That good ol' mountain dew

As you might imagine, it's difficult to find the internet in Arkansas. In fact, it's difficult to find a gas station that will take a credit card. Apologies, then, for being remiss in updating.

After leaving Albuquerque, we headed north to Santa Fe -- a lovely, if very touristy, town. It made it to the list of possible places to move after this is all over with, mostly because of excellent food and incredible mountains (a feature we weren't really expecting in New Mexico, but the state turns out to be full of surprises). We headed to Taos and the Sangre de Christos mountains, north of Santa Fe after two days in the nation's highest capitol city. In Taos, we found a beautiful antique map of North America from 1877, which we picked up as a souvenier of the trip. We did some hiking up in the mountains (where the altitude really whipped us). It had already snowed up there, and at night was getting down to about 10-15 degrees -- we had to sleep huddled under our two sleeping bags and the down comforter, and were still freezing most of the night. We had to be in our tent by dark (around 5 pm), otherwise it got too cold to function. But it was cozy and wintry, and we upped our nightly sleep allotment to about 14 hours.

From there, we headed west to Chaco Canyon -- an area where one of the major civilizations of the southwest was rooted. There we visted Pueblo Bonito, the largest building in the U.S. before the advent of structural steel -- 600 rooms, 4 or 5 floors high, elaborate masonry -- and built between 850 and 1150 A.D. It was *amazing* -- even more so because you can walk through all the rooms and sort of pretend like you're discovering it for the first time. A friendly ranger, obsessed with the astro-archeological events that the Chacoans constructed in the canyon (they think, anyway -- things like shafts of light that shine in patterns around the equinoxes), took us up to watch one of these events at sunrise. We were standing on 1000 year old walls, on the third floor of the ancient building ... it was pretty amazing.

Here we also met a new friend, whom we picked up in the desert. Strangely enough, his name is Chaco. He's been with us for over a week now, and eats insufferable amounts of our food, though he hasn't figured out the food box yet. The third morning with us, we woke to find that he had stockpiled our "fancy nut" mix in John's left shoe. After that we bought the mouse traps. We caught him yesterday for the first time, and he's got the cutest little mexican mustache that points straight out to the sides. But it was raining, and we let him go right next to the car, and we woke up this morning to find that he must have run straight back in -- the Doritos had been raided.

So, with Chaco in tow, we headed north and east into the mountains of Southern Colorado. There, we visited the Great Sand Dunes -- the highest dunes in North America. We climbed a 650 foot dune (which was probably the most difficult hike we've done). It was worth it for the 360 degree views of the dune field, the 14,000 foot mountains next to us, and the endless valley stretching south into New Mexico. We ran down the slipfaces of the dunes, which were incredibly steep and incredibly fun to descend -- the sand makes a sucking noise as your legs slip in up to your calves, and avalanches of sand run down the face from each footprint -- and each step carries you five or six feet down the slope.

Then began our rapid trip across the Texas panhandle (the worst smelling state so far -- cow shit and gas pumps, echgr) and Okalahoma (where we went to our first WalMart ever in Carrie Underwood's hometown). We angled for the Ozarks. In some of the more rural drives we've done (*seriously* Deliverance country), we passed huge encampments of hunters (it's elk and deer season) in the mountains there. We passed a local restaurant actually advertising Fried Catfish and Froglegs for lunch. And they have the crookedest roads you've ever seen -- there's not a straight road in the whole state. Our second night in the backwoods, we found the Ozark Folk Center, which happened to be hosting the final festival of the season -- bluegrass. It turned out to be an excellent show of five groups from all over the south, but one of the strangest experiences of the trip. The audience was uniformly ancient. And -- totally surprising for a bluegrass show -- unequivocally silent. There had been a lot of pre-show requests for gospel (every band mentioned this and played at least half their set as gospel), and the only enthusiam the crowd showed was for the men to reach up and pull off their hats for the gospel songs. Polite clapping and the removal of hats. It was either the most discriminating crowd I've ever been a part of, or the most repressed. I thought it was pretty good bluegrass, but maybe my standards are too loose...

Anyway, here we are in Music City. Nashville. Tennessee. The weather is shit -- that good old east coast November rain. Our trip ends in less than a week. We're in denial about that, but beginning to look forward to what's next -- turkey, mostly. And even thinking a little more seriously about where we'll be moving, and how to move, and when to move, and ... There's a lot of unanswereds. One thing we're pretty sure about is that we'll miss this way of life -- sleeping out, sleeping long, never seeing the same thing twice in a day. We've come up with some easy coping mechanisms -- making pancakes on the propane stove, camping in the back yard, sitting in the car on Sunday afternoons to listen to This American Life.

Quick warning for those on the east coast: we plan on having a party when we get back. Not sure where or when, exactly. We're looking forward to seeing everyone -- we're having a lot of pangs of missing folks. Oh, and we'll be back in DC the day after Thanksgiving (although that weekend will mostly be family time). Best, J and H.

Born again

After leaving Sedona, we camped for the night in a ponderosa pine forest by the name of Tonto. Ponderosa forests smell spicy like any other pine groves, but if you sidle up close and breathe in deeply, the bark smells sweetly of vanilla.
The next day, we crossed into the state where I was born. New Mexico surprised us from the outset. We entered from the west into the vast expanses of Gila National Forest, as seen below.




We quickly reaped further rewards after spotting signs for the San Francisco Hot Springs. We pulled off onto a dirt road and found, instead of the hot springs we expected, a trailhead. A quick calculation indicated that the 1.5 mile hike to the springs was possible before the sun set (around 5pm now), and off we went. We followed a rudimentary map through cactus-filled hills, down into a river canyon. After some misadventure and directions from a local, we found three small shallow resevoirs created by rock dams. The springs were sitting just alongside the river, each progressively warmer. We were alone in the late afternoon, and we able to take baths in the river after a good soak. Here's John lounging in one of the pools, the river just beyond the rocks.




We camped at the trailhead that night and were treated to the most incredible show of stars yet. We even left the rain fly off to better appreciate the view, although the temperature dipped near freezing that night (the fly holds in a lot of heat and makes camping in the cold a lot more manageable). We met a crazy lady from Colorado, who was so lonely she couldn't bear not to speak for about two hours straight. But she fed us homemade banana bread and yummy Colorado apples, so we liked her just fine. Next day, we headed south and east, stopping at a state park called City of Rocks. Here, in the middle of the desert, an outcropping of rocks rises up smoothed into alien shapes that resemble some impossible ancient city. John scrambled up some of them.




Later that afternoon -- an uncelebrated Halloween -- we arrived in south central New Mexico at one of our most anticiapted destinations, the White Sands desert. The desert sits in the middle of the White Sands Missile Range, where the first atomic bomb was detonated, and adjacent to an Air Force base and numerous other places where scary things happen. We were treated to a viewing of the Stealth fighter jet, and the next morning we received an 8 AM wake-up call from one of the missiles they were exploding on the range (from 30 miles away it sounded like it was happening under the tent). To say the least, it was a strange place, no less so because of what we were there to see -- the snow white dunes of the gypsum desert.




It looks exactly like snow, and like snow drifts, the dunes here can move remarkably fast -- up to 30 feet in a year. They move so fast that most life can't survive. We went for a ranger-guided walk at sunset and learned a lot about the unique ways that life forms have adapted -- including, incredibly, some cottonwood trees (which are normally found along rivers with abundant and constant water sources). They don't know for sure how the trees stay alive, but hypothesize that the trees are able to collect fresh rainwater in pools just above the alkaline watertable, which the roots can draw from in dry spells. The desert gets 8 inches of rain a year.

Another unique life form is this plant, which collects water from the sand (the sand acts as a sort of sponge for water) around it's roots, which then hardens and crystalizes the gypsum. It's able to create pedestals, which hold the sand in place even as the dunes move around them. Inside the pedestals, the temperature is a constant 77 degrees, through the 110+ degree summers and winters that cool to below freezing temperatures. The desert's animals--including mice, owls, and foxes--mostly live in these monoliths.




It's hard to resist taking a few glamour shots in a place like this.






It's also hard to resist having a little fun. We grabbed a tarp from the truck for a little sledding.




The next day we decided to drive to Albuquerque, where I was born, to meet my godparents before they left for a trip to Europe. I hadn't seen them since I was a toddler, when they and my parents were very close friends. John, my godfather, did his residency with my father, and Mary Ann and my mom were constant companions. They were there for both mine and my brother's births. We an excellent, if hurried, visit and got to learn a bit about how my young parents lived their lives.




We spent some time today driving along the old Rt. 66, which stretches through the southern part of the city as Central Avenue. It's lined with old motels possessing decadent vintage neon signs. We also sported through old town, the original settlement of Albuquerque, founded in 1706 (celebrating it's tricentennial next year!). It's full of tourist shops now, including some high-end galleries that have incredible Native artifacts -- pottery, rugs, baskets, etc. Since we'll be visiting some of the pueblos later this week, we refrained from spending any money. In the afternoon, we met up with Matt, and old friend of Johns' from DC, who took us on an incredible hike at Tent Rocks, about 1/2 hour north of town.



We had to almost run to the top in order to get out of the park by closing time at 5, so we did the 1.3 mile ascent in about 20 mintues. We hiked through the weird formations you see in the pictures, to this view at the top.




This is looking out over the Jemez mountains from the top. You'd almost never know that both Albuquerque and Santa Fe are both within about 30 miles of here.