5/14 - 6/3/06 Interlude on the Divide - A time to heal |
5/18- Well, Liz's injuries are taking their own good time to heal. Her inflamed heel is much better, but the pain in her right hip is still very troublesome & not improving. So we're getting concerned & starting to consider how we might get treatment. Meanwhile we've been making the best of our stay here on the edge of the forest.
We are entertained daily by the antics of a humming bird circus that
performs death defying stunts around the feeder we set up. We've had
as many as 8 at a time vying for sipping rights. Sunday we took a sight
seeing trip about 60 miles east of here to the Very Large Array (VLA).
It's the huge radio telescope installation that was featured in the
movie Contact, where Jodie Foster first found the ET transmission. It's
very impressive. Each of the 30 or so individual dish antennas are about
80 feet in diameter. You can walk right up to the base of one dish &
it's awesome to see it turn & tilt while they point it at a new
star or galaxy. The dishes ride on 3 sets of double railroad tracks
joined in a giant Y shape & can be positioned miles apart in order
to change the focus of the combined set. Besides the high tech stuff,
the VLA site is home to numerous jack rabbits and a couple of herds
of antelope. It's located out in the vast and very flat Plains of San
Agustin.
Monday some more CDT hikers stopped by. Traveling as Team Doodah, GI Jane & Chuck Wagon are accompanied by their large malamute Sci. Unfortunately SCI was having foot troubles & they were forced to take some time off for him to heal. We had a rollicking thunderstorm Monday evening (included marble-sized hail), so we invited Jane & Chuck to sleep inside Gypsy. They left Tuesday AM planning to catch a ride up to Colorado where trail conditions should be better for SCI
The afternoon thunderheads have been a regular occurrence for about a week now. We got rain again today. This region needs the rain badly, so we're not complaining about it. But the afternoon clouds have cut down on our available solar power. Since this was a work week, I've had to keep the computer & satellite on all day, resulting in low battery levels at night.
Tuesday we drove up to Pie Town to pick up a package we had shipped. UPS won't deliver to General Delivery, so we had to arrange with some folks in Pie town to use their address. We saw more antelope along the way. But we didn't get any pie in Pie Town because the 2 cafes both close by 4 PM. Pie Town is actually kind of a ghost town. It sits astride US 60, but it's not a busy route. In fact there are no busy routes in Catron county. There isn't even a super market! The small store located in each village carries less in the way of groceries than your typical 7 Eleven or Circle-K. Fresh produce? If it's not moldy, it's fresh.
5/20 - Grants, NM. It finally dawned on me Thursday that Liz's hip symptoms were probably due to a spinal misalignment that she sustained while favoring her left foot & carrying her pack. We checked around in Catron county & the one chiropractor was about 70 miles away & he didn't return our voice message. Since Liz has been talking about jumping ahead in her hike once she can resume, it made sense to look farther north. We called yesterday morning & found a bone-cracker in Grants that would take her with no appointment. So we packed up the kit & caboodle & headed north.
It's quite an interesting drive from Apache Creek to Grants: canyons,
ponderosa forests, prairies & the cliffs & vast lava flows of
the El Malpais. It's all state highways too, so we enjoyed the scenery
at a leisurely 50 MPH most of the way. We made it in plenty of time.
At the office they invited Timmy in while Liz was being treated. I was
a little leery since Timmy has been rather aggressive with other dogs,
but he was smitten by little Coco, a trimmed up Lhasa Apso. They chased
each other all over the office, leaving us in hysterics. Liz notes that
if they were to have babies, they would be Timmy-Coco pups. If you are
old enough to remember 60's tunes, this may bring back memories.
By 4:30 the doc had realigned Liz's spine (with much cracking &
popping I'm told), leaving us time to pick up mail at the PO, shop for
some fresh groceries, dump our waste tanks & head back down to the
BLM campsite in El Malpais National Monument. We've got a great spot
here on a bluff overlooking the lava beds. We were treated to a spectacular
rainbow just at sunset last evening.
Liz is feeling better today, able to walk without using her hiking poles as canes, but still slowly & in some pain. We'll see how it goes & if necessary take her in Monday for more treatments. We'll probably be camped here for several days.
5/25- It's grand to be back in an alpine forest after all those months
in the desert. We have moved on to Cuba, NM, which is the next way point
on the CDT grand tour. Cuba itself isn't much, so we drove up into the
San Pedro Mountains to the east where we have the Clear Creek Forest
Service campground all to ourselves. 
We're in tall pine, spruce & aspen forest, with wild iris blooming
all about & lots of cute squirrels & chipmunks.
Good progress to report on Liz's injuries. She's walking pretty much normally now, after a second session at the chiropractor Monday. Yesterday we visited the Ventana Arch, part of the El Malpais NM, walked part of the Zuni-Acoma trail into the lava beds & took another modest hike up into the hills around our campsite. We probably totaled 3 miles, pretty good considering she could barely walk a few days ago. We were both pretty tired afterward though.
We had a couple of different cacti blooming around our camp & we
also attracted birds to our feeders. The only seed-eater was another
female black-headed grosbeak, but we had a new hummer: a black-chinned
pair came around & seemed a little more civilized than the broad-tailed
variety. We had a pair of those too. We also had a stray dog in camp,
very skittish, but very happy to eat the meals that Liz put out for
her. Today when I set up camp here, I discovered a partial nest under
the awning on top of our slideout. We thought we might have had a nest
building ash-throated flycatcher back near Apache Creek, but hadn't
found the nest until today. Fortunately there were no scrambled eggs
in the nest debris.
Before leaving this morning I spent about an hour digging sand-grain sized garnets out of a pile of rocks that we collected on our rock hound expedition near Grants Tuesday. Liz says you can't really do much with gems that small, but it was cool finding gem stones just the same. We have dozens of the tiny gems. I guess we'll just clean them up & put them in a little vial for show. We also collected about 20 pounds of Apache Tears, obsidians ranging in size from 1/2 to 2 inches.
We took I-40 east to Albuquerque, then US 550 northwest to Cuba. I'd
just as soon avoid the Interstates, but the route via state & Indian
highways wandered all over the place. The drive up 550 was very scenic.
It's a good 4-lane highway that cuts through some very picturesque country
after leaving the Rio Grande valley. The White Mesa at San Ysidro seems
to go on for miles. Then there's a whole mini-painted desert with canyons
& arroyos cutting through sandstones ranging from ochre to pink,
red and purple.
By following the CDT route, we're getting a preview of what lies ahead when we return later so Liz can complete this portion of her hike. We're also seeing the sites along the way. We haven't yet caught up with any of the hikers that we had met along the way.
5/26 - We had forgotten that this is Memorial Day weekend. We were reminded
when campers started arriving this morning, filling the campground.
We had decided to move on to an undesignated, ie, free, site farther
along since the $10 fee at the designated campground will ruin our "RVing
New Mexico on a dollar a day" in short order. Besides, lots of
campers typically means lots of generators humming all day. We found
a nice spot in a meadow with a live stream flowing through. We have
to share it with a large group at the other end, 3 RVs & who knows
how many ATVs. With the holiday weekend, there has been a virtual invasion
of the forest by ATVs. Used to be just in winter that the forest was
invaded by motorized toys (snowmobiles), but now it's all year round.
5/31- We moved on to Chama, NM, on Sunday, almost
to Colorado. In fact we can see the Colorado Rockies from our campsite.
We're drycamping at an RV Park in Chama since there is just no dispersed
camping anywhere near here. The $11 per day is cheap, but as I said
the other day, well over the dollar a day we had been spending. Chama
is in a great setting with a crystal clear trout river snaking through
town, but since its economy is based on a 3-month tourist season, it's
not doing very well. Want to buy your own business? Half the businesses
in town are for sale.
The drive here was interesting, NM 96 then US 84, through a lot of
red rock mesas & canyons & past the spectacular Ghost Ranch
area, a relatively unknown natural wonder that reminded me of Zion NP.
We stopped along the way 
to rockhound & found a ridge strewn with huge multicolored agates.
We collected about 100 pounds to add to our growing trove of rock treasures.
We had collected probably 50 pounds of nice agates back in the San Pedro
Mountains too. Going to need to ship some rocks back to Phoenix soon.
Our first morning here Liz noticed an owl up in a nearby cottonwood. Later we determined that there were up to 4, some fledgelings, probably great horned. Our hummer feeder is a hit here too, attracting the same broad-tailed and black-chinned varieties that we had farther south. We have also seen a number of very colorful songbirds outside our windows: western tanager, lazuli bunting, Bullock's oriole & numerous warblers.
Liz continues to improve in the health department. Her feet are fine,
but she still experiences hip pain some days. Her recovery was set back
by a serious strep throat infection. We were able to get medical treatment
back in Cuba & she is still on antibiotics. She really hopes to
be able to get back on the trail next week. Several of the hikers we
have met previously are in Chama or are scheduled to arrive in the next
few days. The next section of the trail still has a lot of snow &
it crosses a couple of passes above 10,000 feet. It would really be
good if Liz could accompany someone through there.
6/3 - Liz is back on the trail. She's been itching
to go & yesterday we caught up with Jim & Ginny in Chama on
a rest day. Liz wanted to tag along with other hikers on the first stretch
of the Colorado high country -- lots of snow still up there. J &
G agreed & since they were leaving this morning, we shifted gears,
got everything ready & I took the group on up to Cumbres Pass where
J & G had left off. Mark the film maker joined us at the pass where
he taped interviews with all 3 hikers. It was hard to see Liz head off
down that trail, but it was such a gorgeous warm day up there at 10,000
feet & she has been missing it so badly.
On the way back down from the pass I saw black smoke streaming up the canyon. I knew it was the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic RR chugging up with a load of tourists. I pulled off the highway & set up for some shots of the classic narrow gauge coal-fired engine & its retinue.
Last night we had J & G over to our camp for a shiskabob cookout.
A good time was had. Had not the hiking bug struck, Liz & I would
have been out fishing the Chama. Friday evening we were just talking
about doing some fishing together when I saw a guy stringing up his
fly rod at the next camp over. I asked him where he was going to fish,
knowing that the little stream next to us held no trout. Turned out
he was Taylor Streit, a Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame Legendary Guide
& author as well as owner of the Taos Fly Shop. He got out one of
his books & showed me a few spots along the Chama & Rio Brazos
where he said I'd probably do well. When you get a clear message from
the fishing gods, you gotta obey, so I will be on the water today. I
bought a 5 day NM license online for $24.
I'll be moving on to Pagosa Springs in Colorado in 2 or 3 days to catch up with the hikers at Wolf Creek Pass. Join us!
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