Las Conchas Fire

Photo courtesy Wikipedia

We've been keeping an eye on the Las Conchas Fire, in Northern
New Mexico. Just over ten years ago we worked at Rocky Flats
Environmental Technology Site near Golden, Colorado. The
company we worked for had jobs at the Los Alamos National
Laboratory doing similar work to what we were doing at Rocky
Flats. We love the area and had been nearby many times. We
hadn't been to Los Alamos before though so we checked it out.
Earlier that year, Los Alamos had suffered from the devastating
Cerro Grande fire which burned 48,000 acres, including 400
homes. We witnessed the horrible aftermath as we drove around
the area. We decided not to pursue the jobs at LANL, which
would have deemed a move to the small town of Los Alamos
a necessity. We eventually left Rocky Flats and began to work
in Antarctica. However, if we had pursued those jobs, we might
be living in Los Alamos today. As of this evening, the fire is
90,000 acres and the entire town has been evacuated. It's a
very sad time for the local residents as the fire is still only 3%
contained. Please keep the residents of the area in your thoughts
and prayers.

Tierra Wools

In north central New Mexico, lies the small hamlet of Los Ojos.
It's sheep-raising country and home to Tierra Wools. It's been
about five years since we've been by here, but it's a favorite place
of Lynn's. Lots of natural yarns, weaving, spinning, etc. All done
by local artisans and students. They offer a number of Fiber Arts
classes here and Lynn would like to take someday. It's a pleasant
little area and so far out of the way, it's very quiet.

Some of Our Favorites

We're trying to budget a bit and Santa Fe is not the most inexpensive
place in the world. However, you can eat reasonably and luckily, three
of our favorite restaurants in town are just that. Good food at inexpensive
prices. Baja Taco is not much more than a fast food place. But I'm guessing
that most fast food places wish they were this good. We've been here before
for their awesome breakfast burritos, but we stopped by in the evening this
time and Lynn had beef taquitos, which were very good and I had a carne
adovado burrito. This is roasted pork in a very hot red chile sauce. Pretty
darn delicious. it's located on Cerrillos Road so it's not exactly in a quiet
and picturesque location, but it's easy to get in and out of, and you definitely
want to do this at least once during your visit to Santa Fe.


The next day, we visited Tia Sophias. It's located near the plaza and can
get its fair share of tourists, but locals flock here as well and have for
years made it one of their favorite spots. It's more famous for its
breakfasts, but we enjoy lunch there and each meal is accompanied by
their tasty Sopapillas, which with honey, make a good appetizer or
dessert. We had combo-type meals since we wanted to sample a
little of everything. We weren't disappointed. I just love the feeling of
this place. It's not overly kitschy and not only are the waitstaff friendly,
they treat you like a local.


Before heading out of town this morning, we stopped at one of my
favorite breakfast places in the world...Tecolote Cafe. Tecolote means
"Owl" in Spanish. It also isn't a super fancy place, but it has just plain
good New Mexican food. New Mexican cuisine is different than Tex-Mex
or even Californian Mexican food. It's really chile-based. In fact, the
official state question of New Mexico is "Red or Green?", meaning, do you
want red chile or green chile with your meal. Much of the time, I prefer
Green Chile, but today, I chose Red as I was having my favorite Carne
Adovado Burrito. Much different than Baja Taco's, this version is
smothered in Red Chile. It was painful. Painful Good! Very hot, but
really tasty. One of my favorite meals and I ordered almost every time
we visit Tecolote. Lynn had a really good looking Spanish Omlette and
with each meal you are given a choice of a tortilla or a bakery basket,
with yummy biscuits and muffins. Lynn chose this, but I opted for the
tortilla since I wanted to soak up more of the delicious red chile.
There's a good local vibe here too as there is a local table set up
where older guys sit and drink their coffee. Tecolote was also
featured in the Food Network show "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives"
and there is a poster of host Guy Fieri on the wall. We started coming
here long before Guy visited, and we've tried several of the featured
restaurants around the country, and we haven't been disappointed
yet.

We lived in Santa Fe for three months in 2005 and got to feel like locals
for awhile. After our three month "test period", we decided not to live
here permanently. However, the great selection of restaurants and food
choices here almost tipped the scale in favor of moving here permanently.
If you plan on visiting Santa Fe, let me know and I can give you lots of
suggestions, both food and non-food related about the area. It's one
of our favorite places in the world.

Fire in Arizona

There is a huge fire happening right now in eastern Arizona. Thousands
of acres of forest are going up in flames. Strong southwesterly winds are
blowing a lot of the smoke toward places many miles away. This evening,
the wind came up and the sunset and sky took on a surreal look. Even
though Santa Fe is several hundred miles away from the fires, the sun
became very dark and the sky filled with smoke, sometimes burning the
eyes and making it hard to breathe. After sunset, the moon became very
red. It was just a really weird weather and climate scenario.

It's A Miracle!

After a nice visit at Nancy and Greg's, we set off on the rather monotonous
drive across southwest Oklahoma, north Texas and eastern New Mexico.
We're very happy with our Toyota Corrolla. It gets excellent gas mileage
too. Since we left on this trip, we've averaged about 35 miles per gallon.
There is a pretty neat little feature that tells you the "Range" of your fuel.
In other words, it lets you know how many miles you have left in your
tank before you're on empty...or in this case, On Walk! Driving west of
Tucumcari, New Mexico, we started to run low on gas and I nervously
watched the gauge as the mileage available got lower and lower. A few
minutes earlier, I had passed up one station, because it was too expensive.
I regretted that decision as I turned off the air conditioner and tried to
coast down hills on Interstate 40. The only signs I saw for gas noted that
it was 15 miles away. My "range" meter said I had 10 miles left. Uh oh.
But then...on the horizon, we came up to this station, named MILAGRO,
which is Spanish for Miracle. How appropriate! I looked at the "range"
meter and it said 6 miles. In other words, I would have run out of gas
in 6 miles. After we got into the car, I measured the distance to the
previously advertised station, and it would have taken us 9 miles to get
there. In other words, I would have been walking for 3 miles one way to
get a can of gas, and another 3 miles back to fill it up. I promised Lynn
that I wouldn't let it get that low again. Someone was definitely watching
out for us!

Farmington Public Library

Back in 2006, we almost moved to Farmington, New Mexico
just because of this library. We decided that although a good
library is a contributing factor on where to live, it shouldn't
be the only factor. As a result, we decided that
Grand Junction was a better option. However, we visit the
library in Farmington every time we're in the area and
even if the book selection was lousy (it isn't...Lynn says that it
has the best fiber arts collection she's seen), it would be worth
visiting just for the architecture. It was designed by Hidell &
Associates Architects in 2003 and takes into account the local
Navajo heritage by being built in the shape of a kiva. The building
is round and all sections spoke from the center, like a wheel.
It even has markings on the floor marking the summer and
winter solstices, when light will shine in from the ceiling at
these particular times. It's a fantastic library and the people
of Farmington are lucky to have it.

Leaving Chaco

A visit to Chaco could take many days to see everything, but
we had to leave, knowing we'll come back someday soon. We
stopped by the Visitor's Center before heading out and now
the old center has been replaced with a temporary yurt. Yurts
are pretty neat buildings but because this yurt is still fairly
small compared to the old Visitor's Center, none of the old
displays, detailing the history of the area were located here.


The old Visitor's Center has been condemned and is scheduled
for demolition. Apparently, it was built on soft clay and when
the remodeling crew went in to start, it was discovered that
the building was unstable. Lynn and I pondered that in a
place where buildings a thousand years old are the attraction,
modern man can't build a structure that will last more than
50 years!


Chaco is a Dark Sky site, meaning that there is very little
light pollution present and is a fantastic place to view the
night sky. As a result, the National Park Service has taken
advantage of that and has a wonderful sky watching
program and even has a great observatory in place. To our
surprise, there was a park volunteer named Bob Bohley that
was operating a telescope at the Visitor's Center this
morning. With a special filter on his telescope, he was
able to show us the Sun and several large flares erupting
off of it's surface. I've seen photos of this before, but never
live on a telescope. It was very interesting and Mr. Bohley
did an excellent job educating everyone that viewed this
sight.


Chaco is one of 20 locations in the United States and one of
890 locations in the world that have been listed as UNESCO
World Heritage Sites. This is an important designation as it
is a protection of Mankind's existence and culture. I think
that Chaco definitely is a good representation of this.

A Day of Exploring

Exploring the Great Houses such as Pueblo Bonito and Chetro
Ketl are always interesting and we could take a week exploring
all the different ruins here, but we were most interested in
visiting ruins that we hadn't visited before. This would involve
a bit of hiking, which we definitely up for. The first site we
checked out was Kin Kletso. At one time, it contained about
55 rooms, 4 kivas and 1 tower kiva. It was actually built by
McElmo phase people who came from the north, late in the
period in which Chaco was occupied.


Much like the other sites at Chaco, almost all of the wood had
to be brought in from miles and miles away. Kin Kletso's beams
were no different. Quite a task for a people who didn't know of
the wheel.


I enjoy seeing the different masonry and doorway styles in
each of the pueblos.


Along the trail, there were a number of petroglyphs. Chaco was
also a huge center of astronomy and we found a circular design
that might have been used to measure the seasons. The sun
would shine at different points of the circle on major astronomical
events of the year such as solstices and equinoxes.


Another small site we visited was Casa Chaquita. It's currently
unexcavated and was probably built around 1100. It was also
a good place to stop for lunch!


Because this area is very dry, there isn't a lot of wildlife in the area,
but we did see a fairly large number of lizards.


At the beginning of the day, we had bold ambitions. The boldest of
which was hiking the Pueblo Alto trail. This would mean hiking up
the cliff side (the difficult part) and then hiking across the top of the
cliff side to overlook Pueblo Bonito and visit the Pueblo Alto complex.
Wait...not so fast. When we got there, we looked at the climb...steep,
but not un-doable. It also included a VERY narrow section where one
has to squeeze through between several huge sections of rock.
We started up and found the trail to be very rough. It hardly qualified
as a trail at all. We took a quick vote and decided to save it for a time
in which the trail might be improved. Rest assured Mom...your youngest
child isn't a complete idiot!


As we were headed back to the car, we saw this couple scrambling
up the cliff side and decided we had made the right decision.


With our hiking for the day completed, we had the option of checking
out other pueblos, going back to the campsite to read (me) or knit
(Lynn). Instead, we decided to exit out the south end of the park
toward the Navajo town of Crownpoint. The sign warned that the
road would be rough. Ha! it wasn't lying, As rough as the road is
entering the park from Nageezi in the north, this road was much
more wash-boardy.


However, there were lots of beautiful views available.


I'm pretty sure we were never "quite" on this angle while driving the
road, but it certainly felt like it sometimes.


Along the way, we drove by a Navajo ranch that had a number of
jewelry items for sale "Self Serve". A few little signs near each piece
asked people not to steal them. It's interesting that people would
actually think of doing so.


We came to a sign that left us scratching our heads. Were we headed
to Heaven...or Hell?


I was interested in visiting Crownpoint. For one reason, it is one
of the few areas of the Navajo Nation that we haven't visited and
I also grew up near the town of Crown Point, in Indiana. The town's
name was definitely where the comparison ended however. it's not
a bad little town. Just very remote and much much smaller. We
stopped at Basha's (a southwestern-based grocery chain that has
locations in lots of the larger Navajo Nation towns such as
Kayenta, Ganado, Window Rock, etc.).


The southwest is known for it's dinosaur relics, but we didn't think
we'd see one on this trip! Maybe it's even the remnants of a dragon.
Albeit a happy one!


We did a bit of stargazing before bedtime. One of the reasons we came
during this time period is that we knew there would be a new moon and
this is one of the most remote areas in the Lower 48 to view stars.
There is very little light pollution. Unfortunately, there were also more
clouds that we would have liked and way more wind than we would have
liked. It made for a short sky-watching evening. Fortunately, we had a
nice fire and it made for a cozy evening.

Camping at Chaco

One of our favorite places to explore is Chaco Culture National
Historic Park, in northwest New Mexico. For those who might
not know, it was a residential, religious and astronomical center
of the Anasazi (Ancient Puebloan) people, a thousand years ago.
This is our third time we've visited, but there always seems to
be new things to discover, and this visit was no different. To
get to Chaco, you have to want to be going there.
It's not near any interstate highway, and a twenty mile rough dirt
road from one of two directions is the only way you can reach the
park. It's also a UNESCO World Heritage Center.


The only way you can stay overnight at Chaco is to camp. We
arrived at the Gallo Campground and found it not full, but a
bit busier than we expected. Obviously, other folks wanted to
share the experience of staying here in this remote land. We
found a great spot, adjacent to several ruins that were essentially
"suburban" houses to the "Great Houses" of the Chaco Canyon
itself.


Workers and their families lived here and you could almost feel
their presence.


Lynn pointed out to me this second ruin that was very easy to
miss. It even included a very small kiva. These kivas acted as
small religious centers. This one for one or two small families.
Larger ones in the Great Houses served as religious and community
centers for a much larger population.

Yum!

I made a special trip today to Vitamin Cottage (our local
health food/grocery/vitamin place to buy my favorite salsa.
505 Salsa. They have it at Safeway too, but I like the Mild
variety and they don't have it there. It's made in New Mexico,
hence the name, 505. 505 used to be the only area code
in New Mexico. It's funny that things I missed the most while
on the Ice seem to be food...and now I get to enjoy them!

It's Chile Season!

It's nearly autumn and with that comes chiles. Most
of them aren't grown commercially around here, but
we're close enough to New Mexico that we get more
than our fair share. At several places around town, you
can see them. At stands large and small, with barrell
shaped roasters turning slowly, you can smell them
all the way down the street. Today, Leslie brought
some Big Jim Chiles home from her friend's farm and
they look awesome! I'm looking forward to growing
some just like them next summer in our garden!