Trees? In New Mexico?

I must admit that all the trips we've taken, over the years, through eastern New Mexico on the way to Colorado, have strongly reinforced the association of rolling, grassy plains—and no trees—with the Land of Enchantment among my synapses.

But the northwest part of the state, where the Rio Chama flows on its short journey to the Rio Grande, upsets this stereotype in spades. In fact, the impressiveness of the trees along the river was one of the biggest surprises I encountered on our trip.

There were pines of all kinds all along the river banks, providing great photo opps for tree aficianados like yours truly, as well as shade and hooks for hanging stuff around the campsites.

The really tall ones, like the one on the right, were Ponderosas, the contemplation of which never fails to start the Bonanza theme running through my mental record player. Some childhood memories are just too powerful to erase!

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With or without musical accompaniment, here's a sample of New Mexico tree scenes for your enjoyment:

lovely river, lovely trees—all being enjoyed by one of our compadres

the view from our Thursday night campsite

neat clouds and big trees—two of my favorite things!

another river scene, with a another party's raft peeping around the bend

some rugged customers find a way to grow big in spite of difficult surroundings

a really rugged treescape

trees on an impressive cliff provide a segue to my next post, which will be about rocks!

Wordless Wednesday: river view

Rio Chama: logistics

I feel really bad that I haven't been able to start telling you about our amazing trip on northwestern New Mexico's Rio Chama—my first overnight river trip.

But getting back into the swing of normal working life, unpacking/cleaning/re-storing a mountain of sandy river and camping gear, sifting through over 300 pictures (!)—and all this done against a 100+° heat backdrop—well, let's just say that it's just not proceeding very quickly.

The scenery along the river was so spectacular I'm lucky not to have taken 3 times as many photos. And I will get the best of them into a blog post for you soon, so you can get at least some idea of what we were able to see.

But in the meantime I thought I'd relate some of the more mundane details of the trip: how we packed up the raft, what camping was like along the river, what we ate, how our enjoyable hours off the river were passed, etc.

The picture above on the right shows our little party's craft. We had two guys in solo canoes, one in a kayak, two folks in a tandem canoe, and Henry and I in the big blue cataraft that somewhat dominates the scene.

On the left is this merry band of folks off the river, waiting here during our first night out, for our cobbler dessert to finish cooking.

The dutch oven that cooked the cobbler (you can see it near Henry's feet in the picture above) was at work again the next evening, this time presenting us with an incredibly yummy chicken casserole. As you can probably surmise, we ate very well at all our meals, thanks to the organizational abilities of Michael and Chris, the tandem canoists, who ran the chuck-wagon operation flawlessly.

The fire setup you see above here is actually pretty interesting. The cast-iron oven is sitting on a mature charcoal fire (we took the coals with us in case enough downed wood wasn't available). The coals are gathered in a handy bar-b-que pit—a steel drum lid that worked perfectly in that capacity. Then, everything is sitting on a "fire blanket," an item of camping gear I'd never even heard of before this trip. Some campgrounds, in some conditions, require them for campfires as a precaution against forest/range/grass fires getting started. It's made out of the same material fire-fighters' suits are made of.

Primitive camping, this is definitely not.

That goes for our personal accommodations as well. Our brand-new tent worked perfectly and was so easy to put up and take down that I was almost able to take care of those chores by myself. I've never been able to do that! It was not only cozy, warm and dry, but the with my super mattress pad inside, it was a very comfortable place to sleep as well.

Our libations were as first rate as our gear. In addition to a batch of Henry's famous margaritas, on the right here you can see the quite tasty wine we had before dinner Saturday. Not only is boxed wine no longer necessarily at the bottom of the barrel, wine-quality-wise (like it was in my youth) but it obviously can come with one of the cleverest names in a field crowded with clever names.

Special kudos to Michael for making us personalized cups, some of which you see here, that served all our drinking needs.

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Now, back to the boat. Which not only carried a lion's share of this great food, drink, and the means for preparing it, but also us, and in style.

Here's a closeup of the raft, now back at the put-in, almost fully loaded with gear, and almost ready—finally—to launch.

My queen-like seat is at the front of the boat, on top of our new giant cooler, which is topped with my super-duper sleeping pad and a surprisingly comfy little stadium seat. What a great view I had! And no paddling was required, as Henry took care of all the locomotion that the river didn't provide with the oars (those oars he took lessons with back in Salida, if you'll recall). Here he is taking a break from this rather tiring activity:

The lessons were well worth the time and money, as he did an excellent job guiding us down the river.

While leaving me free to take those 300 pictures. I'll try to have some to show you later this week.

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As a final shot today, though, I leave you with Henry and Mike paying their thanks to the river goddess for a fun, successful, and safe trip, after packing up the cars at the take-out ramp. Those are sips of the last beers left in the cooler that they're sacrificing to the Chama. I thought it was the least they could do...

Wordless Wednesday: heading east, dreaming west

Why just put a roof on a building?

As I mentioned in an earlier post, there are a lot of really neat old buildings in historic downtown Salida, Colorado.

When we walked around after dinner the other night, the low sun really showed off the rooflines of these wonderful structures to best advantage and I couldn't help snapping some photos.

The pottery shop I visited a few days ago is on the ground floor of the building at the left here

Quite a few of the buildings have dates, like this one, from the late 1800's:


Here are some more well-restored beauties:




I couldn't help noticing, as well, the fantastic sunset clouds above these handsome rooflines:

For fellow cloud aficianados, here's a final photo where the clouds, rather than the architecture, are the stars of the show:

In spite of the ominous look there, we only got dripped on a bit as we completed our after-dinner walk.

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There will be a blog hiatus for the next few days as we start our river trip with a campout (sans internet connection) Thursday night. I hope to get lots and lots of good pictures on the cruise, and some good (but not too exciting) stories that I will share with you upon our return to civilization.

Wordless Wednesday: hummers at sunset

Nice place to hang out

I've got a couple [or 3...or 4...] hours to kill today while Henry takes another rowing lesson in the cataraft. (Wifely insistence that he actually know what he's doing before we head down a canyon for 3 nights next week is at the root of these valuable lessons with the patient and knowledgeable Glenn.) Here Henry is guiding the craft through a drop by the Salida riverside park:

...he looks fairly competent, doesn't he?

Anyway, while he's doing this I have time to kill and there probably isn't a better place to do this than downtown Salida, Colorado. Lots of neat galleries and shops, plenty of eating, caffeinating, and otherwise drinking opportunities, and you can always go back to the river park and sit in the shade and read.

This is the life!

I'm currently in the Salida Cafe (formerly Bongo Billy's, where we've spent happy hours sipping and wifi-ing on previous trips) in the midst of this yummy peach muffin and a refreshing glass of iced tea:

Since I'll probably be lunching down here, too, given the fact that it always takes Henry longer to do anything than he initially estimates, my only problem will be deciding where to partake of lunch fare. I might end up back at the Simmering Cup, a few blocks over, where I've had a nice blackberry tea and sandwich before. They also have wifi, as well as the wondefully handsome tin ceiling you can see at the left.

Or I might try someplace new. I also might do some shopping. They're having a sale at the Maverick Potter (giving out free ice cream as well!) and some early Christmas presents might find their way into my backpack.

Here are a couple more street scenes to savor.

This lovely old building (and most of the establishments in Salida's downtown—as you can tell from the afore-pictured tin ceiling—are in these old gems) houses Headwaters Outdoor Equipment, where more shopping could take place. And where they have really nice employees willing to go the extra mile to help stranded tourists in crisis [long story that I might recount in a future post].

And a look down F Street (below) to S mountain (on the right). Strangely enough, given all the visits we've made to this lovely town, we've never taken a ride up to the top of this landmark (although we did see it from a plane one time when we were flying to the west coast!).

Maybe we'll have to save that for a celebration when we end up here permanently. The more time I spend here the more convinced I am that it is the ideal retirement location.

Mountains, a river, restaurants, a nice library, beer gardens, NPR reception from Colorado Springs...what else do we need?

Wordless Wednesday: on the horizon

[apologies for dirty windshield]

Expedition

You'd think we were taking off on a month-long trek down the Amazon, given the amount of gear Henry jammed into our van. This is just a part of it, the photo taken when we stopped for the night Sunday in Roswell, NM (sorry, no funny alien photo-opps were available):

But it was a complicated trip preparation, what with planning for the boating that will take place in 2 weeks, and the camping involved in that journey, minor shorter trips before then, materials needed for relaxing and working in Garfield, and clothing for 40's-90's. So I thought you might be interested in seeing some photographic evidence of this monumental undertaking.

The boat gear was the most elaborately planned, and the most frustrating for me, since I couldn't really help with it. Any preparation work that I did would undoubtedly need to be re-done, properly, by Henry, so I just stood around a lot and ran and fetched things.

The picture on the left shows a sample of the boating equipment that was packed. Although we ended up not taking the pink raft, and some of the other items in the shot, like my bicycle, were also left at home. But there was still plenty to weigh down our trusty van rather seriously.

Here are the boats awaiting departure in the back yard, along with a deflated raft and a cataraft frame, that were securely tied down to our trailer. The trailer that makes things like motel parking and visiting Sonic drive-ins rather interesting. There are two canoes, although you can probably only see one in the photo.

So here we are.

Being in Salida/Garfield feels more and more like coming home all the time. Which is one of the reasons I wanted to make two trips here this summer. We're talking a bit more seriously about making this our retirement destination. And what a great place it would be! Not the least of its many attractions is the fine library where I'm sitting and using free wifi:

I will try to get here for more posts in the next week.