Musings

We departed early, heading south through the Galisteo Basin. Cool archaeology is here, but we didn’t stop.

We spotted trains crossing—enough train action here to merit the two levels of tracks….

Strange giant cowboy cut-out face-off or smack-down.

At the entrance to Carlsbad Caverns park, there’s a multifaceted business called White’s City, a commercial undertaking with many buildings that seeks to get money out of your pocket and into theirs. Look at the critter-statues…bison, alien, etc., and a big USA flag flapping above.

Road to the visitor center…hairpin turn that looks like it may hang in space. Turns out it’s on solid ground, however.

We took the sissy elevator entrance. The elevator has a top and a bottom stop, nothing in between. And the distance is measured in feet. We dropped smoothly several hundred feet. The walking tour is of the Big Room. It goes on and on. And on and on.

First view. Shiny handrails are on both sides of the paved path.

Handrails left. This is a big space. Even standing there it is difficult to grasp the size of the open space around you.

More big stalactites, stalagmites and perhaps speleothems.

I was fascinated by this well-decorated passage to…dunno where.

I was also fascinated by the few pools of water we could see. This one had drips falling into it, making the “wrinkles” in the water.

We elevatored back to the surface, had a snack from our abundant food stores in the cab, and headed south-ish below the Guadalupe Mountains. Signs every few miles warned us about the wind. It was always there this afternoon, and for maybe fifty it was straight at us, spoiling our mileage.

We crossed into Texas and had this confirmation that we were approaching the US–Mexico border. We frequently hear about walls, but these things are perhaps far more effective. When airborne.

We had a fancy dinner way out in the relative boonies, very delicious, at Cochineal in Marfa. I had a pricey and yummy steak, and the Guru had schnitzel. With veg for both of us. Recommended.

Yawn.

Posted at 11:59 PM | Comments Off on Scale can be elusive

I found pockets of people/businesses active before 9am this morning, but along this block, it was me and this crow. Since they are often in a group, aka a murder, I am a bit mystified about Mr/Lady Solo.

I hoofed it up Ft Marcy Hill, jacket off despite it being rather chilly…go heart rate!

Cutting back through the plaza and heading for the capitol side street, I found a line of baggied meters…clearly the city-fathers and -mothers opted for encouraging shopping traffic rather than collecting change.

Then we took off southbound to meet up with dear friends. We took the Interstate for a bit, then got off and took the back way (where it survived). In this area, signage makes a big deal about damaged guardrails, although, mysteriously, not in this case. I suspect this practice dates back to the early days of guardrail installation, when, if they were present, some drivers depended on them to nudge their vehicles back onto the road should their steering waver. Hypothesis.

Great view of the Rio Grande valley; we’re shooting off to the left, downstream.

Our secondary route took us through several pueblos, where we saw many hornos, sometimes in doubles and triples. Wonder how hot cottonwoods burn.

We even found a dozen or so sandhill cranes in one field, I guess opting to avoid party central down in Bosque del Apache.

We had a great visit with our friends, trying the whole time not to regret that we live so far apart. Talk, laugh. Repeat.

It gets dark early here, and the low light angle made for stupendous landscape views.

And here’s the basin of Santa Fé, a band of sunlight and city lights combining in this magic moment.

Finally, a birdy bookend, this time pigeons.

Posted at 10:04 PM | Comments Off on Parched pastiche

Nature of course offers harsh edges and lines. Today I kept seeing subtle changes of many sorts. Notice how the variations in juniper dimensions help your eye note the landscape’s folds and creases.

Add some snow-dusted high elevations to a steeper juniper plus pines landscape.

And tall pines! And more snow…blanket more than merely dust.

Even these amazingly tasty Brussels sprouts have layers. And that honey-mustard sauce…otherworldly. We lunched in Taos on not-New Mexican cuisine.

Real verticality. Meadow/pasture at base….

And a gorge! Downward verticality. That’s the Rio Grande.

Meadow-to-peaks verticality again, this time with a line of fence-posts angling across.

We climbed to higher elevations, and thus more snow accumulation. Even lines of animal tracks crossing the white.

Always, since we were driving and the road was plowed, the road wends across the landscape, a scar in the snowiness.

Hoar-frosted trees. Layers here are branches and between-branches.

This town is named Los Ojos, which means eyes, but is also used for springs. If you were an anciano*, wouldn’t water emerging from the ground be pretty darned special?, an addition to the complexity of the Underworld.

Erosional remnant…all about layers. And graduations of color.

And dusk…on a clear night. With a big moon, off to the way left, to be imagined. Full tomorrow night….

* anciano = ancient one in Spanish.

Posted at 9:25 PM | Comments Off on Layers and graduations

Our first big adventure was to drive into—and out of—an extinct volcano.

We followed the Jemez River up. It’s in the previous shot, too. Between the river and the road is a ridge locally called soda dam. Long gone hot springs created the deposit, layer upon layer.

This is approximately the crest of the caldera rim. It’s not edgy and distinct. We were glad it was warm and sunny, and the crud on the road was melting, even in the shadows.

This is the Valle Grande of the caldera. It’s huge. You are looking at no more than a “corner” of the interior. All those ridges across the VG are on the floor of the caldera. Huge.

Descending toward Los Alamos (the willows) on the other outer flank, we could see the mountains on the other side of the Rio Grande Valley. Such landscapes!

Outside the lava territory of the volcano-lands, we saw different kinds of rock and landforms. That is the extent of my geology knowledge on this. 😇

Our second big adventure was to walk downtown for a fancy dinner, just as the sunset was glowing over the rooftops in the neighborhood…very soon to fade.

The plaza trees are festooned with lights. And the moon was up.

Food porn. I had elk tenderloin with mushroom sauce and veggies. Perfection.

Plaza lights as we traced our steps homeward, after full dark.

Highly computational photo. Stunning.

And the super-great adventure? Thirty years since our wedding. 🥂🍾 😃

Posted at 6:32 PM | 2 Comments »

I almost titled this “Sin papas,” which is Spanish for without potatoes, which is how I ordered my breakfast—in English—and actually what the order-taker told the cook. Delightful veggie scramble bowl, I had. Sin papas.

More mundanity: traffic light being fixed. Under solid overcast.

Sky is clearing as we pass below Buchanan Dam, holding back the Colorado. Which today looks blue not colorado, Spanish for reddish, dark rusty brown, I think.

We needed to stretch our legs and stopped in San Angelo. Immediately when we opened the doors, we heard a band playing across the lake, another dammed up section of the Colorado. We walked toward the band shell and found this lady posed with her own shell.

Band was playing piece after piece of band standards, mostly several together in medleys. Is this what bands typically do? The musicians were separated into two groups, each with its own conductor. The upper conductor was leading the whole thing, I’m pretty sure. There were active duty folk in the audience, several dignitaries on stage (one in uni), and I think the event was to honor a group that works with wounded warriors.

We are standing as requested for the final song, “Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

On the road again, and the scrub oaks we had seen most of the morning disappeared and we saw wind plants on the horizon.

Continuing westward, the skies became almost clear and we got into irrigated cotton lands. However, they have had some rain, and we saw puddles here and there, and water in the creeks/dry washes. For a time.

Cotton harvest. Round bales and large rectangular stacks. I think the four-digit numbers may designate which farmer is to be paid for the cotton.

Another gorgeous sunset, this one with a line of peaks in the far distance across a valley. We lost another hour and I’m rather discombobulated. And tired. G’night.

Posted at 5:26 PM | Comments Off on Things can change when you keep moving

A relic loblolly pine forest…so unexpected to me in my ignorance. Scientists have looked at the genetics, and these trees are closely related to others to the east. Thus, this is the westernmost stand of the eastern forest in this part of North America.

Of course, over a century ago, a big forest meant that loggers showed up. And the mills were built in Bastrop, and many people there became wealthy. Now the town seems bent on being uber-charming, to attract visitors (with credit cards and puffy pocketbooks) from nearby Austin, especially, and elsewhere.

Bastrop’s mills were powered by the water of the Colorado River, and here’s the old vehicle bridge (current one to the right), which is supposed to be a pedestrian bridge, but is closed presently.

Onward. Look: traffic. And more traffic. Look: a capital. Yes: Austin.

Post-dinner stroll: hey, Stevie Ray Vaughan, a man from a line of three-named men.

Riffles from passing crewing skulls. Yes, in the dark. And, yes, there’s a Goooooooogle “G” on the building opposite.

Playing with computational photography in the darkness under the railroad bridge over the Colorado. In between taking this and the previous photo, I was looking up for the lone star, but I saw more than one.

Posted at 8:52 PM | Comments Off on Into the political center

Turns out our word bayou is from a Frenchified Native American word. Most I’ve seen are like this—dredged and channelized.

Photographically, the high point was a morning walk in a wildlife preserve also known as a swamp. Lots of Spanish moss but no Spanish.

The trail took us back to open water—a lake? This bird kept its distance yet still was curious about us. Snowy egret.

Closer was this little blue heron, busy hunting and mostly ignoring us.

Back on the road we drove through an area with lots of ship-building, which appeared to be roadside but was really in nearby channels.

Later we got into a cane-growing zone. It is harvest season and a few guys and many machines were active. Lots of trailers, full and empty, moved the chopped plant material to…to…I assume presses?

Many bridges, a few high enough for ships to pass.

Much later we were in a traffic jam (no alternative routes), and the Guru made a new friend. Kinda.

And another spectacular sunset. Life is darned good. We sleep in Texas tonight. [Those two sentences not logically connected.]

Posted at 6:22 PM | Comments Off on Bayou territory glimpses

We joined the highway hoards returning to their nests after holiday adventures (eating, shopping, hopefully laughing), and found these junque-laden Joads on the move. The retired schoolbus was packed and the maroon crossover(?) seemed the spriteliest vehicle of the bunch by far.

Note in this snap and the previous one that the traffic was heavier in the other direction. For something like 50 miles of interstate it must have averaged about 30mph. We only had momentary slow-downs in comparison. Don’t know the temporary migration patterns that would produce this differential.

We stopped in Pascagoula to stretch our legs at a park across from this pier. I surmise that all had been rebuilt after Katrina (now way back) in 2005.

The park had a shallow wading pool with misters that could have been no more than ankle deep on a toddler when activated. Off to the side was a sign: “Please rub top of bollard to activate.” The Guru looked at it and said, “You first.”

We looked for a seafood place along the Gulf. The first choice was up on super tall pillars with a great view, but closed for cleanup (not cleaning). Ooops. But it was next to a marina full of working boats with nets not crab/lobster pots, which of course was very interesting.

We continued along the shore and found this place, not up on pillars, but still with a fine view of the water from the dining room.

These nifty new phones/cameras are wonderful. These are the colors of the sunset. Ignore the insect blotches, plz.

Deciding that it’d be wiser to get a needed car wash before we got to the desert, we went through the Wall of Foam (blue sign), and got the worst of the accumulated gunk (nastiness of oak residue was particularly worrisome on the hood) removed.

There wasn’t any other traffic on the old US highway we took instead of the interstate parallel to the shore, and the Guru stopped so I could nudge the phone/camera into the land of computational photography. It was darned dark out, but it captured the bridge superstructure as well as a few stars in the night sky. Oh, boy, we’ll have fun experimenting this whole trip!

Posted at 4:26 PM | Comments Off on You first

We had a miscellaneous errand over toward downtown, so we strolled around that area. This is the view of downtown from Jackson Street bridge. You many have seen it in a movie or in advertising art.

Turns out the libraries are closed for the holiday, so we used the book drop. Our regular branch is closed for renovations, so we used a different branch, over by the MLK center. [TMI, pretty sure.]

One of my favorite public art pieces of all time. MLK stating that he has a dream, I’m guessing.

People live around here now, in some rather expensive new apartments and not in the crack-infested public housing that was here.

Nice reflection in window of business undergoing renovation…sign is for an axe-throwing business. Have fun, it states in multiple ways.

Pansy (etc.) triangle by the MLK center. Your federal dollars at work. National Park Service property.

We discovered that we didn’t know that the Grady HIGH SCHOOL football team has a practice field. More tax dollars at work.

Posted at 6:45 PM | Comments Off on More than tax dollars

Or is it an easy one?

Watch the rain fall…or watch the bread cubes for the dressing dry?

Posted at 7:16 PM | 1 Comment »