Mid-Spring '07 Newsletter

Just a quick update on what's happening here in Freeport...we just got back from a week in Santa Fe, NM, trying to understand how anyone can live without the ocean in their backyard!

Following are some photos we took along the way:

This is me at Tent Rocks National Park (Kasha-Katuwe). The jacket was a necessity as it was snowing, you can see the little white specks in the picture. (Just 2 days before it had been 80 degrees, just glad we brought the coats!) The formations you see behind me are the result of volcanic activity. In some places, there are huge boulders balanced on top of those points! See pix below for what happens when the boulders dislodge!

As an example of what happens when the rocks give way, Rock is walking over some of them as we hike up the 'Canyon Trail' a 1.5 mile trek through the canyon to the top where you can see Cochiti Lake and the dam on the Rio Grande. This park has 2 trails, the 'Cave Loop' and the Canyon Trail. Each is about 1.5 miles, but the Canyon Trail doesn't loop around.

I got to within 100 feet of the end of the trail and then had to climb up a 6' rock face. With the open canyon behind me and trying to look straight up to find handholds, vertigo won and I had to sit out the 'view at the top'.

Here are just the Tent Rocks themselves, simply amazing!

Of course, we ate at great restaurants! It's not vacation if we don't find fab food! We both really recommend the diner on the Plaza. If our luggage ever shows up, I'll get the map out and figure out the name of the place! Other great eats were found at Tomasita's and The RailYard. So what delicacies did we have? Cactus salad, flautas, sopapillas, frog's legs (OK, not a New Mexican specialty), prime rib and so much more! (Great snack food...green chile pistachios!)

We're not great shoppers (laugh if you will, but it's safe for us to live in Freeport) but we did go to the plaza and talk to the Native American vendors who set up under the long portico. They had some beautiful silver jewelry there. The attention to detail in the art and talking to the person who actually makes what you are browsing or buying makes the purchase so much more personal.

The next day we were back in the desert canyons again, this time traveling to Bandelier National Park to view cliff dwellings (one of the main reasons we wanted to go to New Mexico). Unbelievable! Some of the most amazing human constructions we've ever seen.

This is the entry to a 22-room cliff dwelling that is over 800 years old. Below is some of the trail that had to be climbed in order to access the ladder you see here to enter the dwelling. Keep in mind the original inhabitants did NOT have the handrails you see in the photo! It is 140' straight up from the river to the cliff entry. And, yes, that is a river (Rio Frijoles) you see waaaaaay below!

After we left the main site of the Bandelier park, we found an 'adjunct' Bandelier Park along the side of the road. If you have time and are somewhat adventurous, definitely go to this small, out of the way park. You are pretty much 'on your own' here. Pick up a trail map at the gate (which is closed at dusk) and head out. There are NO handrails here, a couple of ladders are all you have to help climb up and down the canyon walls. In some places the trail was as wide as my shoe, cliff wall to the right and deep canyon to the left!

Not too many pix taken along this trail, I was doing my best to hang on! But, along the way, this is what we found to make the fear of falling off the cliff wall all worthwhile:

Prehistoric graffiti!

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