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The Gorge...and Colorado
The view of the Gorge from Guadelupe Mountain. Everyone wave to the friendly folks in Colorado...yes the gorge is that long. No the title of this blog is not about Eli's now very bushy and manly beard which now has to be regularly manscaped, it's about an actual Gorge!
Eli has been OBSESSED with the Rio Grande gorge...for good reason, it is a breathtaking sight as I hope is evidenced by the pictures, but his infatuation has gotten a little out of hand. I do realize that the 1993 Missouri State Topographic Map Champion would find nooks and crannies of a geological nature fascinating, but with all the admiration Eli has been expressing for Mother Nature's curves, well I feel a bit left out. As we drove around Taos he would stare out the window at the smooth sleek gorge, lost deep in thought. His mind fixating on the earth's sexy crevice, he was quite engorged, I mean engaged.
One night we went out on a very romantic drive through the Taos Ski Basin and then we took a turn and Eli wouldn't tell me where we were going...he said "I have a surprise for you". Naturally, I was thinking about jewelry. Imagine my surprise when all the sudden Eli started squirming around in his seat like a little
Close Up
Topo Porn kid who had drunk his whole big gulp, and exclaiming expletives left and right (I would repeat them but this is a G-rated blog). All of the sudden the earth disappeared and we drove over an incredible suspension bridge hung on two sides of the canyon walls. The Rio Grande Gorge is MASSIVE and it's incredible the way the flat earth dissolves into this incredible crevice. You would never even know it was there unless you were right on top of it. It was amazing and beautiful and, I will say here that it was better than some types of jewelry.
I will now take you all on the "Sedimentary Journey" of the Rio Grande gorge. This area of Taos has been known to have both volcanic and seismic activity and Eli postulated that this gorge had been carved out of water flowing for millions of years...however a quick stop on the information super highway has debunked that not so widely held theory. Apparently, obvious to everyone but the Topo Champion and this one course Rocks for Jocks Geography class participant the gorge is actually flowing through a crack in the earth known as the "Rio Grande Rift". The
two sides of the rift are actually separating at a very slow rate (don't tell Eli, he might set up camp and a grid and spend the rest of his life calcuating the rate of which the rift is separating as compared to the rate at which facial hair growth and I would miss him). This separation has caused many natural hotsprings in the area once again confirming just how close the liquid hot magma is to the earth's crust. I have to stop typing now because Eli can't keep his hands off of me after reading this geology talk. Excuse me.
Ok, back now. Regardless of the reasons how this gorge came into being, it is really big, deep, and rocky...and there is a river at the bottom. What could be better than a gorge with a river at the bottom you ask? And the obvious answer is of course TWO really big deep and rocky gorges with rivers at the bottom! Yes, it's true...we also visited the place at which the Rio Grande Gorge intersects, or excuse me, confluences, with the Red River. I have run out of words like breathtaking, amazing, incredible and this site doesn't
Islands in the Stream
The mighty confluence, where two become one. Just like Kenny and Dolly. have that handy thesauras function, so hopefully the pictures with speak for themselves.
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Maren
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Still extremely jealous!