Meador Manor

In the footsteps of the Anasazi at Bandelier (click image for slideshow)

Long post today, because I took lots of pictures on my day hikes at Bandelier National Monument and my visit to Los Alamos. I culled 186 shots down to 80, just for you, gentle viewer.

My day began with breakfast in the back room at the Pantry, a favorite area restaurant operating since 1948. By the time I left there was a line at the door stretching outside, but that’s not because I’m a slow eater. I then drove north towards Los Alamos, a wonderfully scenic drive once one turns west off US 285 onto NM 502. It dives down to cross the Rio Grande and then wiggles westward until you turn off on NM 4 towards White Rock and Bandelier National Monument.

There were signs of the nearby nuclear science lab, especially a large receiving dish off the road which is clearly in use since in the afternoon I would see it again, pointed directly upward to the sky. I passed eroded bluffs, clear inspirations for the Anasazi (ancestral pueblo peoples) to dig into the talus to expand their cliffside dwellings. The ashy rock was produced by the Jemez Volcano over a million years ago, which had two eruptions each estimated at 600 times as powerful as the recent Mt. St. Helens eruption, covering a 400-square-mile area in ash up to 1,000 feet thick. The 12-mile diameter Valles Caldera is a remnant of one eruption. Jeepers! I remember at the Mt. St. Helens Visitor Center a display showing how many eruptions dwarfed it, but the statistics are staggering.

Soon I reached the entrance to Bandelier, which was named after a Swiss naturalist and that explains the difference in spelling from the term for a shoulder-strap ammunition belt. The monument has been closed for several weeks by the Los Conchas fire. The fire burned over 233 square miles of the Jemez Mountains and only a few of the over 70 miles of hiking trails have re-opened, with park staff busily sandbagging around the historic CCC structures in the park to prepare for flash floods and debris they know will come. Burned desert ground repels water, and the park reports that following the La Mesa Fire of 1977 Frijoles Creek flowed at thirty-two times its usual rate and destroyed about two dozen trail bridges, altered the stream bed, forced evacuations, and deposited three feet of silt behind the administrative buildings. So good luck to their efforts to prepare for what is to come when New Mexico’s afternoon monsoons of late July arrive.

They waived the usual $12 entry fee and allowed me to go to the Juniper campground to hike two miles on the Tyuonyi Overlook Trail. The beginning looked unpromising, with a number of fallen and burned trees from old fires (this area was not burned in the Los Conchas fire). But in the distance rose beautiful mountains, perhaps helping inspire the Anasazi to build a circular shrine up here on the mesa.

As the trail made a beeline along a ridge projecting on the edge of Frijoles Canyon, a distant highway looked like an absurd trail extension and improvement project. At the overlook there was a sign which told of how Tyuonyi Pueblo peaked in the late 1400s at about 400 rooms with up to three stories in parts of the circular structure. A brochure told me Tyuonyi translates as “meeting place” and is pronounced QU-weh-nee.

The overlook provided a tremendous panoramic view of Frijoles Canyon, formed by El Rito de los Frijoles or “The Little River of Beans” – and I have no idea why the Spanish called the creek by that name. All around I could see closed trails begging to be hiked – darn that forest fire!

I met a family from Maine by taking their group photo for them, and when they mentioned their disappointed desire to see more ruins, I told them that the Tsankawi area back north near White Rock was open and had some sort of ruins. They would follow that tip, for I ran across them there later and we had a happy conversation as we traversed portions of the trail there.

But first I returned to my car and drove west, intending to hike the open Burnt Mesa Trail. But the parking area was closed for remediation and clearly the first few miles of the trail had been burned over, making the name most appropriate. So I drove onward to take NM 501 north into Los Alamos and zipped back east to the open Tsankawi Ruins, and that one has the more obvious pronunciation of SAN-kuh-wee.

The ancestral pueblo people who settled in this area, the Pajarito Plateau, from roughly 1100 to 1500, were divided into different language groups which shifted in different directions when a drying climate and likely overpopulation and resource depletion led them to shift to pueblos along the Rio Grande. Those living in Frijoles Canyon spoke Keres and oral traditions say they moved to Cochiti Pueblo. But those living in the separate Tsankawi area spoke Tewa and moved to San Ildefonso.

The trail ascended the pretty pink and white volcanic cliffs via a ladder. Up top I could see a creek heading eastward toward the gash of the Rio Grande and soon I encountered the ancient furrow in the tuff carved by millions of footfalls over the past millenium, which would guide me the rest of the way. The white trail led upward and then I found a spot making me wonder if they had their own version of Bigfoot, but of course they just wore out different paths over time.

The view south was fantastic, and I stood aside from the channel for two hikers coming toward me. They laughed, saying they had done the trail backward because of a big group in front of them before they hit a fork. I certainly understood, and a few minutes latter spotted the big group trailing down the lower part of the loop like a trail of ants. I wondered why most of them had worn dark shirts for this hot sunny hike – my self-portrait along a particularly deep section of the trail furrow reveals my choice of attire: a white wicking shirt and a new Tilley hat, hurriedly purchased and rushed to me last week when I left my old misshapen one behind at a movie theater in Jenks.

I reached a funny fork where those horizontally challenged among us might choose to deviate to avoid a narrow cleft of steps. I took the slim path up, despite my high-edge-of-normal BMI (perhaps I’m just dense) and was rewarded with a great panoramic view of a nearby mesa and a lovely view to the north as well. My, but the views from this mesa were memorable, with only the sweep of the highway to disrupt the north view, striped by huge cloud shadows.

A sign warned me I was approaching the unexcavated ruins atop the mesa, which to my untrained eye looked like scattered stones and brushy depressions. I posed by a large cactus which belied the translation of Tsankawi as “village between two canyons at the clump of sharp round cacti.”

A squirrel dashed in front of me to stretch out under a bush, hoping to blend in. I waited until he got to work again, but as soon as I moved he flattened right out again. I reached the cliff edge and there met up with the folks from Maine whom I’d met earlier. Another ladder took us down to several runs of hand-carved caves in the tuff.

I took shelter in one, grateful to get out of the sun for a bit. The talus trail was like an Anasazi hallway, with rooms on one side and a big canyon on the other. Some caves had petroglyphs and blackened ceilings – the Anasazi did this to make the ceiling less friable. I liked the niche in one cave.

Some folks from Pennsylvania had me play peekaboo from behind a rock – a welcome breeze made me use my hat strap. I turned back at one point to capture a woman lost in contemplation. I came across a bluff face with petroglyphs, then another with many small pockmarks in it, presumably to provide Anasazi with a quick scramble to the top, but it would only appeal to a rock climber. The trail began to descend, offering a choice between a deep groove and a shallower set of steps. The Anasazi used axes to fell large Ponderosa pine trees whose straight, thick trunks made excellent vigas: the beams used to support the roof. Many viga holes of multiple levels are visible in Frijoles Canyon, but there was one spot at Tsunkawi with them as well, although the vigas here were small.

The trail wrapped up along a ledge and I bid farewell to the folks from Maine, who were heading on to points westward, including Yosemite, which I simply must visit someday.

From this long description it probably seems like the hikes took all day, but it was actually only lunchtime, so I drove into Los Alamos for what proved to be a mediocre lunch. But the restaurant was only a block from the Bradbury Museum, which my father and I had visited at a different site 20 years before. I decided to see how much it had changed, recalling that it is named after a longtime director of the lab, not science fiction author Ray Bradbury. The man who wrote There Will Come Soft Rains wouldn’t be a big fan of a nuclear weapons lab.

The new rented digs downtown are much nicer than the lab building we visited in 1991, but the highlights were still the mockups of Little Boy and Fat Man, the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A kindergarten teacher and her husband took a new shot of me next to Fat Man since my students would only laugh at the one my father took of me by it when I was in my mid-twenties and still had some hair up top. Now they can laugh at the caption to the photo: Fat Man. Whether that means the bomb or their teacher is up to them!

I took a shot of an instrument package used for underground nuclear weapons testing, something my students are unfamiliar with since our nation last conducted such a test in 1996. I took another shot for my class, of an Eniac circuit board, since we discuss that early vacuum tube computer when we deal with projectiles – Eniac was designed to compute artillery firing tables. After we work through deriving one simple range equation and contemplate the complicating factors we ignored, my students grasp why Eniac was so useful. Speaking of projectiles, the museum had a couple of missiles and mockups of their nuclear warheads on hand too.

On my way out of town I halted when I spotted an imposing log building with extensions sticking out here and there. The intriguing center was Fuller Lodge, built in 1928 from 771 massive pine logs selected by architect John Gaw Meem. He was quite influential, and his Santa Fe-style home on Museum Hill is now home to the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art. When I toured that museum yesterday, I was frankly more interested in the house than its contents.

Fuller Lodge was the dining hall for the Ranch School, a private school for boys which was purchased in World War II for use as a hotel and gathering place during the Manhattan Project. It was known as bathhouse row since they were the only rooms in town with bathtubs at the time. It is now a community center and home to a public art gallery. I wandered into the lodge and shot its main hall and a stairway, then captured one of its chimneys and other façade while outside.

Driving back along NM 4, I stopped at a switchback to shoot a panorama and then drove into White Rock. Its residential streets were lined with houses which were an odd mix of faux-dobe and conventional appearance. The yards were similarly inconsistent, some with quite nice xeriscaping and careful use of cedars interspersed with yards afflicted with tiny, ugly, and unkempt lawns struggling in the desert. My purpose in visiting was not to pick the best yard, however, but to view from an overlook the immense White Rock Canyon, where the Rio Grande has carved 1,000 feet down into the volcanic rocks. Not a bad way to wrap up a long photogenic day.

Upon my return to Santa Fe I showered and had tasty beef and chicken Tacos al Carbon with pork and beans at Los Patrillos. Tomorrow I journey north to Pagosa Springs, hoping to get in a hike along the way.

Click here for a slideshow from this day hike

Day 4 of July Jinks 2011 ->

<- Day 2 of July Jinks 2011

Santa Fe (click for slideshow)

I awoke in Santa Fe, had an uninspiring continental breakfast in the cramped lobby of the hotel complex, and set out for the hills to the northeast, hoping to hike part of the Dale Ball trail system. But alas, the entire system is closed, like the adjacent forest, because of the fire danger. I do wish the city’s webpage on the trail system would bother to mention that.

So I drove around the hilly residential area and finally settled on Hillside Park as a destination. I circled the park, but could not find a parking area – it turns out the one up top has been blocked off for unknown reasons. But I managed to find Thomas Silvestri Macione Park near the base of Hillside Park, and it had plenty of parking.

The tiny triangular plot of land is dedicated to Mr. Macione, or “El Diferente”, who was evidently a beloved eccentric who started out as a barber in Boston but moved to Santa Fe in 1952 to paint. A sculpture of El Diferente by Mac Vaughan, complete with easel, palette, and nearby dog, adorns the park.

I found the lower entrance to Hillside Park, which is a plaque-adorned series of ramps leading up the hillside. Ascending the walkway afforded a nice view of downtown and the Plaza a few blocks away, and a rabbit entertained me for a bit.

Up top the trail led to a monument with the figure of Justice on one side. It turns out the upper area was L. Bradford Prince Park, commemorating a territorial governor who was instrumental in early policies; the whole area was once part of Fort Marcy. Tiny lizards skittered by here and there. The city had started some trails across the park, but they were abandoned and incomplete. I wandered the area, reaching a nice home adjacent to the park at far end, and retraced my steps, catching sight of the Romanesque towers of the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi above the trees. I toured the Cathedral last year, but I would see it from the Plaza today as well.

Driving to the Plaza area, I searched for a street parking spot but finally gave up and grabbed one in a parking garage. I toured the New Mexico Museum of History and the Palace of the Governors, which is an ancient, long, and narrow adobe building dating back to 1610 and said to be the oldest continuously occupied public building in the U.S. Its current Pueblo Revival Style appearance dates back to a 1913 renovation and that look became mandatory for buildings throughout Santa Fe. It gives the city a unified distinctive appearance, even though it is mostly faux-dobe. Few buildings here have four-foot-thick walls build of mud bricks like the Palace.

Today the building, like the Spanish Governor’s Palace in San Antonio, is anything but what we think of as palatial. It seems like a fairly miserable place to be stuck in to me, spoiled as I have been by 20th and 21st century architecture and resources. I was struck by the small size of the chain mail on display used by Spaniards back in the day – even I would be heavier and taller than them thanks to modern nutrition. Photos were banned in the complex, but I did shoot the courtyard between the buildings. The white low structure on the right is the Palace. I also strolled out into the plaza and shot the front veranda, lined as always with Native Americans selling wares.

I’d hoped to eat at the famous Plaza Cafe, but it was closed pending clean-up from a kitchen fire. The receptionist at the museum suggested Tia Sophia’s, but it was closed too. So I strolled over to the La Fonda hotel, which was built in 1922 and was one of Fred Harvey’s famous hotels from 1925 until 1969. I’m not surprised that the impressive interior reflects the design work of Mary Colter, who helped create so many splendid buildings at the Grand Canyon and established a style now used throughout our national parks. I enjoyed a drink up in its bell tower last year.

In the 1970s the hotel’s interior fountain patio was enclosed and turned into the La Plazuela restaurant. It was fully renovated in 2009 when local architect Barbara Felix painstakingly reworked it. I was impressed by her attention to detail, even visiting the closed mine to get samples of the original flagstone material for a better match. I honored her work by dining at La Plazuela today, waiting until 11:30 for lunch to begin.

I was not disappointed. The beef fajitas I had tie with those at La Rosa in Bend, Oregon as the best I’ve ever had. While the grilled squash and other vegetables were what made La Rosa memorable, in this case the excellent slices of meat were served with delicious corn, pinto beans, and exquisitely cooked sweet onions and peppers. Nothing very unusual, outside of the corn, but these were prepared to perfection. And topping it off was a thick hot sopapilla and honey. I had enjoyed a similar meal at Enrique’s in Ponca City last week, but La Plazuela showed just how wondrous fajitas can be when skillfully prepared.

I waddled about the hotel for awhile, admiring the light fixtures, alcove paintings, and fireplaces. Back outside, I strolled down to the Cathedral, drawn by its bells striking 12:45 p.m. and its statuary, and was struck by a multi-figure statue in the park with both animals and people. An art show was going on, but I still got shots of the four major figures and a cathedral tower in the background, and the tower viewed amidst the park’s trees. The museum across the street from the cathedral, in the renovated Federal Building, is a nice example of Santa Fe style.

I wandered over to another art show, this one by the Santa Fe Society of Artists. I went in not expecting to buy a thing, but the penultimate booth was that of Franz Amadeus Leitner, and his landscape photographs were most striking. I especially liked a shot of Shiprock, a formation in northwestern New Mexico I have not visited but plan to see for myself next week. I liked it enough to splurge and buy the mounted print for my home. Mr. Leitner was charming and I enjoyed how he plugged a tiny swiper into his iPhone for my credit card.

On my way to my car with my bubble-wrapped treasure, I was stopped by three ladies who were looking for a yogurt shop. My own iPhone was used this time to give them walking directions, and as soon as they went on their merry way I was asking it for help too, since I’d told it to remember where my car was parked.

The next stop was Museum Hill, which I visited last year during the International Folk Art Festival. It was far quieter today, and the empty plaza highlighted the large Apache Mountain Spirit Dancer sculpture by Craig Dan Goseyun. I love how he captured the movement of the dancer’s costume. Nearby was Morning Prayer  by Allan Houser, who also sculpted Sacred Rain Arrow at the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa.

I made a sandwich of the area, with boring slices of the Museum of Indian Art & Culture and the Museum of Spanish Colonial Art around the meat of the Museum of International Folk Art. Lucky for you, only the meaty museum allowed photography. A docent took me and an elderly couple from New York to highlights of the extensive collection of folk art. My favorite was the Girard collection, a sampling of about 10% of the 100,000 pieces Alexander Girard collected and donated, setting up clever displays and tableaus. I liked the Polish cathedrals decorated with silver foil from candy wrappers, a South American cathedral, a Mexican courtyard tableau, and loved the addition of some camera-laden elderly tourists in the huge pueblo tableau. I also admired the costumes in another wing from a Bolivian Carnival and Peruvian Masquerade.

It was too late in the day to visit the fourth and final museum on the hill, the Wheelwright, so I drove over to the Cristo Rey Church, which is the largest adobe church in the world. Making my way over to the Monsignor Patrick Smith Park, I spotted a bell just like the one my father has on a pole in his backyard. This one was handsomely mounted above a gate in an adobe arch.

Folks were lounging under the few trees around the edges of the park, some with children and some getting randy enough that they’ll have children in no time. My final shot of the day was of a home perched on a distant hillside.

I returned to my hotel to map out, literally, my strategy for the next couple of days and then had spaghetti and meatballs at the Olive Garden. Tomorrow I’m going to Bandelier National Monument, which had been completely closed for a few weeks due to the Los Conchas Fire. Frijoles Canyon is still closed indefinitely, with fears of flash flood damage in the coming rains. But last Friday they opened up three trails around the north edges of the park and I’ll take anything at this point since all of the forests and city trails are shut down. I had fun in town today, but I’m ready to head out to the countryside for a day hike.

Click here for a slideshow from today’s hijinks

Day 3 of July Jinks 2011 ->

<- Day 1 of July Jinks 2011

Santa Rosa Lake Lizard (click image for slideshow)

The first day of July Jinks 2011 was a long drive from Oklahoma City to La Villa Real de la Santa Fé de San Francisco de Asís, but let’s just call it Santa Fe, New Mexico.

I drove straight west on I-40 into Texas, stopping at the Calico Cafe in Amarillo for lunch. I saw one dust devil near Amarillo and was pleased when filling up the car to note my 2001 Camry had managed to get 35 miles per gallon on the easy highway drive with temperatures in the 90s.

After entering New Mexico I skipped Tucumcari, which did not impress me last year, for a later stop along Highway 66: Santa Rosa. The lure was Santa Rosa Lake, which in the current drought is at dangerously low levels. The temperature was 99, but that did not dissuade me from taking a 3/4 mile trail to see the channel below the dam. The humidity was very low and I did not get terribly hot along the trail, while back home in Bartlesville I would have been drenched. I saw a pretty lizard along the way and a cactus which had turned pink. I took another short trail nearby, which looped around layered rock.

After that nice break from the drive, I headed back into Santa Rosa for a dipped cone at the Dairy Queen and headed back along I-40 to make the turn up the nearly deserted two-lane US 285 and then I-25 to Santa Fe.

I finished my penultimate Hercule Poirot audiobook along the way. The only Poirot novel that remains for me to enjoy is Curtain, the one Agatha Christie wrote in the early years of World War II and locked away in a bank vault for over thirty years. She saved it for posthumous publication, wanting her parting shot with Poirot to be a book written when she was at the height of her powers. That’s long-term thinking! I will savor it on this trip, unless the History of the Bible lectures I’m now listening to keep me too captivated. Having exhausted the Poirot series, save for short story collections, I’ll then listen to some more of her stand-alones and other short series. No doubt eventually I’ll work my way through the Miss Marples, but I don’t care for her as much and am putting those off having listened to two or three of them thus far.

I am staying at an apartment complex on the southeast edge of town which was converted into a hotel. It is cheap and quite adequate. I had to wait awhile for my dinner at Pizzeria Espiritu in a strip mall less than two miles away, but Yelp was right – it was superb! My pizza had mozzarella cheese and fresh basil, topped with a creamy sauce (rather than tomato sauce) and a mix of Portobello, Shiitake, and Italian mushrooms.

Last year the city seemed larger to me because of the route I took to and from my hotel. Now it seems smaller, especially since I know its population is only a bit more than twice that of Bartlesville. But it is far more upscale, of course, with its focus on art and tourism. Tomorrow I will visit Museum Hill and the Plaza.

Click here for a slideshow from today’s hijinks

Day 2 of the July Jinks ->