New Mexico & Arizona - October 2007

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I had the misfortune to come down with the honest-to-goodness flu this weekend - which caused me to miss a trip to Chicago that I was really looking forward to. However, there was a lone upside to this wretched sickness. I was feeling much too sick to do any schoolwork, but as I started feeling better, I felt like doing something - so I was able to upload and organize a ton of photos taken during our trip to New Mexico and Arizona back in mid-October. The pics are now available on Chris’ flickr website at http://www.flickr.com/photos/ctracey/sets/72157603980899385/

There are a lot of pictures - over 200. I was trying to cut it down somewhat, but I was having a tough time. We were out there for 11 days and we really covered a lot of ground. Going back through the pictures, I was almost surprised by how many different places we went.

As for that, here’s the Short Summary:

The idea for the trip started because my college roommate, Anne Garnett, was getting married in Santa Fe. So we decided to travel out there, then stay for a week or so and travel around. We did not really do much planning in advance - just made reservations for the plane tickets to get there, a rental car to get us around and bought a Southwest USA guidebook, NM Highway Map, and a large duffel bag we could check on the plane to hold all of our camping gear! Oh, and made reservations for hotels for the night we arrived, during the wedding weekend and before we left.

Other than that, we just figured it out as we went. We managed to do it in a way that got us around to lots of other interesting things, good food, and other sites, and only a tiny bit of backtracking by places we’d been to already! And, there were really only about three days when we drove much more than 5 hours, so it felt like we spend much more time hiking than driving during the trip.

I was really impressed at how well our itinerary shaped up. For one, we did “experience” all of the highlights we’d talked about in advance: go to White Sands National Monument, visit Carlsbad Caverns, see a cliff dwelling site and a modern-day pueblo, and eat lots of burritos. We also managed to fulfill everything on our “it’d-be-nice-to-do-list,” like going to Tucson to see Jason Kuscma (www.kuple.org). And, we even got to the “Well, it might be our only chance to . . .” items on our list, with visits to Roswell and Los Alamos.


Here is the longer overview of our travels, that provides a little more detail on where and how we traveled around:

We flew into Albuquerque on Friday night, arriving just past midnight so we stayed overnight out by the Airport. On Saturday, we picked up our rental car and drove up to Santa Fe. We walked around for a bit until we met up with Punam and Colin to meet baby Dante for the first time, and touched base with Debra (and Dave) Carrick. We then all went to Anne’s Wedding to Steve Taylor at the La Fonda on the Plaza in the heart of Santa Fe.

We walked around Santa Fe some more on Sunday morning, sight-seeing, then drove up to Los Alamos with Krupa-auntie (Punam’s mom) in the early afternoon. We later met up with Punam, Colin and Dante at the Bradbury Science Museum. There is not much to see in Los Alamos except the museum, which had general science exhibits, historical information on the Manhattan Project and nuclear arms, and hints of the concerns and perspectives of Dr. Robert Oppenheimer.

On Monday, Chris and I headed up to Taos via the “low road” along the Rio Grande. We stopped at the Road Runner café along the way, which we’d passed when driving up to Los Alamos the day before, which we noted had the words “vegetarian” and “truck stop café” painted on their sign. It was amazing.

Along the way to Taos, we happened to notice historical markers for the Rio Grande Gauging station, which was the first US Geological Survey gauging station. Chris actually used to work with data from this station when he was at the USGS, so we had to stop. (Just proving that we are giant geology nerds, in case that doesn’t become clear later on).

Anyways, we made it to Taos, but just walked through town briefly before heading northeast into the southern Rockies. We camped in Cimarron Canyon state park and marveled at an amazing palisades sill (intrusive igneous rock formation). While we came somewhat prepared for cold-weather camping, we did forgot some important things - like tuques and gloves!

On Tuesday, we headed back to Taos to tour the Taos Pueblo, which is a world heritage site, having been continuously inhabited since the 1400’s. After an incredible lunch in town, we headed down the “high road” back to Santa Fe, then continued south to Alamogordo to stay at the Satellite Inn.

First thing on Wednesday morning, we headed up to White Sands National Monument to hike the 4.5 mile Alkali Flats trail across the dunes. Other-worldly is really the best word I can think of to describe White Sands.

After the hike, we headed back up north just a little ways, to where we had passed pistachio farms and the Three Rivers Petroglyph Site near Tularosa the night before. Both were well worth the visit. Then, over another incredible lunch (can you tell we were really enjoying authentic New Mexican cuisine), we came to the conclusion that this might be the only time in our lives when we would be just a 2-hour drive away from Roswell. So, off we went.

We spent the night camping just east of Roswell at Bottomless Lake State Park, named for the brackish lakes that formed in limestone-caused sinkholes. On Thursday morning, we headed into town to check out the aliens. Roswell actually felt a lot like Bowling Green, Ohio - except for the novelty lampposts - as it’s a small-medium sized town in a heavily agricultural area. We visited the municipal art museum, and then wiled away the rest of our morning at the International UFO Museum and Research Center. Unfortunately, the “Cover-up Café” was currently closed, and in need of new owners, so there were no space fries or any novelty foods of such kind.

I then made what was probably our lone culinary mistake of the journey- rather than walking back through town to find a New Mexican restaurant mentioned in our Lonely Planet, I was rather determined to continue on south. Which we did, only to discover that as you go further south, the cuisine shifts from “New Mexican” to “Mexican” and the vegetables (and vegetarian options) seemed to disappear. (Chris may make us return to Rosewell one day to try this restaurant.)

But, that night we did make it down to Carlsbad Caverns, and in good time to catch the nightly bat flight, when hundreds of thousands of Mexican free-tail bats fly out en-mass. Surprisingly, there is nowhere terribly convenient to the National Park to camp, so we ended up just staying somewhat north of the town of Carlsbad at Brantley Lake State Park (about 30 miles from the Caverns).

On Friday, we drove back down to Carlsbad Caverns to tour the caves. The Caverns were fascinating - they are solutional caves, but carved by natural acids, not water, so the end result is very different from the large cave systems here in the east. We left Carlsbad mid-day, heading was back towards Alamogordo, going through the mountains and the ski area of Cloudcroft, instead of across the agricultural areas around Roswell.

As we approached Alamogordo, I was able to locate our White Sands admission receipt, which I’d noticed was good for three days. So, after an early dinner in town, we went back out into White Sands to spend some more time sliding down the dunes and watch the sun set. We then went west to Las Cruces to pick up I-10, which would take us to Arizona, and found a hotel in Deming where we spent the night.

Saturday morning, we headed on over to Tucson, which is about 200 miles from Las Cruces. There we met up Jason Kuscma and Megan Plesea, who we’d only seen once or twice since moving from Bowling Green. They were both finishing up their last semesters in Library School, so we managed to be the last houseguests I think they’d have in Arizona. (They’ve since relocated to NYC). They took us to one of their favorite places in town - and the one site I’d noted we should try to visit when I’d skimmed the Tucson section in the Lonely Planet - The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. It is a combination zoo-botanical garden-natural park, and one of the best ones we’d seen. That night, we spent some time in the campus area, and tried to help Jason cheer on the Cleveland Indians in the world series, and stopped by the Hotel Congress, the site of the capture of the Dillinger Gang.

Sunday morning started with delicious apple fritters from Le Cave’s, a great bakery located right across the street from Jason and Megan’s loft. We then headed back on I-10 east, leaving the highway after getting back into New Mexico to drive up through the Gila National Forest. Our destination was the Gila Cliff Dwellings site, located pretty high up in the mountains, and we arrived in the late afternoon with plenty of time to hike and tour the site before dusk. The dwellings were much larger and elaborate than we expected.

We spent Sunday night camping at a really convenient, and free, national forest campground, located right by the dwellings. We had the entire campground to ourselves, and again had the opportunity on our shortcomings in packing gloves and hats for high-altitude camping!

On Monday morning, we packed up and then drove out through the National Forest to the east, where we eventually picked up I-25, which would take us north to Albuquerque. By getting back to Albuquerque in mid-afternoon, we had the opportunity to further cultivate our interest in novelty geologic journey elevators, with a ride on the Evolater at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science. While we left feeling quite enlightened by our journey through 38 million years of New Mexico’s geologic history, we are still partial to the classic Straovator here at the Carnegie in Pittsburgh.

After walking around a bit, we found a nice, authentic New Mexican restaurant in old-town to have our final dinner at. Then we spent the night at a great bed-and-breakfast mini-resort, located right in the old-town area, called Casas de Suenos, before heading out for the airport and our flight home on Tuesday.

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