Down South

 

First I just want to apologize for not visiting all of my favorite blogs. I’ve been trying to catch up these last few days, and I am so far behind. But I’m missing you all and looking forward to finding out what you’ve all been up to.

I was contacted yesterday by a representative of Chile Monster.com to let me know that they shared a link to my blog with all of their readers on Facebook. Chile Monster is a company that ships New Mexico Chile products to chile addicts all over the country (perhaps, the world?), and many of their customers and readers are ex pat’s of New Mexico who have a special place in their hearts for The Land of Enchantment. I was pleased to see how many folks there enjoyed my blog and I was pretty honored that Chile Monster got the word out and was happy to provide their readers with their photo fix of this culturally and geographically diverse and beautiful state. Check them out: Chile Monster.com

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Last week was a doozie of a week filled with activities. First there was Mother’s Day where my family gave me roses, some chocolate and a really nice folding lounge chair for my bedroom balcony. It’s a beautiful turquoise color and very comfy. I love it!

And yes, those are raindrops on my balcony deck. Unfortunately, we only received a few sprinkles. Not enough to penetrate past the top layer of soil. We’re still very dry here.

And then Mother’s Day was followed by our 21st Wedding Anniversary. Ranchman John gave me a terrific book that I can use for placing letterboxes as well as getting the kidlets and I to try out some new hiking trails. This is the newest, updated edition of Hiking New Mexico. I borrowed the original copy many years ago, from the library and photo-copied most of the pages, and placed them in a reference folder.

Soon afterwards, we packed up everything and headed down to southern New Mexico to do some letterboxing, hiking and camping. We hadn’t been down to this area of New Mexico in several years and there had been quite a few letterboxes placed by some new letterboxers. Our destination was Oliver Lee Memorial State Park, a beautiful, peaceful, rugged campground about 13 miles south of Alamogordo.

(There was a letterbox placed beneath this anti-aircraft gun beside the main road in Alamogordo)

Along the way we stopped off to find several letterboxes, so the drive down took us a little longer, about 3 hours, to reach the campground. We still arrived before sunset, though, and had the pleasure of watching the gorgeous colors highlight the desert vistas around us, as we set up the tents.

We chose to leave the pop-up tent trailer at home, because the winds were expected to get upwards of 50-60 mph gusts during our visit. The heavy roof (along with the roof-mounted A/C unit) of the tent trailer is only supported by 4 metal adjustable posts, so they’re not even one solid piece, and sleeping beneath the roof during powerful gusts just seemed too risky.

Thankfully at night the winds died down, but during the day, we did get some powerful wind gusts, so I was glad we had the tents. We ended up having to place some small boulders inside the tents, before we drove into Alamogordo during the day, because our tent stakes refused to pound into the concrete hard caliche of our campsite and we were pretty sure our tents would have blown into the Sacramento Mountains otherwise. I have to admit, even with the boulders holding them down, I was rather surprised to drive back into the campground at the end of our day exploring Alamogordo, and still finding our tents safe and sound.

(This photo was taken on Saturday morning before the sun had peeked over the Sacramento Mountains)

Before we left the campground we decided to hike one of the nature trails within the Oliver Lee State Park, inside Dog Canyon.

 

Looking west into Dog Canyon Arroyo imagining how it fills up after a heavy rain. Tularosa Basin, Holloman AFB and White Sands National Monument in the distance.

 Looking east into Dog Canyon.

 

Jax and Jen peeking over Frenchie’s Cabin adobe wall.

Jax posing on a rock along the trail. 

 

See how the power of water scoured away all the soil from around this Cottonwood tree? It’s holding on for dear life in the middle of the Dog Canyon Wash.  

 

Hiking down into the arroyo. 

My kidlets and Dobbie beside Dog Canyon Creek.

A pretty flower found beside the creek. Anyone know what it is?

 

 

A section of the trail heading downhill.

How appropriate is that logo on my twinling Jem’s shirt, when you think about where we were hiking? And no, it wasn’t planned.

We also placed a letterbox along the trail, and enjoyed the beautiful desert garden beside the ranger station.

It was a great way to start the day, especially before the temperature started rising.

While we were in Alamogordo, we visited the New Mexico Space Museum, at the base of the Sacramento Mountains, where several letterboxes were hidden.

We have a Science Museum Family Membership, and this is one of our favorite museums. The museum also has a terrific outdoor display which I took some photos of.

And then we did some hiking on a trail behind the museum that enters the Wilderness area of the Sacramento Mountains. We only hiked about 5 miles, but it had become a very hot, dry, windy day, with temps into the low 90’s. There are no trees for shade on the trails, so the sun was roasting us. Thankfully we remembered our water bottles.

Jenna had a great time on the hiking trail and scared me to death with how far she managed to run ahead of us.  Do you see her there?

(In the left middle side of photo)

How about now?

(In the center of this photo)

Now?

I have to admire her independent, adventurous spirit, because I was the same way when I was younger. Still am actually. But I worried about her stumbling upon a rattlesnake or a mountain lion all by herself out there. So I had her brothers run after her until John and I could catch up (yeah, we’re a little slower).

Thankfully, we encountered no slithering, rattling reptiles, and we ended up finding two letterboxes along this trail while enjoying the expansive views all the way out to Holloman AFB and The White Sands Monument.

(Ranchman John and I were fed up with the fierce winds. We found a letterbox at a dog park across the road from this park at the end of the day and let the kidlets get out some of their excess energy on that playground behind John)  

But soon the winds got so strong that they caused huge dust storms which prevented any views farther than perhaps a mile or less. The winds were wearing me down by that time, so we returned back to our car and drove down off the mountains and had some lunch, then did some more letterboxing until about 4:30pm. Then we headed back to the campground.

(We found a letterbox at this old mission church and as we were stamping into our logbooks, we saw a lone man wandering along the old cemetery wall and watched him fiddling with something suspicious. So after we he got into his truck and pulled away, we went and investigated and discovered a geocache in that area.)

  

But hindsight is 20/20. We were quickly wishing we had stayed a little longer up in Alamogordo, perhaps enjoying some ice cream. Because our campsite didn’t have a shelter, so we had absolutely no shade, and the sun was blazing down on us.

The kidlets discovered a fun way to cool off with a water battle using some plastic cups, while John and I wrapped wet cloths around our necks and heads. We placed a blanket on the tent to create a pocket of shade, and kept the windows and doors open for some cross ventilation for those hot desert winds, so we could try to take a little siesta, until the sun went down.

When the sun was low over the western horizon, I made dinner and afterwards Ranchman John took the kidlets for a long walk all around the campground, while I cleaned up the “kitchen”. I even found a few minutes to sit back with a cup of tea and enjoy the beautiful night skies while looking for constellations.

When the family returned we went “Diamond Hunting” with our headlamps, and the kidlets were surprised to find the desert floor covered in them. Spider eyes reflect sparkling, tiny, bright white, hence the diamonds reference. We also found amber eyes reflecting back at us from moths, and we felt a few bats fluttering above our heads.

But the nature experience was not over.

Soon after we were in our sleeping bags, a night time visitor came a calling and stuck around for much of the night. I think we must have left some crumbs around our table and Mr. Skunk was focused on finding every last one. Dobbie never barked at it, but she did create a low deep growl with her hackles raised. We kept her in the tent and was glad that the skunk wasn’t bothered by her. At one point, Dobbie poked me in the face several times and I looked up to find the Mr. Skunk staring at us through the tent’s mesh door! I wanted to take pictures but was worried the flash would have caused a “foul eruption” so close to the tent. bleh!

Eventually we left Mr. Skunk to his night time prowling and fell asleep.

And the following morning, we ate breakfast, cleaned and packed everything up, all before the sun rose over the mountains, so as not to have to work in the blazing hot sun.

(The yellow tape on the grills are to prevent people from using them to make a fire and cook on them. We are in such a serious drought and experiencing fire danger that all State Parks, National Forests and Recreation areas prohibit campfires and even smoking out in the open) 

We were on the road by 9:30am and heading home, saying goodbye to the beautiful Dog Canyon and Sacramento Mountains.