New Mexico – Page 16

Bandelier Natl Park Valley – Saturday June 13, 2015

Pictures from my morning hike into Bandelier Natl Park.
I got up early one morning and hiked to 1.5 miles down into the valley and then did some more exploring of the valley floor.
Looking across the mesa at the volcano which created this rock.
The higher area is the caldera which created this area.
Frey trail down to the valley floor.
The information I read at the visitor’s center says this is a parrot.
Couple of years ago a flash flood created quite a mess, here are some of the thousands of trees backed up on other trees.
Trail up to the Alcove Area of the park.
It was a nice morning, I was back to the visitor’s center by 9:30 a.m. to catch the first bus back to the campground. I did have a jog down the trail a ways to catch the bus.

Our first afternoon at Bandelier Natl Park.

Here are a few of the pictures I took during our first day in Bandelier Valley.
A flower that was all over the valley.
An open Kivia.
This shows here some of the houses were built extending from the wall.
Looking up the valley at where the homes are placed.
Showing the homes in the holes in the rock wall.
In the middle you can see the railings and steps up into the homes.
More of the railings between houses.
This rock is just full of holes and is relative soft.
This cool flower again.
You can see people in the middle of this picture.
Here is a herd of Rangers.
The homes on the valley floor.
More of the railings and people looking at homes.

The logs go all the way back into the rock wall to form a roof for the lower unit and floor for the upper home. Later I’ll have pictures of the log holes in the rock wall.
The holes in this rock is just strange.
See the railings and people.
Couldn’t get enough of these holes.
Homes down in the valley floor.
Shows homes under an over hang.
Long row of homes.
The small round holes is where the roof and floor supports went into the wall, the homes were three stories.
Roof and floor support holes.
Abert’s squirrel, look at the ears.
This is from inside the museum, shows how they constructed the homes.
This is from the road leaving the valley. It was a nice morning.

Santa Fe, NM – Friday June 12, 2015

These are some of the pictures I took while in Santa Fe. We spent 6 hours walking around the central area of Santa Fe. Looking at three churches and a bunch of high priced jewelry stores. We had a good time however my feet where tired.
Some amazing stain glass windows.
This is the Lorette Chapel, the story is here
The front of the state museum is where many navajo sell jewelry.
This picture of hail was taken 30 minutes after the above picture of the plaza.
Lady of Guadalupe Church of Santa Fe.
Hand carved door header.
Think this is some of the original bricks.

Navajo Lake State Park, Tuesday June 9, 2015

We were on the road early today for a 300 mile drive to Navajo Lake State Park in northwest New Mexico. The drive turned out to be an extra 50 miles. I took a wrong turn just 8 miles before we would have gotten to the Pine Area campground. I saw a Navajo Lake Campground sign and I turned left. Had to drive all the way to Aztec, NM (14 miles) before I could find a place to turn around. There are two challenges in pulling a car: 1) you CAN NOT back up, not even a foot, 2) getting gas, finding a station I can get into and out of without backing up, and I have to decide as we drive by, it can be a REAL pain.

We are in site 58, our third site of the afternoon. The sites are all laid out backwards. Power and water should be on one side with the door and table on the other, most sites have the power, water and table on the same side, or the power/water are on the side where motorhomes and trailer have there door. The first site I could not get level without our slide being within 10 inches of the next sites BBQ (really 10 inches). The second site was a pull through marked a reserve site on the exit side of the pull through and an open non-reserved site on the entry. When I pulled into the site and started setting up the RV the camp host (really nice guy) came by and asked me why I was setting up in a reserved site. I said because the post over here says the site is open. Dan (the host) said it’s a reserved site and he had actually never seen the non-reserved site post I saw. He went a got a garbage bag and put it over my post really fast. He than took me around the park in his John Deere tractor and helped us find a site.
Here is the drive for today.
Here is a close up of the area we are in:

Notice the dam at the lower part of the lake. Can you see where the blue line goes across the face of the dam. Yes, the road starts at the bottom of the dam face and we drove up across the face of the dam to get to the top of the dam.

Valdaz Caldara, NM – Monday June 8, 2015

I got up at 6:15 and hiked the Frey down into the valley to see the ruins. My goal was to hike further up the valley than Jean and I had done on Friday to see the “Alcove”. To get to the Alcove it requires climbing 3 ladders and a bunch of steps for a 140 climb. Jean was not interested in going up the ladders. It was a nice hike. I was alone all morning, saw the first person 3/4 mile for the visitor’s center about 9:15. ( I’ll post pictures when I get them formatted. )

The track line on the right side without any dots was the bus ride back to the campground.

Drove the 15 mile up super volcano and into it’s caldara today. It really is a large volcano, the road across is 13 miles. When we get some internet access it’s on my list to learn more about this volcano. It is currently a national preserve (since 2000) and will become part of the National Park System this October.

Los Alamos, NM – Sunday June 7, 2015

Happy Birthday Christine, a day late.

Today was two museums in Los Alamos; a small historical museum and Ray Bradberry Museum. The small town museum told the story creating the town of Los Alamos as part of the Manhattan Project to build the first atomic bomb.

The Ray Bradberry Museum is very high tech and more of an advertisement for the Los Alamos National Laboratory them what I would call a museum. They had a great section on the atomic bomb and then several areas showing all of the important things they are doing now and why we should continue to give the lab 3.5 to 4.0 billion a year for all the projects they work on.

Santa Fe, NM – Saturday June 6, 2015

Drove 41 miles into Santa Fe to see the sights. There were three mission churches Jean wanted to see and a couple of museums. We ended up seeing all three churches and then spending the rest of the day walking around the shops at the Santa Fe Plaza. There are hundreds of shops to walk through. It is really hard for me to understand how all the jewelry shops can all stay open and make a profit.

Pictures of the churches ( when I get pictures formatted I’ll post them here ).

I put them HERE.

Bandelier National Monument – Friday June 5, 2015

This morning we got up and went down into the valley to see the ruins. With limited parking in the valley the county is paying for a bus shuttle system to ensure people keep coming to the park. My guess is there may be 30 – 40 parking spaces at the parks visitors center. Visitors can drive their own cars into the park before 9:00 a.m. and after 3:00 p.m. We left the campground at 8:30 and drive to the visitor’s center, there were about 20 available parking spaces. The shuttle system allows 100’s of people a day to be in the park. The shuttle starts at a county visitor’s center in White Rock, NM. They have a lot of parking spaces for visitors and even spots to park your RV. The RV spots have power available for $20.00 a day if you’d like to leave the A/C running. The A/C is important if you have a pet who can not ride into the park on the bus. This a really great idea. The $20.00 will than allow you to stay in this RV parking area over night.

Jean and I spent 3 hours walking along the interruptive trail viewing the ruins: ( when I get some pictures formatted I’ll post them HERE ). Pictures from today start half way down the page.

Bandelier National Monument – Thursday June 4, 2015

We were up early today and on the road by 7:00 a.m.. I wanted to get to Bandelier early because of the limited choice of campsites. This campground is an older national park like campground which means there will only be a few sites we’ll be able to fit into. We got here at noon and got the only pull through site in the park ( lucky Harry and Jean ) site 55.

Paying for the site was an interesting endeavor. Most things here are pay by credit card machine this includes entry into the park and camping.
Here are the registration instructions on the campground map.
TO REGISTER: Choose a vacant site (DO NOT put anything on the site until the site is paid for) and return to self-registration area at campground entrance. Follow directions posted by the fee machine. Place
receipt from machine on dashboard. Note: Machine give $1 coins for change.
If you wish to extend your stay you must do so after 12:00 Noon.
Camping fee is separate from the ENTRANCE FEE.
Campers must stop at the entrance station to show valid entrance pass upon every re-entry into park.

Two paragraphs below this on the registration instruction sheet the instructions say; “Campsites must be vacated by 11:30a.m. unless payment has been made for the following night.”

My first question is how can I extend my stay if I must make the “extend your stay you must do so after 12:00 noon” but I must be, ”vacated the site by 11:30 a.m. unless payment has been made.”?
Second question, “DO NOT put anything on the site until the site is paid for,” When I find the site I want how do I know that someone else has not selected this site and is at the pay station paying for the site. If I get to the self-service credit card pay station and someone else has already paid for the site I have to find another, this could be an interesting challenge when 10 people are driving around the 3 campground loops looking for a site.

Another great opportunity is at the automated pay station. On the payment machine it says you can use a credit card $1.00’s, $5.00’s, $10.00’s and $20.00’s. On the sign about three feet to the right of this payment machine, in the middle of the instruction for registration it says, “ DO NOT USE $20.00’s” You’ve got to love the great ability of our government.
Oh yea, on the receipt which is printed from the automated payment machine it says we have to be out of our site by 11:00 a.m., Thanks that is really useful information.

Bluewater Lake State Park, NM – Wednesday June 3, 2015

View from camp.

We are here for another day and will move on to Bandelier National Monument early Thursday morning. The plan is to stay there through the weekend before moving on.

Camping in New Mexico is really great. The state parks and nice and have both reservation sites and none reservation sites for drop in’s.

Here is the pricing structure:

$10.00 for basic site
$14.00 for site with electricity and sometimes water

$180.00 for an Annual Camping Pass (good for 13 months) all basic sites are free, electricity and water site is $4.00
$100.00 for an Annual Camping Pass at age 62
$225.00 for an Annual Camping Pass if you are from out of state.

We purchased an Annual Camping Pass when we here in October and it has more than paid for itself.

High today should be 85 with low of 52.

Bluewater Lake State Park, NM – Monday June 1, 2015

Monday morning we were up early. After two weeks on road it was time to visit a laundromat. We went to “Handee’s Laundromat and Car Wash” it was actually very clean and we were out in about and hour and a half.
We are still moving east and are now at Bluewater Lake State Park just off of I-40 west of Albuquerque, NM.
In site 41, New Mexico has sites that are reservable and also always have sites that are available for drop ins. This is really nice since we don’t always know where we are going until we get there.