Long ago, when planning this trip, Bill had marked Carlsbad Caverns as a desirable destination in New Mexico. The caves are home to thousands of bats, who make a spectacular exit at dusk as they come out to feed. Closer attention to the Caverns' web site established that this natural wonder is closed to the public until 1 May. We were too early!
Our Boondockers Welcome host, Tony, had lots of suggestions for alternative destinations. We were beginning to realise that the American West is far too big and far too interesting to do it justice in the 90 days we had available.
We had seen some pecan orchards in Texas, but New Mexico is the biggest producer and it was the dominant land use around Vado and Las Cruces.
Not all the place names in New Mexico are of Spanish origin. Our first port of call was near a town rejoicing in the name“Truth or Consequences”. Yes, really. It was originally called Hot Springs but in 1950 a popular radio quiz show offered to air the program on its 10th anniversary from the first town that renamed itself after the show.
The point of interest had a similarly improbable name. It was the Elephant Butte Lake State Park.
A lot of New Mexico is arid.
The state park provides recreation opportunities on the Elephant Butte Reservoir. There is a campground, and more importantly a boat-launching ramp. The fizz boat in the background was one of many on the lake. The fisherman in the foreground was trying to catch bait so that he could go after the big catfish. He was delighted to meet New Zealanders because he was hoping to emigrate there. His opinion of President Trump was, if it is possible, even lower than that of our friends in Asheville.
The lake was formed by damming the Rio Grande with a view to simultaneously generating power and providing water for irrigation.
The name "Elephant Butte" refers to a volcanic core, said to resemble an elephant, which is now an island in the lake.
Since we had paid a “day use” fee to enter the park we felt entitled to use the dump station and emptied our tanks.
Not far up the road is the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge. What wildlife take refuge in Apache Forest? It turned out to be mostly waterfowl. The refuge is a large and attractive wetland. We couldn't tell whether the birds we saw were there to breed or still on their migration. But there were lots of them.
A pair of Gadwalls
Buffleheads
Not all the birds were on the water. These are Mourning Doves.
America's national table birds. Male turkeys face off.
Alas for the camera, the water birds especially were a very long way off and beyond the effective range of even the big telephoto lens. There were Northern Shovelers, Coots, Canada Geese, a Great Blue Heron, Pied-billed Grebes, Great Egrets, Ross's Geese and the ubiquitous Killdeer. Off the water there were corvids (crow-type birds) of uncertain species.
Mammals were represented by Mule Deer. We saw a few in the refuge and a large herd a mile down the road.
There were some flowers at the refuge.
Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument wasn't on our itinerary when we set out, but it was on the map and not far out of our way. It was a place where the Spaniards, in the early days of contact, installed priests and built a church. No, that's not right. They installed priests and then compelled the indigenous population to build a church.
The remains of the church and its adjacent buildings.
The indigenous population were part of the pre-Columbian puebloanpopulation that built towns and villages of permanent materials along the Rio Grande and Colorado river systems. They were divided into 3 or 4 language groups, but had very similar cultures.
A shared feature was the building of kivas. A kiva was a circular room for religious ceremonies, political meetings, schooling, story telling, etc. The ones we saw had floors below ground level, although they were not entirely subterranean. What is remarkable about Salinas Pueblo is a structure that looks like a kiva adjacent to a Catholic Church.
This certainly looks like a kiva, but it is in the midst of the Franciscans' residence. A cunning strategy for making conversions? No-one knows.
The site is in the hands of a lively young ranger and she, or some predecessor, has a keen sense of humour.
There were flowers in the dry soil if you looked carefully.
As we returned to Gregory to leave Salinas Pueblo we got a nasty surprise. We noticed that one of the front tyres was badly and unevenly worn. Its partner wasn't in great shape either. Oh dear. Shouldn't the wheel alignment in Penticton last year have prevented that? Maybe, but that was many thousands of miles ago.
The day's schedule was suddenly rearranged. All sightseeing was cancelled and top priority given to making our vehicle properly roadworthy. We did have the tools to change a wheel, but didn't fancy doing so. We set off to find help.
The first little town along the road had a tire shop (Americans cannot spell “tyre”), but it was locked up. On a weekday. At the gas station they weren't surprised.
The next settlement had an auto repair shop right on the highway. For a very modest fee the mechanic wheeled out his huge hydraulic jack and changed the bad wheel for the spare. While he was working he observed that the brake pad on that side was worn almost away. But the other brake pad was still fine. The mechanic was also able to direct us to a tyre/tire supplier.
The town with this vital succour is called Moriarty. We wondered if the name was based on Conan Doyle's arch villain. It is surely not a nod to the Goon Show character.
The tyres/tires could be installed without waiting. Hooray. But they could not be aligned. There was no-one in Moriarty with the equipment necessary to align the wheels of such a large vehicle.
We asked for a recommended brake pad fitter and were directed to an outfit modestly calling itself “Higher Standards”. The owner was much more down to earth than the business name and could fit us in on the following day.
To ease the pain of so much expense we lashed out on a paid campground and ate out that evening at a modest diner.
In the morning the good news was that the necessary brake parts has been delivered. The bad news was that more work was needed. One of the ball joints had to be replaced. This was a surprise because we believed that all the ball joints had been renewed in Summerland last July. “This is an old ball joint.” We were presented with a filthy piece of metal to support the statement, presumably so that we could present it to the Canadian mechanic and claim a refund. We dutifully stowed the grubby evidence.
On new front tyres and with new brake pads we drove to Albuquerque with the name of a recommended wheel aligner. We had telephoned ahead and been advised that the job could not be done immediately, but they would fit us in on the morrow.
Back to being tourists for the afternoon, we navigated cautiously through Albuquerque to Petroglyph National Monument. Like the Salinas Pueblo, this is a small site by national monument standards. It only has two parking places, and one of them was not recommended for RVs. Time was fairly short anyway, so we only walked one trail.
Just because we are here to see the petroglyphs doesn't mean that we ignore the fauna and flora:
A spiny desert plant
Its fruits(?) in close-up
A non-spiny desert plant
A Rock Wren
Over hundreds of years naturally light-coloured rock oxidises and acquires a thin black coating on the surface. The early human inhabitants of the area found that the coating could be chipped off to reveal the pale rock below.
What these images represent and why they were created can only be speculation. Maybe we have been solemnly admiring ancient graffiti.
An early bird-watcher starting a list of species seen?
Curating the petroglyphs presents an interesting problem. Once the oxide has been removed the fresh surface immediately begins the process and, in a few hundred years, will be as black as the rest of the surface. In the short term the art can be left in situ and exposed to the elements. But eventually …
This property of the petroglyphs has one advantage. The age of an image can be estimated by the extent to which it has been re-oxidised.
For a night in Albuquerque we first applied to Walmart, but it turned out to be one of the Walmart stores that don't permit overnight parking. Plan B was to try Cracker Barrel. The manageress was very welcoming “... but I don't know you're there.” We agreed that Cracker Barrel had no responsibility while we were parked behind their store.
As a token of our gratitude we had a modest Cracker Barrel breakfast in the morning before driving off to get the wheels aligned. We had got ourselves up and moving much earlier than usual to try and get to the head of the job list. No promises were given about the time our vehicle would be worked on, but Gregory must have been near the top of the schedule because it was only a couple of hours before we were invited to pay an invoice.
Not all Pueblos are ruins, like Salinas. Acoma claims to be the longest continuously inhabited settlement in North America. It's open to tourists, so we went to have a look.
On the way we considered the difference between a mesa and a butte. A mesa is defined as “a flat-topped hill with steep sides”, and a butte as “an isolated hill with steep sides and a flat top (similar to but narrower than a mesa)”.
Mesa or butte?
Probably a butte.
Acoma was, of course, laid out long before there were motor vehicles to consider. Tourists are required to take the bus since only high clearance 4WD vehicles can make it up the hill, and there is little room to park when you get to the village. This gives the tours a great monopoly position, but the price is pretty reasonable.
The largest building in the pueblo is the church. Again, it was built with forced labour. The timber had to be carried, by humans, for 40 miles. The priests ordered that the wood selected for certain purposes was so sacred it must not be allowed to touch the ground and the bearers had to change places without putting the tree down or go back and start again with another tree. Christian charity as practiced in the 17thcentury.
The church is still used by the villagers, but as they choose. A priest comes only once or twice a year for specific festivities. Our guide told us that he wasn't allowed to tell us much about the local religion, although visitors are permitted to watch some traditional ceremonies – or parts of them. We got the strong impression that the traditional beliefs have robustly survived the Spaniards' attempt to eradicate them, although some Catholic ritual may have been incorporated.
The village also includes 3 kivas. Outsiders are not invited into a kiva.
Our guide. We have forgotten his name :-(.
A street in the pueblo. Most families have homes nearer to their 21stcentury employment, but they return to the pueblo for festivals and other important events. Why are there so many ladders? Traditionally, the entrance to a house was through the roof.
Of the houses that were occupied, three were offering crafts for sale.
On the way to our campsite we passed a natural arch:
This is La Ventana – the Window.
That night we were booked in to another Boondockers Welcome. This one was an alpaca ranch. The hosts were lovely and the dogs were very friendly. So why did we take no photographs? Doh.
The ranch was at quite high altitude and it was COLD that night. Gregory had an effective heater, but we needed a 110v power supply to make it work. At least it was an incentive to get dressed and ready for the road to Arizona.
No comments:
Post a Comment