Eastward Bound

[BD]

It was a beautiful desert mountain morning, sunny and clear and colder that a well diggers….  whatever.  We decided to take a short hike up the gorge through an area of huge basalt boulders covered with pinion and juniper trees.  Again, classic high desert, volcanic country.

Desert Morning Bug

Desert Morning Flower

Also excellent rock picking country which next to Indian pottery, is one of my favorite things.  (Was almost laughed out of the house at the suggestion that some might buy me a metal detector for my retirement present.)  But the last laugh is mine as I was walking down the trial and saw a bright glint of blue which turned out to be a tiny nugget of turquoise.  (VD says it’s just a mummified blue gummy bear, but what does she know?)

Picking Out Thorns

The walk was great and I came back with pockets stuffed with small rocks for myself, two significant boulders that VD thinks would make great cornerstones for the raised flower bed I promised to build in my retirement, (right after I get my metal detector), and bleeding hands from prying a reluctant cholla cactus from the ground.  I’m sure it will thrive in Downers Grove.

After emergency surgery to stem the hemorrhaging, we’re off to Taos which is a winter kicking off point for New Mexico snow skiers, and a home for the starving artists that would otherwise be homeless in Santa Fe.  Actually a cool little town that would be especially appreciated by any of the readers who might have flirted on the fringes of the 60’s counter culture. 

Another side-note of cultural attitude adjustment  -  While eating lunch at upper end Taos bistro, two ladies of obvious Indian heritage sat down at an adjacent table.  One of the two struck up a conversation with Val (who always look approachable) and before long they are sharing sweet potato fries and chatting up a storm.  At some point, VD sharing that I had not fulfilled my promised to take her country dancing and were might we go to do that.  She could not help us with a local place, as she and her friend were just visiting Taos themselves.  She did however offer the hospitality  of the Jicarilla Apache Nation if we were ever in the neighborhood of of her reservation hometown of Dulce NM, (which we had passed through just a few days earlier).  Val is truly the universal ambassador.

By late afternoon we depart for our final campground night in Cimarron Canyon, of course another picturesque corner of northeast New Mexico.  A small trout stream running through the back of the campsite completes the picture.

Good Night From Cimarron Canyon.