With prediction of high winds in mid-afternoon, we met another granddaughter and family in late morning for a picnic excursion to Dripping Springs, the long-time local name for and a prominent feature of the Organ Mountains National Monument – Desert Peaks. Packed into four vehicles, including a bus our daughter had recently refurbished with the help of her two sons, the entourage drove up to the lower picnic area for a light lunch and a hike up into the rock formation nearby.
No distances or destinations on the trail signs, only this message that, if you don’t know exactly what you are doing, you will die. We went anyway.
Most of the teen-agers headed quickly ahead of parents and elders, in several directions. As it turned out, us oldsters, used to hiking and bicycling, were perhaps in better shape than some of the younger set. With the group ranging in age from 2 to 71, we were soon scattered the length of the trail, making it difficult to keep track of everyone.
The main group of us turned back before reaching the trail junction at the uphill end of the loop, but it was still a fun expedition. Part of the reason for keeping the hike short was the uncertain weather, but the winds didn’t begin to pick up until well after we returned to the city below.
It was good to see the great-grandchildren again and meet new faces in the family. We got to present great-grandson Paul’s high school graduation present to him in person: unfortunately, we will be in Iowa celebrating another graduation, from college, that took place a half-century ago, on the actual day of his ceremony. We missed one great-grandson, who was in school today.
The Organ Mountains are unique to the region, an island of granite and rhyolite between the sedimentary San Andreas and Franklin ranges.
We ended the day with a pizza party at our daughter’s house, with wonderful home-made pizza, and were joined by two more grandsons after work. The mountain outing was held on a school day mainly because our granddaughter is scheduled for a weekend shift at the hospital, where she is a nurse in the OB ward.
Windy weather moving into the Mesilla Valley. We were off the mountain before the winds built up and lowered visibility.
From our “base camp” near Las Cruces, we stopped at the Jeep dealer for an oil change, then ventured south into Texas for a day’s visit, where a granddaughter is a supervisor at a home health agency and a son is manager of a seafood restaurant.
Our granddaughter took us through the “old town” neighborhoods to a local coffee shop–across the street from a Starbucks, so it was a different experience for us. Very nice place. As we left to meet with our son, the wind blew up a fierce dust storm, followed by rain, and soon the steep streets on the slopes of the Franklin Mountains turned into fast-flowing streams. But, the rain soon passed to the south into Mexico, and the wind subsided.
We brought along some belated house-warming gifts for the El Paso crowd. Our son is also an accomplished musician, audiophile, and cinemaphile, and one of our grandsons is also a musician, so we had decided to pass on my vinyl recording collection from my disk jockey days in the 1960s, along with the turntable, so they wouldn’t just be wall decor, but could actually be played. Our granddaughter got my mother’s cookbooks and some hand-painted dishes that Judy and I had picked up in Montana when we lived there.
It was a good visit: our son had recently moved to El Paso with his job promotion; even though our granddaughter passed his restaurant on her way to work every day, uncle and niece had not visited until now. As our family matures and disperses, we seem to be the catalyst for family gatherings. Unfortunately for us, the number of cities we need to visit to see everyone is increasing.
To celebrate our family gathering, we went to the Cattleman’s Steakhouse at Indian Cliffs Ranch near Fabens, a long drive out of the city, but an amazing complex, with a huge sprawling restaurant, a zoo, and an old (1979) movie set to tour. The others enjoyed the beef for which the very popular eatery is famous, while the vegetarian in our group (me) dined on “trimmings,” which consisted of a baked potato and a side of awesome mushrooms cooked in wine, plus dabs of ranch beans and coleslaw and a biscuit or two, as the rest of our party ignored the bread to concentrate on the baked potatoes and beef.
Hmm, I may lose weight yet, as we continue into the heart of beef, pork, and chicken country. In the west, most restaurants have at least one meatless entrée, but here the “empty plate” is meant for sharing the generously proportioned slabs of meat with a child or elder. Indeed, Judy carried away a fair portion of her once-a-year steak in a take-out box.
As the evening drew to a close, we headed back toward New Mexico, in more rain, as we passed through a small storm cell in the dark. But, fortunately, the heart of this storm was headed northward and would pass our destination before we arrived. We were treated to a spectacular desert lightning display straight ahead. We turned off the freeway and cautiously dodged pools and puddles on the farm roads to our lodging, where we found the driveway freshly gravelled and our casita dry, the latter having withstood the heavy but brief downpour without overt leaks. Leaky roofs are a constant plague in the desert, where flat roofs are standard construction.
After a night of rain, the skies cleared and we packed out and headed south. Rather than endure freeway traffic through Albuquerque, we headed first northbound on I-25, then south on NM 285 to NM 60, and eventually to NM 54, down through Corona, where the Roswell incident began (the purported “flying disc” crash in 1947 took place at ranch near Corona, but the nearest military base then was at Roswell). We stopped for lunch at Carrizozo, talked to a couple running a shop selling local artists work, and then went for dessert and coffee to a small shop on a side street.
Topping off the fuel at Alamogordo, we headed across White Sands Missile Range and past the White Sands National Monument, a sea of gypsum dunes, the remains of untold millions of sea creatures washed down out of the mountains into the Tularosa Basin, which then evaporated, leaving a dry desert of shifting water-soluble granules of not-sand.
We left deep ruts in the mud getting into our B&B in Dona Ana. The main road was also being repaired from the heavy rain.
Our destination was north of Las Cruces, between the villages of Dona Ana and Radium Springs. The heavy rain the day before left the long driveway to our B&B a quagmire of sandy loam, suitable only for 4-wheel drive. But, after unloading and a trip into town for supplies and a visit with one of our daughters who has high-speed Internet access, we noted that the mud had dried considerably, though still soft.
A very spacious casita on the farm… The rain not only turned the driveway to mud, but leaked down the wall and soaked the area rug in the living room–our hostess took it to dry on a fence the next morning.
Our casita is cozy and spacious, but without Internet or TV reception, only a DVD player and a small selection of movies. We did bring our radio from our cabin in Montana, and lots of books, and are enjoying the dark night far from the city and the smells of a working farm, with horses, goats, and chickens nearby and a bowl of fresh-laid eggs in the refrigerator. The silence is broken by an occasional train passing by, the tracks about 500 meters to the east.
Our lodging while in Las Cruces is on a working farm north of town. Trains and roosters, otherwise very quiet.
After a long day bicycling, visiting, and getting lost, we had a more relaxing day today, walking to the Plaza early and checking out shops to visit later. After a walk around the Basilica grounds, and our morning coffee, we walked part way up Canyon Road, always fascinated by the kinetic wind sculptures near the Tibetan shop. But, many of the shops were either not open or just opening for the day, so we headed back, stopping at coffee shop and travel literature bookstore and at weaving studio in one of the courtyards.
Later in the afternoon, after school, we drove out to our granddaughters house. Before dinner, we broke out a set of 8-sided kumihimo braiding disks we had made from craft foam after lunch, and taught the great-grandkids how to make a simple 7-strand cord, after which they taught their parents. Our grandson-in-law, a teacher, thought it would be good to have his students learn, to keep them occupied before class. We showed the older ones how to make bracelets by braiding a loop with seven threads, then folding and braiding doubled, 14 into 7 pairs, to make the cord, with a knot at the end to form a button. It was fun for all, as even the toddlers tried.
Patrick shows his father how to form a loop and rethread the braiding disk. Kayla concentrates on keeping the threads untangled on her project.
Cutting through the Rail Yard parking lot to get to the trail. Photo by Judy
Our first day in Santa Fé was warm and sunny, an ideal day for riding the 20km out to our granddaughter’s house south of the freeway. We oiled the chain, essential after 10 days of being battered by road grit, wind, rain, and snow on top of the car, and set out, with a vague mental image of the route. Relying on line of sight to keep the railroad tracks in view, we made our way through downtown Santa Fé, finally solidly on the trackside trail.
The Arroyo Trail, deceptively downhill, even in the “flat” parts. Photo by Judy
Before long, we arrived at a fork in the trail, near the high school, and took the right fork down into the arroyo, a path that continued downhill at an alarming rate, as we would have to climb back up in the heat of the day, when we would be tired. But, we enjoyed the speed, zooming over a bridge and continuing down the arroyo, forgetting that the bridge was the junction where we should have turned left (uphill) onto Richards Street. We suspected we were off our route when we arrived at Sam’s Club on Rodeo Drive.
Looking back up the arroyo from the overpass on Rodeo Drive. We knew we were lost at this point, but at least in the right direction. Photo by Judy
With an “Oh, well, we’re still headed in the right direction,” we descended back into the arroyo and continued on, until the trail broke up into a series of short, twisty, uphill segments through a housing development and ended on a boulevard. There was a bike lane, so we continued on the street, eventually arriving on Cerrillos Street, NM Highway 14, the main route to Interstate 25. We’re now not lost, but not where we intended to be. Judy’s rule about not riding on the road and not riding steep grades while I’m still on anti-coagulant medication had long since been broken, so we continued on, stopping at the new Starbucks near the intersection with I-25.
A bonus to being lost–we found the Starbucks on NM 14 near the intersection with I-25. Photo by Judy
Steeled by a dose of caffeine, we set off once more, dodging cars and trucks on the freeway ramps, finally rejoining our intended route, still on busy Highway 14, but our only choice until we turned off to our granddaughter’s neighborhood at the bottom of a steep hill. When we stopped, the GPS read a bit over 20km. Our misdirection turned out to have saved us a few hills and about 2km, at the expense of a little [more] freeway madness, but with a much-needed coffee stop.
RaymondRocky, Karyssa, Patrick, and Kayla. Paul Jr is in Las Cruces, where he just finished his senior year in high school.
After lunch and a visit with the great-grandchildren, we climbed back on the bike for the long uphill ride back to our lodging downtown, this time intending to take the route we had planned, a quiet road paralleling the freeway to the northeast, then under the freeway to the Arroyo Trail. However, without a detailed map and dodging unexpected heavy traffic, we turned off the highway too early and then missed an alternate left turn that would have put us on our intended route, continuing uphill on a very busy rough road with no shoulder. From time to time, we could see the freeway getting farther and farther away to the north, yet pressed on, arriving in a new housing area at the top of the hill. We flagged down a passing cyclist, Steve, of similar age to our ourselves, to ask directions. Yes, we were lost, with the choice of backtracking 4km to Highway 14 and taking the right route, or pressing on through hills and traffic to Richards Street, which would get us back on track.
By this time, we were hot and exhausted: Steve offered to get his pickup truck and take us to where we needed to be, an offer we couldn’t refuse. So, off we went with Steve and Joan, in increasingly heavy traffic and confusing intersections, which we would not have wanted to cycle through. Finally crossing the arroyo, we, not wishing our kind rescuers further traffic trauma, had them pull over. We descended once more into the arroyo, riding around the south side of the high school complex, then ascending steeply (pushing the bike) to the intersection with the rail trail, a gentler grade, which we followed back to the main rail station and then back out onto the streets for the last leg of our journey.
This was a lot more fun going the other way earlier in the day. Climbing up out of the arroyo to the rail trail to downtown. Photo by JudyThe trail becomes less distinct near the train stations. This is the Rail Runner, commuter service between Santa Fe and Albuquerque. Photo by Judy
Our total riding today was 33km, in three segments, with lots of hills and road riding, our longest daily total since 2013, and at 2100 meters elevation. When we first arrived in the high country, a couple of days ago, we found ourselves out of breath just walking up stairs, but we seem to be acclimatizing rapidly. Professional cyclists routinely train above 2100 meters as a legal performance enhancement technique, so maybe the pain will produce gain, even at our age.
