Hello Everyone!
It’s been a busy week out here on the road in Southern California. This week has taken me from the desert to the mountains to the city and back again. I got some skiing in, went to a local fair, drove down Route 66 and went to the original Renaissance Festival in Irwindale. As the week is ending, I’m making my way up the east side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and enjoying seeing all the snowy peaks out my driver’s side window. I’m getting closer and closer to starting my tour season and trying to get as much in before I do as I can.
After I finished writing this post last week, it was late in the day so I spent the night there in Twentynine Palms. I went out for a surprisingly excellent salad at the Cactus Grill and then headed out to the Tortoise Rock Casino for the night. This casino is run by the Twenty-Nine Palms Band of Mission Indians and they were incredibly welcoming of overnighters so long as you checked in with security. I enjoyed a little blackjack and walked out $10 up which is definitely a win.
I was up and out early on Thursday as I needed to grab some groceries and a few other things in the morning before I got started with my day’s travels. Once I was all stocked up, I headed out to the Big Morongo Canyon Preserve just off Highway 62 in the Morongo Valley and I’m really glad that I did. This preserve is located in Sand to Snow National Monument and is run jointly by San Bernardino County and the Bureau of Land Management. It’s not a huge place, but it offers several miles of trails and boardwalks in very different environments. The wildflowers were in full bloom and there were plenty of birds out there to keep me company (and apparently a few rattlesnakes, but I didn’t see any). It was a wonderful place to spend the morning, get some fresh air and stretch my legs. From there, I jumped on Route 38 in Yucaipa and started making my way up into the San Bernardino Mountains. The road was pretty steep and we struggled a bit with the heat as I didn’t know we would travel up to almost 9000’ on our way to Big Bear Lake. Thankfully it got considerably cooler the higher we went and right when I thought we were going to have to pull over to avoid overheating, we crested the pass and started dropping down the other side. I got to Big Bear Lake with enough time to wander around the beautiful namesake mountain lake for a bit before the sun went down. From the north side of the lake I could see Snow Summit Ski Resort and was impressed by how much snow was on the mountain. The Village at Big Bear Lake is a cute little mountain town which I would really enjoy for the next two nights.
I was up early the next morning and stopped in to a shop called GetBoards right there in town to rent my ski equipment for the day. The people working there were great and my equipment was considerably cheaper than it would have been at the resort. Once I was all outfitted I went up and hit the slopes for the first time since I was in Western North Carolina five years ago. The snow was remarkably good and most of the lifts and slopes were open. I loved the west side of the mountain which is full of long, easy trails for “skill development”…
The area that is now Tucumcari was once home to dinosaurs who walked the shores of an inland sea. When the water receded, the sediment formed into sandstone and one of the formations it left is now called Tucumcari Mountain (although it’s really more of a mesa). Prehistoric people tracked mammoths and mastodons in the area and later developed farming techniques and built villages. In the 18th century, the Apache and Comanche moved through the area, hunting bison and pronghorn. The name, Tucumcari, comes from an Apache word “tukanukaru,” meaning “to lie in wait for something to approach”. In the early 20th century, the Chicago, Rock Island and Union Pacific Railroad was making its way across the country and a tent city sprung up called Ragtown and, later, Six Shooter Siding. As the camp grew into a town, they changed the name to Tucumcari and it stuck. Route 66 came through in 1926 and the town became an overnight stop for people headed west. Signs for miles declared “Tucumcari Tonight” and people pushed through for the promise of a hot meal and a comfortable bed. Tucumcari today still capitalizes on nostalgia for the “Mother Road”, but also has a wonderful museum downtown which has a place for everything and everything has been lovingly put into place. I had a great stop in Tucumcari and definitely got my kicks on Route 66. I hope you enjoy these photos from beautiful Tucumcari, New Mexico.
Hello Everyone! It’s been another amazing week out here in New Mexico and I can’t wait to tell you about it, but I’m going to start out this week with my most exciting news. As most of you know, I will be going back to my regular gig as an overland tour guide this summer. I’ll be working for a company called Incredible Adventures which is currently being run by my last two managers from my old company. I got a call from one of them yesterday with some thoughts on my start-up tour and I will be heading to Hawaii next month. Of all the places I thought I might go this summer, Hawaii was not on my list and I am so excited for this opportunity. It will be in the midst of my time in Arizona, but I will fly out and then back and be able to finish up my time there before heading on to San Francisco to begin my season in earnest. I am definitely looking forward to walking barefoot on a white sand beach and swimming in beautiful turquoise water. So with mai tais and sea turtles dancing in my head, let me tell you about my exciting week here in New Mexico.
When I left you last week, I was planning on heading to a place called Meow Wolf the following morning. Meow Wolf was an incredible experience which is really hard to explain. It’s essentially a big funhouse, full of fascinating and beautiful art installations. You enter it through the front door of a Victorian house and then you choose your own adventure from there. You can go through the fireplace into an ice cave with a mammoth skeleton which you can play like a xylophone. You can go through the refrigerator which takes you to a strange vacationland. You can go through the bookcase and come out in a circus-like room. You end up in treehouses and lighthouses and flying buses. It really is quite a place to experience and I was there for probably three hours and continued finding new rooms and passages right up until the end, and I’m sure I missed some along the way. It was weird and wonderful and I would definitely recommend it if you are ever in Santa Fe (or Denver or Las Vegas).
My Thursday afternoon was definitely one of ups and downs. I got a call from my dad telling me he had fallen and broken his ankle. He’ll be okay and is in a recovery facility, but I worry about some of these places and what floats around in them with Covid only being one such worry. On the flip-side, I got a nice email telling me one of my photos has been accepted to be published in a book of hiking trails from National Geographic called 100 Trails, 5000 Ideas. As a photographer, National Geographic is obviously one of the biggest names in the industry and while it will be a small photo in a big book, I’m still very happy to be included. In the afternoon I headed over to visit the Montezuma Masonic Lodge, where the gentleman I met in Taos told me I could find Kit Carson’s rifle. I met several of the Masons who were a part of the Lodge when I walked in, and they were incredibly warm and welcoming. The Secretary, Don, told me the whole story of the rifle and how Kit himself had instructed that it be hand delivered to the Lodge upon his death. It was, and they’ve been caring for it ever since. I had to put on a pair of gloves to hold it, but it was amazing to have this piece of history in my hands. I’m very grateful to the gentlemen of the Montezuma Lodge for their hospitality and all of the fascinating stories they shared with me while I was there. I decided to celebrate the day with a few beers at La Fonda, a wonderful must-see hotel right off the central Plaza in downtown Santa Fe. Mark has been bartending at La Fonda for years and it’s always a pleasure to stop in and say hello and have a drink in historic surroundings. From there, I said goodbye to Santa Fe and headed up the highway to the Buffalo Thunder casino for the night.
I started my day on Friday at Bandelier National Monument, not far up the road. Due to its proximity to Santa Fe it’s a busy park and it was fairly crowded when I was there, but there were some great old ruins to poke around at the base of some beautiful cliffs. When I had had my fill of the ruins, I had some lunch and then set off up the other side of the canyon on the Frijoles Rim Trail. It was a wonderful and beautiful trail and, in contrast to the valley, I didn’t see a single person along the whole hike. The trail took me up to the top of the canyon and along its rim for a mile or so and there were wonderful views down the canyon and off to the mountains in the distance. When I made it back to my van, we were off and running to Los Alamos to have a short look around Manhattan Project National Historical Park before it closed. I had been to another section of this park several years ago in Oak Ridge, Tennessee where they had enriched the uranium which was then transported to Los Alamos and built into the atomic bombs. They tested their first bomb at the Trinity Site down near what is now White Sands National Park…
Hello Everyone! Well I’m finally starting to feel more adjusted to the dryness of the desert and the altitude here in Northern New Mexico. It definitely takes a few days to get used to in my sinuses and with just walking around. On the other hand, Shadow Catcher has gotten better gas mileage this week than at any time since I’ve had her, and it is definitely the right time for that. Daylight Savings is back and I’m absolutely enjoying the later sunset – it stretches my day out a bit and I feel a little less hurried. I spent a good chunk of this week in Albuquerque, a city I had only visited in passing before. At first it seemed a little bit seedy, but it really grew on me and I enjoyed it quite a bit and look forward to returning. Beyond that, the weather has been near perfect all week and I’ve continued to really enjoy my time in New Mexico. It’s growing nearer and dearer to my heart every day. I guess they don’t call it The Land of Enchantment for nothing.
So when I left you last week, I was in the small town of Truth or Consequences which turned out to be a neat little town and one of the most photogenic I’ve been through so far. I headed out to Elephant Butte Lake State Park to take some photos and grab a quick shower, but the lake out there is really low after years of drought. I returned downtown in the evening and enjoyed wandering around and taking photos until the sun went down. Then I stopped in for a couple of beers at the great little Truth or Consequences Brewery and enjoyed speaking with the lady who worked there who had moved to T & C from El Paso and never looked back.
I was up and off on Thursday with big plans that I couldn’t quite fit into a day. My first stop was at old Fort Craig, an army fort built in 1854 - soon after the New Mexico Territory became a part of the United States as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo. The fort was established to provide protection from Indians for settlers moving west into the newly acquired territory. It was staffed mostly by recent immigrants, one of whom described Fort Craig as “some lonesome sort of hole on the edge of the hot and dusty desert”. It would become the unlikely site of a fairly important battle (for the Western Theatre) of the Civil War as the Confederacy had its eyes on Colorado and California gold and a Pacific port which would be free from a Union blockade. To get to either, they had to cross New Mexico first, no small feat in the 1860s. Confederate General Henry Hopkins Sibley, who led the charge, planned on providing for his troops by “living off the land”. I don’t think he was quite prepared for the desolate and sparsely populated desert environment he found. Fort Craig, at the time, had tremendous storehouses and provided food and supplies to the entire region, so Sibley set his sights on the small desert fort. The armies met on the Valverde Battlefield, not far away, and the Confederates managed to send the Union troops retreating back to the fort. Sibley then demanded the fort’s surrender, which was probably met by laughter but was definitely refused by Commanding Officer Colonel Edward Canby who saw no reason to surrender his secure and well-armed fort. Sibley didn’t have the ammunition or the firepower to attack the fort, so he was forced to move on in search of provisions for his men further north. Canby left in pursuit, leaving Kit Carson in command in his absence. A defeat near Santa Fe sent the Confederates high-tailing it back to Texas. The fort would go back to serving its original purpose of fighting off the Apache, but was abandoned by the 1890s. Today it is just a collection of ruins overseen by the Bureau of Land Management, but it’s an interesting place. The caretaker told me they average just 8 visitors a day, but sometimes get as many as 20.
After a few hours at the fort, I headed on to the beautiful Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge just up the road. These natural wetlands are an essential stopover for migrating birds, and seeing it helps to show the importance of the Wildlife Refuge System…
