousands of cranes, but they had mostly all left for the migration north. I did, however, stop in the gift shop and buy a walking stick which turned to be helpful on my hike the next day.

We returned to Highway 380 and continued east. Not too far east of 380 is an historical marker for the Trinity Site, which is where the world's first nuclear weapon was tested. The site itself is actually somewhat south of the highway, and its only open to the public one day out of the year. I know that the atomic bomb detonated at Trinity was extremely weak compared to what is being put into ICBMs today, and that there probably isn't much in the way of residual radiation, but I still don't think I have any desire to visit the actual site.

Trinity

Further east on 380, we stopped at the Valley of Fires National Recreation Area. This is the site of an ancient lavaflow, where lava seeped up through vents and covered the valley. There seems to be different opinions on when this occurred, but all agree it was sometime in the last few thousand years, when humans were already living in the area. That, of course, would explain why the natives called it Valley of Fires. I can only imagine how amazing it must have seemed to the inhabitants here 1,500, 3,000, or 5,000 years ago (depending on which geological estimate you want to believe). Here are a number of pictures we took at the Valley of Fires. Unfortunately, the pictures don't really do it justice. It was an immense valley filled with black, volcanic rock. I'm not sure there's anywhere else in the continental U.S. that you could see that.

Valley of Fires East

A view from the highest point in the recreation area. Most of the lavabed was to the west of us, but this is a view east. More lava is visible, but beyond that is a nice view of the moutains.

Stina at Valley of Fires

Stina watching the sunset at the lookout point at Valley of Fires.

Daryl at Valley of Fires

A picture Stina took of me climbing back down from the lookout point. See my spiffin' new walking stick?

Stina at Valley of Fires 2

Another picture of Stina at Valley of Fires.

The winding nature trail at Valley of Fires. The railing is, presumably, to keep visitors from falling onto the lava rock, which is quite sharp. Unfortunately, we got the park near sunset and didn't have time to take the trail. To get the first picture, I had to climb over the railing and stand on the ledge, which made Stina cringe, but what can I say? I'm a thrill-seeker.

VoF Cactus

Just a cactus at the Valley of Fires that had some interesting coloring. Its reddish hues were brought out even more by the sunset.

VoF Lookout

The lower lookout at the Recreational Area. Nothing special about it, but I thought it looked neat in the sunset.

VoF Contrast in Trees

I like this shot, which I call "Contrast in Trees." I know as much about botony as I do about ornithology, which is to say not very much, but the tree on the right looks like my idea of a tree, what we had back in Missouri where I grew up. The one on the left is one indigenous to the Southwest. I'm not sure if it is even officially classified as a tree, but they grow large enough to be called a tree in my book. Still, it looks like something from another planet. As much as anything, I like the colors in this pic.

After the sun set, we left the Valley of Fires and continued East on 380 then south of 54 to Alamogordo, where we checked into those most luxurious of hotels, the Super 8. This one actually isn't too bad, and even has free DSL which allows me to post my blog. After we checked in, we went to dinner.

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