Advertisement
Published: July 14th 2011
Edit Blog Post
Mission Ruins
at Pecos Nat'l Historical Park I had planned today to be a bit on the crazy side--drive a couple hours to see one thing, then drive back nearly as far for something else, then even further for something else, capped off with fireworks. Last night, I started thinking that was a little silly. It's taken me a long time to realize this, but being on vacation should mean relaxing and enjoying ourselves, not just seeing as many things as we can possibly see. Someday, we will be back here and can see the things we missed. Consequently, today was a lovely day.
Pecos National Historical Park was our first destination. It was home of the Pecos Puebloans, an early community of agrarian society whose original pueblo housed 2000 people. It was a center of trade between native Americans from the plains and those farther west. Conquistadors along with their Franciscan escorts came in the sixteenth century and built churches. Settlers came along the Santa Fe Trail; the Civil War came, too, north in Glorieta. We explored the museum, with Liam looking for answers to his junior ranger questions and me looking longingly at the pottery. We then walked the Ruins Trail, which took us past
Junior Ranger in Training
Liam worked very hard to find all the answers to the activity questions. Here, he's drawing some of the things we saw for a bingo game. kivas, including a reproduction Liam and I wandered down into, the second church, built after an uprising. The highlight for the boys, though, were the creatures. We didn't see any rattlesnakes, although Liam was hoping. We saw huge black beetles, though, who had really long legs compared to their body size, as well as dozens of lizards who seemed to be doing push-ups.
While heading to the Georgia O'Keefe Museum, we got distracted by the prospect of lunch. We stumbled across the Santa Fe Baking Company, where the side of fruit for the boys was a giant bowl bigger than any we have at home. My chicken salad wrap was absolutely fantastic--lettuce, pecans, green onions, and a significant kick from the chipotle mayo. Thankfully, we had our crantastic and banana malted smoothies to calm it down. Yum!
The museum, unfortunately, was a bit of a disappointment. It's listed as one of the top ten museums in New Mexico, but there were only nine galleries, most of which didn't have any of her paintings. We did watch a short film about her life which was interesting. My favorite pieces were O'Keefe's Abstraction White Rose, Bella Donna and Evening Star,
No. IV, as well as Henry Koerner's My Parents II. We looked at Sherrie Levin's After Seurat, 1-6, and thought we could probably do it ourselves. See my attempt somewhere below.
The rest of the day has been doing a little geocaching and hanging out at the Santa Fe KOA. The new owners are lovely, as is the campground. I definitely recommend this place when in the area.
- - - - -
Today, we learned that wolves will eat fruit if they can't find any meat. They also use their retractable claws to climb trees, if necessary. (No, we weren't anywhere with wolves. Liam was reading the
Dangerous Animals book he got for his birthday from Grandpa & Grandma.
We forgot our hammock and reclining chair, a big bummer for Jeff since we have the perfect site and weather to enjoy it.
Statement of the Day: "I need to pee." - Liam
High Temperature: 94, in Santa Fe NM
Low Temperature: 54, in Santa Fe NM
Miles: 115
Geocaches Found: 16
Projects Knitted: Square #4
Advertisement
Tot: 0.39s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 12; qc: 62; dbt: 0.2762s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb