Cimarron Canyon State Park (Sunday)

Today we are moving on, we are finished with the Santa Fe area and are heading toward Taos.  There, we want to check out the Angel Fire forest for possible future quad riding.  We did a little housecleaning this morning, and Joe arranged with the forest ranger to open up the dump station for us.  We had a little hiccup there, I tried to turn on our water pump and it wouldn't come on.  Joe started the generator, which meant that our batteries were not dead, so that was good news.  He found a breaker had been tripped, so he got that reset and we were good to go.  We fueled just out of town for $3.219 today, and saw the station where we had fueled the car yesterday had raised their price 5 cents, so we went into the one up the road that we had seen yesterday.  After we left Hwy 285/84, we split off onto Hwy 68 toward Taos.  We followed the Rio Grande river for most of this drive, and saw some rafters drift by.  When we pulled off at a scenic stop later, we could see one of their entrance areas.

They called this area the Rio Grande Gorge, and further north we could see where the river had cut a pretty significant gorge through the landscape.

We hit Taos about 1:00 on Sunday afternoon.  There was quite a bit of traffic, and no place to pull over so we went on through.  It wasn't quite what we expected.  We thought it would be higher in the mountains, with resorts and mountain chalets.  It did have an interesting downtown area that we hope to go back to tomorrow.

We had a recommendation from a co-camper here in Santa Fe to go to Cimarron State Park, which is over by Eagle Nest northeast of Taos, and that was our original plan, but I checked my Passport directory (where we get campgrounds at half price) and found one northwest of Taos that sounded like a possibility.  It had full hook-ups and a laundry, and it is getting time to do that so we picked up 522 in Taos and headed that way.  There is a loop that goes north of  Taos called the Enchanted Circle, and this town (Questa) was on the loop, as well as Eagle Nest, so we headed northwest.I called the RV park and they said they were open but at church right then.  We told them it would be an hour or so before we got there.  When we got there, although it was right on the bank of the Red River, it was not much of a park.  We couldn't raise anyone, and as we drove around, the laundry and showers were all locked up for the season, so we just headed out of there and drove on around that part of the Enchanted Circle to Eagle Nest, and then on to Cimarron State Park. The laundry will have to wait for another day.  From Questa to Eagle Nest, we took Hwy 38.  And we were really glad we did.  The part of the drive after we left Questa was a lot more scenic because we were at a higher elevation.  I went to the kitchen to fix lunch while Joe continued driving, and just after I took our plates up front, we came upon 3 mountain sheep just after we went through the little town of Red River.  So here I am, juggling plates, Joe is trying to get stopped, I'm trying to grab the camera, and all the while hoping these sheep won't run off.  Fortunately for us, they didn't.

This was a really pretty drive, with snow-capped mountains, pine trees, and open valleys.  We came past a small herd of about 10 elk in one valley, but they were too hidden to get a picture.

We drove through Eagle Nest and turned off onto Hwy 64 to Cimarron Canyon State Park.  Like Hyde, this park is not yet open but we called and were told we could still use the park.  There was one spot with electricity (probably for the host who wasn't there yet), and it had a sign that it was available, so we took that one.  The Cimarron River runs through the park and is very pretty, part of it a braided river where it splits into many different channels.

After we got set up, we walked over and just enjoyed the sound of the river running.

While I walked on down looking for any evidence of animal activity (we saw a lot of deer poop), Joe decided to rest on a log.  But it was a mistake, he found it was not very comfortable, and he even got a splinter.  He said he probably injured his ribs again.  But he's fine -- he was just being a wimp.

About 6:00 p.m., we took our Wildlife Viewing Drive through the rest of this state park and on into Cimarron.  The deer were out!  We saw 59 deer, some in herds of 10-12, others just 5 or 6.  None of these deer were very spooky, they just looked at us when we stopped the car.  Even the turkeys took their time getting on the move.

We also saw 3 wild turkeys

.  Actually, we saw 4 but we thought one of them was the same one we had seen on the way to town.

There were sheer cliff walls along this drive too, called Palisade Sill.  They were beautiful, sheer cliffs, pretty awesome, with the sun hitting them just right.

We drove 138 miles in the RV today.  It was 41 again when I got up this morning, but as we headed into Taos and even further north, it was quite warm, in the 70s.  We are camped at an elevation of 8090, and it cooled off quickly when the sun went down.  It was a beautiful day, no wind that bothered us driving, and we saw some pretty scenery and lots of wildlife.  Who could ask for more!

Los Alamos - Saturday

I've noticed that the computer is putting a date on my posts when I post them.  Usually, that is not the same day as our Adventure, so I will try to start putting the day in the title.

Since we felt like we had seen most of Santa Fe when we came in on the train, we decided to take a scenic drive today.  Joe found a loop drive heading northwest that would take us through Los Alamos, so after a stop at McDonalds to post yesterday's blog, we headed out.  Our next stop was for fuel for the car at Camel Rock gas station, where we paid $3.29.  Just up the road we saw it for $3.219 so we will fuel the RV there tomorrow when we head to Taos.

.

We took Hwy 285 out of town, then turn off on 502 to Los Alamos, crossing the Rio Grande River again.

Neither of us knew much of the history of Los Alamos, so it was just a fluke that we took that route.  But it was very interesting.  They have a walking tour that takes you past most of the historic buildings from when the Manhattan Project was underway here.  I didn't even know what the Manhattan Project was -- but it was the making of the atomic bombs that ended World War II.  We stopped at the Visitors Center, and after we drove/walked the walking tour, we spent an hour or so at the Scientific Museum. We started the walking tour at Ashley Pond.  This area was originally a Ranch School for sickly boys but was taken over by the government to establish a location for the secret building of the atomic bombs.  Scientists from around the world game to Los Alamos to make this happen.

It wouldn't be New Mexico without some art work, and some beautiful sculptures surrounded Ashley Pond.

The walking tour included Bathtub Row which housed the scientists, so named because those residences were for the original faculty of the Ranch School and had the only bathtubs in town.  There were also the remains of a ancestral pueblo dwelling (roughly 1225 CE), and a fire house where the man-powered fire pump truck was stored.

The museum was wonderful.  It had two films showing, one about the history of making the bomb and the current mission to maintain our country's aging weapons without nuclear testing, and the other about the community itself from 1942-1945.  On display were the two bombs, the Fat Man, which was named after Winston Churchill, and dropped on Nagasaki, and the Little Boy, which was dropped on Hiroshima.

We finally decided it was time to move on, so we got a bite to eat and headed out.  We backtracked to pick up a little side road, Hwy. 4, and followed it on for several miles, through the Bandelier National Monument (we drove through the campground there), and the Jemez State Monument.  On this drive we finally spotted some wildlife -- 2 deer.  A welcome sight! 

This drive took us through the Valley Caldera National Preserve, a beautiful valley where elk roam.  We lucked out and saw a herd of about a hundred (quite a distance away), then we drove back into the preserve as far as we could.  We saw another herd of about 20, and a couple more off by themselves.  The Jemez River runs through this preserve, and we followed that river for miles.  There was a lot of fishing on it, even though it looked like little more than a stream in some places.

Prarie dogs are also plentiful in this preserve.  I saw a couple when we first stopped, and one of their holes.  Then as we were driving out, we came upon their prairie dog farm, must have seen 20 there popping up and down out of their holes.

When we came out of the preserve, Joe spotted a forest road a few hundred feet back, so we decided to see if we could see any more elk in there, because the lady at the preserve said they usually cross over from that side about dusk (we were a couple hours early).  We drove back in there about 5 miles, then turned around and took another side road that took us back to the highway.  This whole area had been destroyed by a tremendous fire back in May 2000, the 48,000 acre Cerro Grande wildfire.  There was a monument commemorating the fire and community re-building in Los Alamos, but we never found it.  Whether that was the same fire that destroyed this forest we don't know, but the damage was sure evident.  They were logging in some areas, quite a large operation.

As we were driving out of a parking lot, I asked Joe why our car squeaked so much.  He said, "well, it's elderly." 

We didn't see any wildlife on this forest road, but just after we turned back on the highway, Joe spotted two elk back in the trees.  We continued our drive, which took us through many Native American communities (speed limits 25, 30, 35).  It took us a long time.  A guy driving an oncoming car held up 2 fingers as we passed each other, so we spent the next 20 miles looking for 2 animals of any kind.  We never saw anything though.  Along this route, though, were beautiful mountain cliffs which were mauve and pink, then the terrain changed to the red of Sedona.   We finally connected with Hwy 550 that took us back too I-25, about 40 miles south of Santa Fe.  In fact, we were just north of Albuquerque and we could see the Sandia Casino where we had stayed in Albuquerque.  We got back into Santa Fe about 7:30 and had dinner, then headed back to camp in the dark.  It was a long day, but an Excellent Adventure.  We probably drove between 150 and 200 miles in the car. The town of Los Alamos and the elk in the wildlife preserve were the highlights.
 

Balloon Museum and Turquoise Trail (Friday)

This morning we went over to the International Balloon Museum and checked it out, since I am a veteran hot air balloon rider.  It was a really nice building, and there were a couple classes of school children on a field trip.  I'm guessing they were first or second graders.  We listened to the museum guide talk to the kids for a little while, then wandered on by ourselves.

 
There was a lot of information about the history of ballooning, and several baskets and gondolas on display. 

This next picture is the camera they used on the bottom of the basket.

 

We would love to come back here in October for the International Balloon Festival.  The park itself is very nice, very large.





We finished up there and headed back to the RV to get hooked up and hit the road by 11:30.  The wind from yesterday was absent, thankfully, and it was a balmy 64 degrees.  We noticed the price of gas had gone up 7 cents since we filled up on Wednesday.  That is not a good thing.

We drove back around the southeastern edge of Albuquerque to hook up with the Scenic Byway Highway 14, also known as the Turquoise Trail because of all the mining towns that sprung up through here.  This is actually on the backside of the Sandia Peak where we went on the tram ride on Wednesday.  Just as we got out of Albuquerque, we came upon an old guy with a team of mules and a wagon with "Jesus Saves" on the side, parked just alongside the highway.  Didn't get a picture, because we weren't expecting that right along the road.  But that was probably the most scenic sight on this drive.  We went through several small towns with shops selling jewelry, art, antiques, etc., but none had any parking so we just kept on driving.  We found a lookout pull-off and had lunch in the RV, then headed on into Santa Fe.  We are camped just north of Santa Fe at the Hyde Memorial State Park, elevation 8700, temperature in the 50s. We were off the road and hooked up by 3:00 p.m., which was a good thing because there were only 7 spots with electricity, and I think we took the 4th spot.  The other three filled up in the next hour.  We have no phone signal here, and no signal for the computer, so I'll have to post the next few blogs when we hit a McDonalds.

 The road by this campground goes on up to the Santa Fe Ski Resort.  So after we visited with the neighbors a little, we decided to go for a ride.  Didn't see any wildlife, but did see some pretty scenery.  When we were in Santa Fe, we could see some snow-capped mountains.  This drive took us up there to the snow.



We found a Brenda rock.  But we are not collecting rocks for Brenda this year, so she will have to come get this one herself.



There are lots of aspen forests on this mountain.  It would be great to come back in the fall and see these trees when their leaves had turned golden.  They are not leafed out yet this spring so they aren't very pretty right now, but will be soon.



We reached an elevation of 10013, and came upon the ski lodge.  We could see some of the ski runs and they were still snow-covered, but we didn't see any skiers.

We are going to stay here for a couple of days, do some drives in the mountains, then head on to Taos and Angel Fire.  Our neighbor here in the campground is from Angel Fire, so he gave us some good information about where to camp and things to see.  We are on the move now, but slowly, very slowly.