Day 961: Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument

Posted on March 25, 2016 by Ben

Today started with a photo-worthy breakfast:

We hitched up and prepared to leave the Camel Rock Casino, where we’ve been parked for a week. Thanks for hosting us, or, as they say in the Tewa language spoken by the residents of the Tesuque Pueblo, Kuunda:

After restocking our frozen meat at Trader Joe’s, we drove south to visit Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument:

One of the “tent rocks”:

The canyon became a slot canyon:

This cave was enlarged by Native Americans hundreds of years ago and still has soot on the ceiling from the original inhabitants:

More tent rock formations. A boulder or tree protected the soft layer beneath it from erosion while the surrounding material eroded away more quickly:

The kids completed their Junior Ranger workbooks, but as of now there is no visitor facility where they can be handed in, so we will have to scan them and e-mail them to the BLM field office.

We continued southwest, then northwest. Driving to our overnight location involved a few miles of dirt road, on which we encountered open range cattle:

We arrived at our Shabbos dispersed camping location, Cabezon Peak:

Cabezon Peak stands over 1,000 feet taller than the surrounding terrain. It is the largest of a family of volcanic plugs in this area:

Good Shabbos from Cabezon Peak, New Mexico:

See the trip map for today’s drive and our current location.

Day 960: Purim in Santa Fe

Posted on March 24, 2016 by Ben

This morning we went into Santa Fe for Purim to hear the Megillah reading. When we returned to the RV, M as having trouble with his R/C car charger, so we cut out the section of the cord that was damaged and did some soldering to rebuild the cord:

This afternoon, we returned to Santa Fe for laundry and propane. We also delivered shalach manos to the owners of the tire shop and book store that we visited last week. In both cases, they mentioned they were Jewish when we were there.

We then went to a family for the Purim Seudah. B is sporting new face paint today:

The meal was medieval-themed, and included many authentic dishes from the Middle Ages. There were about 20 people there, and the food, wine, and company were excellent:

Day 959: Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

Posted on March 23, 2016 by Ben

Today we visited the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum with my parents:

The museum houses some of O’Keeffe’s drawing and painting materials:

Near the museum, there’s an interesting outdoor art installation:

Trish did B’s face painting in preparation for Purim, which begins tonight:

Tricia’s costume:

The synagogue in Santa Fe is very small. It was inspiring to be here, the only Nusach Ashkenaz synagogue in New Mexico, in a town with less than 70,000 residents:

The kids in costume:

My Purim bowtie was a hit:

Freilichen Purim!

Day 958: Bandelier NM, Valles Caldera NP

Posted on March 22, 2016 by Ben

Today my parents came by the RV and we headed up to Bandelier National Monument:

We watched the visitor center film and then checked out the displays:

Next we walked the trail that leads out to the dwellings:

The naturally soft ash layer was used by Native Americans for housing. They both lived in caves and in dwellings built against the cliff wall:

We walked through and then onto a ledge above Tyuonyi Pueblo, built in the late 1300s and thought to have had several hundred residents:

This model from the visitor center shows what the pueblo probably looked like when it was in use. Rooms had no doors or windows. All access was through holes in the roof:

We followed this path up against the cliff face to view the caves in which some Indians lived:

I climbed up into one of the caves:

The kids and Bubbe came up too:

This dwelling is called the Long House:

The lines of holes in the cliff wall are sockets for floor and ceiling beams:

The kids completed their Junior Ranger workbooks and received their patches. M received the Deputy Ranger patch for his age group:

B received the Junior Ranger patch:

We continued west to visit Valles Caldera National Preserve, which preserves the Valles Caldera, a volcanic caldera almost 15 miles across. The two eruptions that created the caldera ejected 500 times the material ejected by the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption.

We stopped at an overlook inside the south rim. Looking north, the mountains in the distance are lava domes inside the caldera that were created by later eruptions. The northern rim of the caldera isn’t even visible from here:

We stopped by the visitor center:

A map of the caldera. The photos above showed the Valle Grande area of the caldera, which in in the lower right corner of the caldera:

In a not to the preserve’s ranching past, the Junior Ranger program here is called Junior Cowhand, and the kids had to do a variety of activities including roping this horse:

The kids handed in their worksheets and received their badges:

Parting shots of the caldera:

On our way back, we photographed Camel Rock. I had thought that Camel Rock was only the toadstool-like formation, but I now see that the toadstool is the head of the camel and the hill to the left is the camel’s body:

See the trip map for today’s drive.

Day 957: Touring Los Alamos

Posted on March 21, 2016 by Ben

Today we visited Los Alamos with my parents. Our first stop was the Los Alamos Historical Museum, temporary location for visitor contact for the newly formed Manhattan Project National Historical Park. Unfortunately, there’s no Junior Ranger workbook for the Los Alamos location yet. We did enjoy the museum:

We next visited the Los Alamos Nature Center:

The nature center has a dozen terrariums showcasing animals from the area:

This Wolf Spider was the largest non-Tarantula spider I’ve ever seen:

The kids experimented with the video microscope:

This ant terrarium connected through a hole in the “ground” to this exposed ant colony below:

Our last stop of the day was the Bradbury Science Museum, the de facto visitor center for Los Alamos National Laboratory:

The museum deals primary with atomic weapon history:

This interactive display allowed the kids to explore Los Alamos as it looked during the Manhattan Project:

After our visit to Los Alamos, we returned to the RV where we had a birthday party for B and Bubbe:

After dinner, my parents returned to their hotel in Santa Fe and M played with his new R/C car. It was considerably cheaper to order the car directly from China, but it took 18 days to arrive from China, so we had to carefully decide where to have it shipped, and the intervening days were an agonizing wait for M. We picked up the car yesterday in Santa Fe, and today M drove it around: