6/3 - 6/17/06 Going with the Flow - Shifting Gears

New Mexico Travels Photo Gallery

6/8- You just never know what tomorrow will bring. Tuesday afternoon I received a call from Liz, "Please come and rescue me!" She & 3 other hikers, the remaining members of the Minnesota 4, also known as the ids, had bailed out from the high country. Too much mushy snow. And in Liz's case, she was injured again. Her left heel had become inflamed & she had pulled a groin muscle sinking into a snow bank. It had been a miserable & difficult 3 days, with the descent requiring them to ford melt-fed streams. They reached the remote village of Platoro, Colo., high up in the Conejos River Valley & called me from the Skyline Lodge.

The drive up was spectacular. NM 17 becomes CO 17 just before crossing Cumbres Pass into the southern San Juan Mountains. The route crosses several miles of very high alpine meadows before rapidly dropping into the Conejos Valley with spectacular views around each bend. This area is picture postcard Colorado, just jaw-dropping in it's natural beauty & grandeur. Driving up the valley I was repeatedly struck by it's near pristine state, not to mention the pretty waters of the river. The fishing there must be fantastic.

I found the wayward hikers & headed back to Chama. Liz had already decided that her trek of the CDT is done. I was relieved, but sad for her that she won't be able to fulfill this dream. But for us, it opens up a whole new chapter. With the hike no longer looming before us, we can get on with other things that we can enjoy together. We are now planning a summer of rock hounding, fishing, hiking & birding as we move north through Colorado & Wyoming before heading west to Idaho & Oregon.

As for the fishing here on the Chama, I got out 3 times, including last night accompanied by Liz. I hooked into a couple of fish, but no trout dinner this time. Saw a beaver swimming on the other side of the river & managed to snag a little water snake that was able to free itself before I could get in close enough to check it out. I'll be teaching Liz to fly fish once she's healed up enough to wade a little.

We've been experiencing overcast afternoons all week, with some thundershowers & stormy winds. Our site is shaded until about 9 AM anyway, so it has impacted our solar power such that most evenings we can't spend much time online. I decided last night to move today to a hookup site at our campground so we could get recharged before moving on. It was clear & sunny when I checked with the owners, but by the time I went to pay the extra $6 for hookups, the entire valley was socked in & it was pouring rain. The owner looked at me & said, "Did you know this was coming?" It's still storming with lightening all around as I write this at 8 PM.

Besides the solar problems, my laptop computer has been acting up for more than a week, shutting itself down at random times. I've arranged for Dell to replace the guts on warranty as soon as we are in one place long enough to tell them where we will be a day or 2 in advance. But it has made it that much harder for us to keep up with our journals.

One more note. We continue to enjoy the birds here. After our move today, we hung the hummer feeder on Gypsy's ladder, right next to the back window. One of the females found it soon & I was able to study her from 18" away as she sipped her sugar nectar. Got a nice shot of a flicker yesterday & also our Lazuli bunting chowing down in the other feeder. Saw a Lewis's woodpecker this afternoon, first one ever.

6/16- Like I said, you just never know... I mentioned my computer troubles -- well, it finally melted down last weekend. I got it fixed late Weds, but have been in a mad catch up mode with my day job & my RV writing/editing since, so I'm just now getting a chance to update my journal.

We left Chama a week ago & headed back down to the Ghost Ranch area -- a beautiful but little known red-rock canyon region once home to Georgia O'Keefe. We took a Forest Service road about 5 miles into the Chama Canyon Wilderness & found a great camp site on a bluff high above the river gorge with sandstone cliffs on both sides. The sandstone looks like Neapolitan ice cream -- cream, tan & red layers. While there we did some rock hounding & also drove the 10 miles to the north end of the canyon to visit the Peace Monastery of Christ in the Desert. What a setting for a life of contemplation! We also visited the Ghost Ranch dinosaur & cultural museums, small but worth the stop. Liz was still recovering from her latest injuries, so our exploring on foot has been somewhat limited.

Needing a physical address where I could tell the Dell service people to find me, we decided to move on to an RV park in Taos, where we have been since Monday. We took kind of a scenic drive here, following state highways much of the way. We came to the precipice overlooking the Rio Grande Gorge & had to catch our breath. It just looked like a short stretch of gravel road on the map, but we found a very steep & washboarded stretch with extreme hairpin turns descending into the abyss. We backed up to a level area, parked the trailer & checked out the road. Scary! We took a Forest Service road north to US 64 & took the bridge across the chasm. Spectacular & we were glad to view it from above rather than below.

Since I had a "forced" day off Tuesday, we drove the Enchanted Circle scenic route which traverses the Sangre de Christo Mountains to Angel Fire, runs up the Eagles Nest valley, crosses back through the mountains to Red River & then back south to Taos. We have been wondering if we might like this area as a possible place to move our home base to, so there was an ulterior motive to the drive. The mountain country is beautiful, heavily forested in pine & spruce. The high mountain valley at Angel Fire & Eagles Nest is very nice, but at 10,000 feet, probably not practical for our needs. We came away deciding that this area is probably not what we want. We were also looking for some place to camp next, but the only thing we could find that had cell service available was some Forest Service camps near Red River. They recently raised their fees to $15, but that's still half of what we are paying in Taos.

Tomorrow we are heading back to Phoenix to trade out some heavy duty trail hiking gear that Liz won't be needing for some fun stuff like an inflatable raft & more rockhounding & lapidary gear. We'll leave Gypsy here & pick her up later next week to head on to Colorado for the start of the next phase of our summer adventures.

<< prior adventure           next adventure >>