Along the Jemez Mountain Trail, National Scenic Byway - Part 2

A couple of days later we decided to carry on along the Jemez Mountain trail, this time as we left Bernalillo behind it was lovely sunny day.

 

This time our first stop was Jemez Falls, we had the place to ourselves.   The short ¼ mile trail to the falls winds under tall pines along an easy trail covered in large soft pine needles.   The needles reminded me of those used by the Apache to make baskets.

 

You can hear the falls and see the safety rail as you get closer to the end of the trail.   Here there is no actual ‘trail’ you just follow were countless people have walked over the years to get to the edge.   It’s very pretty and must be pretty spectacular during the monsoon season.

Valles Caldera National Preserve was our next stop, I didn’t think the preserve actually opened until the end of May, but highway 4 is a stunning drive that takes you across the wide open grasslands before continuing onto Los Alamos.   We didn’t expect the preserve to be open, but what we hadn’t realised was that the Preserve open at the weekend.   How lucky was that?   We turned onto the drive and followed the 2 mile dirt road to the visitor centre.  Traces of snow still lay on the ground at the side of the road and it was pretty chilly.

The caldera is a collapsed super volcano created 1.25 million years ago. Magma began to refill empty magma chambers causing lots of smaller eruptions which created rounded domes along a ring fracture.   At its highest point, Redondo Peak rose to over 11,000 ft making it one of the clearest examples of a ‘resurgent’ caldera.

While it’s generally considered dormant, about 5 miles beneath the surface is magma that some vulcanologists think could be ‘stirring’.   I hope they’re wrong as 5 miles doesn’t sound much between us and all that hot stuff! 

The area became public land in 2000 and encompasses nearly 90,000 acres of high elevation grasslands, forest, wetlands and shrub land.   It also contains the headwaters for the East Fork of the Jemez River and San Antonio Creek.

Sadly we arrived at the wrong time to take any of the tours, but this beautiful place is definitely on our ‘to return to’ list.

As we’d spent so long here, we didn’t make it to Los Alamos, instead we retraced our route and took a short, very short, hike along the East Fork of the Jemez River.   

Driving back into the tiny town of La Cueva we took the road to Fenton Lake State Park.   It’s very pretty and while we enjoyed our visit, I don’t think it’s somewhere we’d return to, as there is still a heck of a lot out there we’ve yet to discover.

Have fun, we are!

Along the Jemez Mountain Trail, National Scenic Byway

Sunshine and cloud fought for supremacy (it took a while, but sunshine eventually won) as we left Bernalillo behind in our rear view mirror.   When we reached San Ysidro we left the heavy traffic on four lane highway 550 behind as we turned onto highway 4, the quieter Jemez Mountain Trail.  

Our first stop was Jemez Pueblo, where we stopped at the Walatowa Visitor Centre.
   

The museum about the history and culture of the Jemez people was very interesting and informative.  

Leaving the pueblo and visitor centre we followed highway 4, until we came to highway 485 leading to the Gilman Tunnels.

The narrow road follows the Guadalupe River and is all that remains of a railway line constructed in the 1920’s to haul logs out of the forest.   The scenery was stunning and needless to say when we reached the tunnels I had to check the echo!

After the last tunnel the road turns to dirt and eventually arrives at Fenton Lake State Park.   We thought of driving that way, but as we weren’t sure of the condition of the road and none of the visitors we met at the tunnels had ever driven any further, we decided against it and headed back to highway 4. 

Driving this way turned out to be a very good idea as we had a lovely lunch, (hot chocolate to die for, deliciously tart Key Lime Pie, not to mention DB’s scrumptious raspberry tart) at the Highway 4 Café and Bakery in the small town of Jemez Springs.

The Jemez State Monument was our next stop.   The Monument contains the remains of the ancient pueblo of the Jemez people ‘Giusewa’
 

 

 

We almost had the place to ourselves as we followed the winding trail through the ruins.

Our next stop was Soda Dam, hot springs flowing into the Jemez river give off a distinct smell of sulphur and ‘rotten eggs’.   Over the centuries the water from the hot springs has formed a weird looking dam across the river.    It’s very pretty but quite slippery, so as it’s pretty darn hard if you fall we passed on that.

 

It was getting late in the day by the time we reached Battleship Rock picnic area.   A couple of hikes lead out through the forest one of which is about two miles long and leads to Macauley Warm Springs, one to remember if we ever come this way again in the future.

Although there was plenty more to see along the trail, we decided this would be our turn around point for the day and we headed back to Bernalillo.

 

Have fun, we are!

Coronado Historic Park followed by a visit to a great little brewery!

In 1540 Francisco Vásquez de Coronado, along with 500 soldiers and 2,000 Indian allies from New Spain, entered the Rio Grande valley.   Coronado was searching for the fabled Seven Cities of Gold.   He didn’t find any gold but he did find villages full of native farmers.

 

The people spoke the Tiwa language and Kuaua (which means Evergreen) was the northernmost village.  It’s thought the village was settled in 1325 and when Coronado arrived about 1,200 people lived there.  

During excavations in the 1930’s a square kiva was discovered in the plaza. The kiva contained some beautiful murals which are known as some of the finest examples of pre-columbian art ever found in the US. When the murals were excavated it was discovered that there were some 17 or 18 layers of plaster and each layer of plaster was decorated with paintings.

We took a tour of the kiva with the docent, while we’ve seen and been in quite a few kivas they’ve always been round kivas, never square.   The paintings inside (no photographs allowed) are similar to the originals.   While he didn’t know, the docent thought that as the scenes depicted in the paintings, showed things like corn, planting and harvesting, they represented a year, spring, summer, autumn and winter.   He also told us that the black painted figure was a clown.   Not a funny ha, ha sort of clown, but an enforcer type clown who carried a bull whip and scared the life out of you. 

 

In a special display room by the visitor centre we admired the original paintings, (no photographs allowed) they’re very faded and some were marked by crow bars where they were yanked out of the walls. 

It was very windy and we followed a short trail along the Rio Grande. The views of the Sandia Mountains were excellent and looking north we could just about see the snow-capped Sangre De Cristo Mountains.

We enjoyed our visit to this small but very interesting historic park.

 

Once we got back we parked the truck and walked the short way to the Kaktus Brewing Company, which is literally right next door to the Bernalillo KOA.  

As we walked in we thought for a minute that all the tables were taken. When we looked again, we realised that the chair backs were painted to look like people.   As ‘Breaking Bad’ hasn’t reached the UK yet we had no idea who this was meant to be until we were told.   We tried our first Frito Pie, I didn’t know what to expect and while it was very nice, I’m not sure it’s something I’d have again.   Most importantly though, the beer was pretty good!

Have fun, we are!

Madrid, New Mexico

After our trip up the Sandia Mountains we decided to continue following the Turquoise Trail as far as Madrid.

 

Founded sometime during the mid-1800’s, Madrid was a coal mining town. Because of the geology both hard and soft coal was mined, this was unique as there were only two other mines in the world where this happened. I must admit I thought coal was coal and had no idea it could be hard or soft.

 

The shafts were very deep going as far down as 2,500 ft.   During its heyday the town supplied coal to the Santa Fe Railroad, local consumers and the US Government.   When coal declined Madrid became a ghost town.

These days Madrid is known for its galleries and arts and crafts stores, it also has an original soda fountain as well as an original tavern.

The road through town is quite narrow and we had trouble parking the truck so it didn't stick out into the road.   If we’d gone in the middle of summer (we were there in April) I'm not sure where we would've been able to park. 

We had coffee at Jezebels, the Soda Fountain, after that we walked along to the tavern and mooched around the stores.    There were some lovely things and some gorgeous lamps.

By this time it was getting late and places were closing up, so we headed back to Bernalillo. 

Have fun, we are!

At the top of the Sandia Mountains

We checked the weather, we wanted an almost wind free day to take the tram to the top of the Sandia Mountains.   Chilly, with next to no wind, sounded good to us, so off we went.   Especially as strong winds were forecast to hit Albuquerque over the following days.   Imagine being in a tram dangling on a wire half way up a mountain if the winds really started to blow, scary thought! 

 

From Bernalillo it’s an easy drive, we just hopped back on I25 took exit 234 and literally followed the road.   Our timing was good, as we arrived just in time to pay for our tickets and board the tram.
 

Arriving at the top
 

While chairlifts scare me to death, trams are just fine.   I know, it’s totally illogical but just being inside something reassures me, although my heart still skips a beat as they cross the pylons! 

Visibility was reasonably good and we could see for miles.  Right across Albuquerque, over to Santa Fe and out towards Shiprock, which we thought, we could just about make out through the binoculars.

Downtown Albuquerque

The tram climbs up 2 miles above sea level, when we reached the top we were at 10,687 ft and despite our trousers and fleeces it was absolutely, flippin’ freezing!   Even though there was a little snow in places, the ski runs were closed (I am still catching up as this was at the end of April) and there was an extremely cold breeze.   Sadly for us we were too early for the restaurant and the visitor centre was closed for renovation!

I walked along a short trail behind the restaurant and found the Crest Trail, which is only 1½ miles long, but it was so cold, that we didn’t consider hiking even part of it.   Besides which some people returning told us it was very muddy and slippery in places.

We admired the views and then decided that as there was no escape from the freezing wind we’d head back down.

Approaching the first pylon

On the way to the next pylon

Still a long way to go

The end is in sight

 Almost back on the ground

As it was still early we decided we’d drive up The Sandia Crest Scenic Byway. So we followed the road out of Albuquerque and took I40 to exit 175 to highway 14, known at the Turquoise Trail that eventually leads to Santa Fe. 

Looking towards Shiprock from Sandia Crest

Albuquerque from Sandia Crest

The drive up the scenic byway was very picturesque, but once again when we arrived at the top it was absolutely freezing so, pretty as it was we didn’t stay long. 

Have fun, we are!

Petroglyphs & Volcanoes

Still following our plan to head north, we left Kiva RV Park and moved to the KOA at Bernalillo, just north of Albuquerque.   We had a nice site and were somewhat amazed to see we had what looked like a lawn.

 

It was actually astro turf, but it made a nice change from dust.   We also had a reasonably good view of the Sandia Mountains, and enjoyed watching the mountains as they changed colour at sunset.

One of our first trips was to Petroglyph National Monument.

We hiked several trails the first of which was Boca Negra Canyon, which is considered the birthplace of the Monument.   We hiked to the top of the rocks, which although not far was surprisingly steep and very windy.

There were some interesting petroglyphs, including one that resembles a historic Latin cross.   The crosses are thought to have been made by Spanish shepherds in 18th or 19th century.

The macaw petroglyph.

From there we drove over to Piedras Marcadas Canyon, this is the most remote section of the park, the trail is 1½ miles long across soft sand.   We saw more petroglyphs on this hike than the others. 

These are just a very few of the petroglyphs we saw.  I just loved this little face, he looks as though he's totally bemused.

This one looked as though he was having a great time at a party.

Shopping for lunch.

 As always Kokopelli made an appearance.

This chappie appeared to be creeping out from underneath a large rock.

At the end of Piedras Marcadas Canyon looking back towards Albuquerque

We enjoyed our trip to Petroglyph National Monument, although to be honest we were surprised to find that suburban Albuquerque surrounds most sections of the park.

 

Our next stop was the Volcanoes section of the park.   It’s a day use area and by the time we arrived at the car park we didn’t have time to hike the trails.   Not only that, the gorgeous warm, sunny weather we’d enjoyed all day disappeared, the sky clouded over and the wind started to blow. 

DB looked at me as though I was mad as I hopped out of the truck to read the signs and take some photographs.   He was right, the wind was really strong and quite cold believe me I soon climbed back into the truck. 

Have fun, we are!

Still here - really!

In case anyone's wondered where we are.   We're still here, and haven't fallen off the face of the earth, we're just a tad busy at the moment.

With a bit of luck, we should be able to catch up soon.   In the meantime,

Have fun, we are!