Gila Pictures

Near Visitor's Center

Near Upper Scorpion Campground

Along Gila River

Along the  River

Gila Continued (Pictures)

Old Silver Mine

Also three copper mines near Silver City.

Church at Winston, I think

Gun Racks at Winston General Store

Crossed on NM 52

Gila Cliff Dwellings

Railroad Trestle near Cloudcroft

Cloudcroft. Leaving Santa Fe, I headed toward Cloudcroft (clearing in the clouds) via Kline's Corner. I didn't stay there as it seemed basically a small and cabin community. I did see the railroad trestle on the right. The trestle (over Mexican Canyon) is a branch line (the Alamagordo-Sacramento Mountain Railway) of the El Paso and Northeastern Railroad, which built it to provide a steady supply of timber necessary to continue construction of the railroad line. The Cloud-Climbing Railroad became famous as the railroad with spectacular vistas along the way to its destination " in the clouds." I saw a deer as I continued driving across southern New Mexico's vast expanses to spend the night in Socorro.

General Store at Winston

Gila Cliff Dwellings. Taking a blacktop road (May 22, Wednesday) off I25 to Winston, I had a hotdog at the general store there. I thought I would not find much in the way of food or gas for quite some time. Some local ranchers/hunters were chatting with each other and with the woman acting as clerk, like one might expect in small towns. Part of the conversation consisted of her telling how an woman had helped her elderly husband by giving him a teaspoon of coconut oil each day. It becomes solid and has the appearance of lard when stored in the refrigerator but really helps the mind. After his first teaspoon full, he could draw a clock and locate some of the numbers on it. Maybe, this falls into the area of home remedies. Road 52 became 59 before it turned into an unimproved one which eventually led (142, 28, 159) to highway 180 which took me to Glenwood and eventually to Silver City. In this trip, I almost hit a startled deer, as it darted sharply across the road. I saw another along the way.

Gila River. Thursday, May 24, I saw the dwellings, starting with a field house at the Lower Scorpion Campground's "Trail to the Past" at the same elevation as the Visitor's Center. I had seen five deer on the way to the center. They definitely weren't afraid of people. A well-visited hummingbird feeder was an interesting feature of the visitor's center. Up a steep  trail on the mountain side are the ruins of interlinked cave dwellings build in five cliff alcoves by the Mogollon peoples. People of the Mogollon culture lived in these cliff swellings from between 1275 and 1300 AD. A very small lizard peeked out from beneath a rock step on the return trail, which was in full sun in contrast to the trail up. Much of the area was burned in the Miller (2011) Fire, named after the people whose unextinguished campfire started the conflagration. Beginning in the mountains, the three forks of the Gila River converge in this valley and ultimately flow toward the Colorado River. For as long as 10,000 years, this resource-rich floodplain acted as a travel corridor, drawing people into and out of the valley. The ancestral people of the Mogollon (pronounced mo-go-yón) region, Chiricahua Apache, spanish, and Mexican, and Anglo explorers and settlers relied upon this river for transportation. After viewing the cliff dwellings, I took unimproved and high-clearance vehicle only recommended road 150 north (up North Star Canyon), which runs between the Aldo Leopold and Gila Wilderness Areas.

Areas for Grinding Corn

Wilderness Areas. The Black Range, stretching 100 miles north to south and the state's largest mountain range, lies within the Aldo Leopold wilderness. Unlike the Gila Wilderness with its winding, flat canyon bottoms, rolling uplands, and grassy parks, the Aldo Leopold Wilderness safeguards its mountains with steep slopes, narrow canyons, and difficult access. Its ecosystems include Chihuahuan Desert scrub and grassland, piñon-juniper ponderosa pine, and spruce-fir. I continued on through Winston, spending the night at Truth or Consequences. The Gila Wilderness was the first area anywhere in the world set aside solely to protect its character as wildness.

Chimney at Inn on the Alameda in Santa Fe

Creek Crosses Unimproved Road

Backroads Now Traveled

Acequia 

Took back roads 315 and 144 over the Jemez Mountains to connect with highway 4. I saw two "cowboys" with their dogs moving their cows to new pasture. Quite a number of  cows roam the area restrained by fences and cattle guards. Then took 286 south that was supposed to lead to the Cochiti Mesa but lead to three dead ends. I saw a deer; other than that barely a person. I could see the destruction of the Los Conchas Fire of 2011, which burned more than 150,000 acres. I learned about this on my return  from a driver, who has the only home I saw in that remote area. He said the side of his house had been burned and had to be replaced and that the fire supposedly started when a dead aspen fell on a powerline, generating a spark. Next, I took 289 south through the Dome Wilderness Area also burned by the wildfire. This was a good road for awhile; but then it got really rugged before connecting to highway 16 and finally Interstate 25. Saw a deer and some turkey vultures in the grass by the side of the road. The Dome Wilderness is made up of rounded, pine-forested summits, deep canyons, and comparatively flat mesas. Two prominent summits are found in the wilderness, Boundary Peak, which with St. Peters Dome is part of the small San Miguel mountain chain, and Cerro Picacho (Hill Peak). The other major topographic feature of the Dome Wilderness is Sanchez canyon, created by erosion of the soft volcanic tuff (compressed volcanic ashes) that makes up the Pajarito Plateau. This tuff typically weathers into vertical cliffs. I saw features suggestive of this description but could not identify positively what they were.

Birch Trees at Higher Altitude

Cowboys Moving Cattle

With Dogs

Unusual Outcropping

Burst of Yellow

Wildfire Devastation Widespread

Cerro Pedernal at Start of Trip

Gatsby

The Novel

Gatsby. Saw Gatsby May 10, Friday, at 6:55 PM at the Storyteller 7 Theatre in Taos. Can't say the ticket purchasers, mostly teenagers, look middle class or better. Then again, Taos is a community with many poor people. All bags were checked for alcohol by the ticket taker. I was shocked at the glitz of the movie, though I didn't see the 3D version. Am now reading Spark Notes on the novel to get more commentary on the book's significance and staying power. Wikipedia sums it up well: "The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel written by... F. Scott Fitzgerald that follows a cast of characters living in the fictional town of West Egg on prosperous Long Island in the summer of 1922. The story primarily concerns the young and mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his quixotic passion for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan. Considered to be Fitzgerald's magnum opus, The Great Gatsby explores themes of decadence, idealism, resistance to change, social upheaval, and excess, creating a portrait of the Jazz Age that has been described as a cautionary tale regarding the American Dream." I like what Spark Notes says: "Gatsby's irresistible longing to achieve his dream, the connections of his dream to the pursuit of money and material success, the boundless optimism with which he goes about achieving this dream, and the sense of his having created a new identity in a new place all reflect the coarse combination of pioneer individualism and uninhibited materialism that Fitzgerald perceived as dominating 1920s American life."

Abiquiu

Rafting on the Chama River

Abiquiu. Have been here before so not a lot to add. What's different is all of the rafters on the Chama River on a very windy day. Also, more traffic on the gravel road to the monastery than I saw in March. Ghost Ranch and the Abiquiu Inn offer a lot of books on Georgia O'Keefe and a tour of her Abiquiu home. I have been fortunate to also have seen the one at Ghost Ranch. Bold sandstone cliffs overlook the Piedra Lumbre Valley. In the distance is the Cerro Pedernal, a narrow mesa on the northern flank of the Jemez Mountains. O'Keefe made many paintings of it; and her ashes were scattered on its top.

Cliffs as seen from Monastery Road

Flowers on Monastery Road/New since March

Wheeler Peak

Wheeler Peak. Wheeler Peak, the highest summit in New Mexico, is part of the Wheeler Peak Wilderness and not visible from Taos. Snow can linger in the high country until mid-June; and there was a bit of it yet in the Taos Ski Valley. The temperature was 57°. Alpine tundra, rare in the American Southwest, protects Wheeler and other proximate Wilderness mountains. I got as far as just below the alpine zone so saw dense conifer forest. About 135 million years ago, a huge geologic uplift created the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.  Wheeler Peak, at 13, 161 feet, is the highest of the range and the loftiest spot in New Mexico itself

Rio Hondo. I took NM 150, the Taos Ski Valley Road, which runs along the Rio Hondo, to Taos Ski Valley (Twining) to get a view of Wheeler Peak. The Rio Hondo runs down the mountains eventually connecting with the Rio Grande. I saw a lot of sporadic development and mountain homes of all architectural varieties. Still, it's a lovely area. It's great to have vast areas of New Mexico protected as wilderness areas where flora and fauna can recover from past abuse and thrive, even as they face pressure from increasing population and easier accessibility. In 2012, New Mexico's population was estimated at 2, 086, 000.

Columbine Creek. Found the more popular trailhead on NM 38,  four miles east of Questa, for the Columbine-Hondo Wilderness Study Area. Saw some active birdlife around the campground but didn't have my binoculars.  It's hard to get good pictures of creeks; but they're so refreshing spiritually and vital as water sources. The snowpack in the upper elevations acts as a bank of water, which supplies the needs of downstream communities. Just sitting by a creek for a few minutes tends to change my whole perspective on the world. No wonder Thoreau took to the woods and so enjoyed Walden Pond. To end the day I took the El Salto Road out of Arroyo Seco (seven miles north of Taos), through four wheel access only portions, up to a dead end. Along the way, I could have stopped and seen some waterfalls, which are on private property. I read later that the owners are willing to give out permits for a small fee. The village of Arroyo Seco (Dry Creek) was primarily a Hispanic-settled agricultural area–with a placita, a church, a few stores, and a post office–until Taos Ski Valley opened in 1955.

Columbine-Hondo Wilderness Study Area

Columbine-Hondo. This wilderness area is in a mountain basin, located in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the southern-most chain of the Rocky Mountains. From the late 1800s to the beginning of the twentieth century, miners and prospectors traveled a trail in this area between the gold camps of the Red River Valley and the mining camp of Twining (now Taos Ski Valley) as part of the New Mexican Gold Rush. The area is an important source of clean water for the central Rio Grande passage way in New Mexico, providing water for two of the larger Rio Grande tributaries–the Red River and the Rio Hondo. The area also waters many acequias (irrigation ditches) used by the local agricultural community. Spanish settlers used the area for seasonal sheep grazing and cultivation since the 16th century. I need to explore the area further. The part I saw consisted mostly of alpine tundra at upper elevations and had seen fire and drought. It is also early spring; and many shrubs are just beginning to show new growth. Lower elevations covered with juniper and Douglas fir, part of the Carson National Forest, were scenic.

John Dunn Bridge. On the way back to Taos, I drove over John Dunn Bridge. John Dunn's (1857-1953) purchase, with money he won at the poker table, of the toll bridge across the Rio Grande near Arroyo Hondo in 1900 gave him a monopoly on road travel in and out of Taos. Today, it's a popular fishing and swimming spot. Dunn himself lived through three periods of the West: the gun fighting, cattle working, and present modern Western eras. His home still stands filled with shops in the heart of the tourist district between Bent Street and Taos Plaza. It's a beautiful drive through this part of the gorge (itself 90 miles long and in places almost 1,000 feet deep).