Elephant Butte State Park Febuary 2012

     I guess I should start the February  blog before I start getting comments from Sara P.  As you can see by the number of pictures this month, we have been doing a little sightseeing since our last blog. There is so much to see here in the southern part of New Mexico it just takes a little time to drive to every where. We have the White Sands Missile Base to the east of us. If we want to head over to the east side of the state we have to go north 65 miles before we can go east or go south 75 miles before we can head east. To go to the west we have to go over the mountains or go south 65 miles.

Looking for that retirement condo.

                                                                                                                                                    We started our travels at Lake Valley which is an old deserted silver mining town. They have a nice visitor center and some of the old buildings. It was interesting to walk around and see the old buildings and the old right of way for the spur that the Santa Fe Railroad had there during the boom time of the town. We also talked to the volunteer that works there. This area is overseen by the BLM. The volunteer couple works five days a week and they are closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays. 

     On a another day we took a drive to the town of Ruidoso.  This town is about 60 miles straight east of us but because of the missile base, it is about a 152 mile trip to get there. On the way we stopped at the Valley of Fire which is a park run by the National Forest Service. It's in the middle of an ancient lava field and and has a campground there. I can almost guess how hot it is in the summer with all of that black lava around you.

Smokey is the one on the left.

              On the way to Ruidoso we also stopped at the Smokey Bear Memorial in the town of Capitan. This is the site where the original Smokey is buried. They have a very nice visitor center with a lot of information about Smokey and all of the different programs and ads for the "Only You Can prevent Forest Fires." promotion. They also had all sorts of things related to Smokey such as toys, teddy bears and lunch boxes.  It was interesting to learn that when Smokey died in Washington D.C.  they flew him back to New Mexico and took him directly to this sight with a police escort and buried him at 3:00 A.M. due to the fact that there had been threats to steal the body. As soon as they had buried him they placed a very large boulder on the grave to protect the site. The little bear climbing the tree on the right is his grave marker.                                                         

Our next day trip was to White Sands National Monument. It's an area of sand dunes made up of a very fine white sand and gypsum. It looks like snow from a distance. They sell saucers at the visitor center so that you can go and slide down the dunes. They charge $14.00 for a new one and will buy it back for $5.00. They also sell used ones (that's the new ones they bought back for $5.00) for $10.00 and will buy them back for $3.00. It was really cool to watch the people sliding down the dunes.  They really had some speed on those saucers. 

 This is a really nice area, they have shelters and picnic areas all around the dunes and a lot of families were there making a day of sliding and having a nice picnic. Holly even had to get out and pretend she was back in Michigan sitting in a large snow drift.

     We went to Albuquerque for a couple days to celebrate our 43rd anniversary.  We spent time at Old Town and had lunch at one of my favorite Mexican restaurants. We drove up to Santa Fe and went to the  Plaza (that's Santa Fe's Old Town). There's an old Catholic church there that is known for it's spiral staircase. The story goes that the sisters needed a staircase for the girls to get up to the choir loft but there was no room for a straight stair case. Plus the fact that they had very little money. It is said that one day an old man showed up at the church and said that he would build it for them.

 He said he was a carpenter and all he had with him was some basic hand tools. He built the staircase using only wooden pegs and no nails. The work is beautiful and you have to look really close to see where any joints are. It has been studied by several different experts and they say that they can't tell what kind of wood was used but they do know it is not from the area. You can see by the pictures that it is a beautiful church. The stained glass windows are also very beautiful.  The church is now privately owned and very well maintained.

 This is Jackie, Larry and Taiga. Brutus had a crush on her (Taiga). They were camped right across from us and we spent several nights around their camp fire talking. Larry retired from NASA and Jackie was a psycho. Oops sorry, she was a psychoanalyst! They have traveled all over including Alaska, Africa, and England. Very nice and very interesting people. That's one of the many nice thing about this lifestyle, you get to meet such interesting people.

Our last day trip (7 hours of driving) was to the Gila Cliff Dwellings. These are homes built in caves. It was quite a hike up to the cliff face where these were built. The people that built these were the Mogollon natives. They closed off the openings to the caves with stone walls and built living areas inside. Some of these even had porches  that stuck out from the face of the buildings. They figure that the dwellings were built around 1275 AD and were used for only about 30 years.

When we got there it was late in the day and not many visitors so Deborah, who is one of the volunteers, took us on a tour. We have been to different cliff dwellings before on our travels but these are the first ones where we were able to go inside. Deborah was a great guide and was a wealth of information. It was a treat to be able to go thru the different areas and to try and imagine how this area looked when there were people living here.

I guess you could say that these were the original condos. There were several family's living here. There were separate living areas and some shared areas. Some were two stories and some were even hand plastered on the inside. There was one place where you could see a small hand print in the plaster on the wall left by the person that was doing the work.

They have left the area as it was when the government stepped in to protect it. Prior to this, the artifacts, which would have fleshed out the history, were pretty much taken by looters.  The only thing the government has done is repair walls where it was needed to shore up weak areas.

It was amazing to see how well these were built. The stone work was just so well done and where walls came together, they were mated so well that there were no gaps at all.

As you can see the caves were way up on the cliff face. Deborah said that they farmed crops on the area above the caves and hunted game down in the valley. There is a spring fed stream in the valley and that was where they got their water.

This is the trail up to the dwellings, it crossed the stream several times and then started up. It was very muddy and rocky in some areas. The picture of the sign below that was seen in several places along the trail and was self explanatory.

It still amazes me how well these were built. The walls are very straight, the corners are square, and there are even some curved walls. If there was a rock that was to large to move they just incorporated it into the wall.

There are some pictographs that are still visible. It's nice to be able to take the time and travel around and and see all of this history and wonder about the people that built things like this. This sure beats sitting home and watching it snow or the grass grow...and to think, I get to do this with my best friend. Well that is about it for now. We've been doing our "job" and relaxing. I hope everyone has been enjoying our travels as much as we have. See you all next month. Oh that's right....we bought a new Jeep this month. More on that later!

Cute little thing isn't it.