Day Five

Here are our early morning pictures from Storrie Lake.

You can see an RV in the background on the right. One of many.

Unfortunately, I think that may be all the pictures I have of Day Five. Julia will probably have more. We spent most of the day driving. New Mexico is a huge state. Huge. The fifth largest. We had to go from Las Vegas, in the middle of the state to Carlsbad, waaaay down in the south of the state. Google maps tells me it's around 260 miles, and I believe it. We must have driven 6 hours that day. And what did we see? Not much. A lot of desert with its low scrubby vegetation, and tall dried up yucca blossoms. Roswell was pretty depressing. Everything had to be dressed up in some kind of martian gimmick. I spared you the pictures.

The good news is that we made it in time to see the bats leave Carlsbad Caverns, an occurrence that takes place nightly during the summer months. We got to the caverns around dusk, and waited in the Bat Amphitheater which looks onto the mouth of the famous caverns.


We waited. And waited. I didn't mind the wait, but it was a struggle for the families with small children, or impatient adults, to wait quietly without the distraction of their cameras or cell phones. Too much noise will throw the bats off their mojo as will the collective sound of everyone's electronics. We can't hear it, but if you're practically blind and fly by sonar, I guess it's pretty disruptive. So I don't have pictures, but I was able to cadge one from the Carlsbad National Park site.

About 300,000-500,000 bats leave the caverns every summer night. They can fly as far as West Texas for their nightly insect meal. They left the cave in a rush of wings, nearly soundless, that lasted for about an hour and a half. And they were tiny, tiny! Maybe the size of a sparrow, with delicate wings. If you got very close to the cavern entrance, you might hear a susurration like the rustling of leaves. Seeing them leave the cave left me with such a special feeling for them. They're so tiny and delicate and harmless, and really beneficial to us humans, and they've been so reviled for being ugly and creepy. I recently read a New Yorker article about a fungus that was killing bat populations all over the world. Realizing how precarious their survival is made me feel even more protective of them.

Here's a picture of a little guy called a javelina, native to New Mexico. We didn't actually see one, though I had my eyes peeled for them while we were there.

After the bats, we grabbed a Sonic Burger (ok, I grabbed a Sonic Burger, Julia grabbed some Sonic tater tots)


and went back to our hotel, the Stagecoach Motel. Don't ever *ever* go! Our room was so infested with roaches (3 killed in 20 minutes. And Julia did none of the killing), we had to set up the tent on the bed in order to feel okay falling asleep. The weird thing about the motel is that it had a beautiful, well-maintained pool, nicely screened from the highway with decorative plants and trees. Go figure. A hilarious picture of Julia on the bed with our tent.

Suddenly Wien

Here I am, in Vienna a few months earlier than I had expected to be. The plan was to come visit Tante Gerda over Christmas, but when she passed away on the 19th of September, my mom and I flew out immediately. It's been a heavy fortnight, but working our way through Tante's belongings, accumulated in the elegant apartment that she lived in from 1958 until just a few weeks ago, has allowed for a sense of intimacy that was pretty intangible for me while she was alive.







Tante spent the last few hours of her life with her incredibly sweet cousin Elfi at her side. This woman is an angel. They held hands as Tante took her final breaths. The last time I saw Elfi I was a small child, and I'm grateful to have the opportunity to get to know her a little bit better during this visit.



Claud and Matthias flew in for the funeral, which was beautiful. My mom and I went out for another visit to the grave a few days later. My great grandmother, grandmother, great aunt, and great uncle now all lie there together, in the Baumgartner Friedhof.

Day Four

We bid a fond farewell to Sandia Mountain Hostel and our donkey friends. Here's Bambina looking to start the day with a crust of bread or a melon rind. The sign on the door, aptly enough, says "please close the door to keep animals out of the hostel."


The day before, a gallery/shop owner in Madrid had told us about a national monument about 45 minutes away that was her favorite place to send people—one of her favorite things to do in the area. We figured we would trust the locals and visit Kasha-Ketuwe Tent Rocks National Monument. After a short coffee stop in Madrid, we drove out to Cochiti Lake, on the Pueblo de Cochiti Reservation. Pictures aren't allowed on the Reservations, but this is what our drive was mostly like:

The "tent rocks" are these enormous rock formations that are formed from different layers of rock and ash and tuff (volcanic ash). They settled over time and then were eroded away by wind and water. Since the layers all erode at different rates, the rock has striations with different colors. The giant rocks almost look like curtains (or tents, I guess), billowing in the hot wind.

Sometimes the path leads you through a narrow, twisty canyon with tent rocks on either side. It could be really dangerous to be here during a heavy rain. The summer months in New Mexico are notorious for flash floods. The weather can be clear one minute, blue skies and all, and then a huge storm will roll up out of nowhere and dump enough water to cause a flood in one of these "arroyos" or dry river beds. The lady who recommended Tent Rocks to us told us we wouldn't want to be there in the rain, but being Easterners, we thought she meant because there was no cover. Only when we got there, did we interpret her words to mean "it would be dangerous to be there in the rain."



It was quite a steep path near the top. The Canyon trail took us up to 630 feet up. Nearing the top:


At the top, though, we were rewarded with a great view of Tent Rocks below as well as the Rio Grande Valley, and the Sangre de Cristo, Jemez, and Sandia Mountains in the distance. This kid in the red shirt scared us half to death by playing along the edge. His dad didn't seem too concerned, but I could barely look long enough to take a picture. The boy (who was also sporting a grown-out mohawk) assured us that there was a ledge just 1o feet or so below him, but I couldn't even gather the courage to look.


After our Tent Rocks adventure, we had to put some distance between ourselves and the Sandia Mountains. We drove about 100 miles to the east to pull into Storrie Lake State Park just north of Las Vegas, NM. We blew through Las Vegas pretty fast, but we still managed to find the Fort Union Drive In Movie Theater. The drive-in experience got two thumbs up,


even if the movie itself left something to be desired.

Storrie Lake proved to be a bit of a disappointment. The lake itself was small and stagnant, with a large perimeter of boggy marsh surrounding it. Then, there was the management of the park. It's totally cool with the rangers, accepted park policy I guess, for everyone to drive their cars and giant RVs onto the grass and all over. So everywhere you go, the grass (not lush to begin with because of the dry, dry climate) is criss-crossed over with muddy tire tracks. Add on top of that the most unhelpful pair of rangers ever, and this campsite ends up with two thumbs down!! A side note: they actually have quite passable showers that smell nice and woody like a sauna, and have hot (though a bit sulfur-smelly) water. If you go and find a giant hairball sticking to the wall, though, don't blame this halfie. All this notwithstanding, I managed to take a picture that made it look gorgeous. It's all in the light and strategically cropping out the RVs.

I Just Have to Share

My new favorite blog:

Fuck you, Penguin

Read, laugh, weep.

Day Three

We woke up on our third day to find ourselves at the Sandia Mountain Hostel, surrounded by donkeys!

I guess there were only two of them roaming about, which would make it difficult for them, technically, to "surround" us, but they are so persistent in their nosings for food, that one easily feels surrounded. The two that were roaming around were Bambina and her foal, Pancho.

Absorb the cuteness:

Here's me and Pancho having a moment:

After palling around with the donkeys for a most of the morning, Julia and I, and our new friend and hostelmate Katrina went to the Tinkertown Museum, the lifelong work of folk artist Ross J. Ward. A mural painter for traveling carnivals by trade, he spent every spare moment carving miniature people and environments. He died in 2002, but lived to see his home grow into a museum that welcomes 200,000 people annually. And it really is something to see:

Many of the scenes have moving parts which, for 25 cents, will animate. They play music (Rusty's Band, up top), or chase a chicken, or do whatever seems appropriate to their situation.

Madame Esmerelda, of course, is not something he created, but rather a salvaged carnival attraction. For 25 cents, she will give you a card that details your fortune. Good news for me: me and my beloved will never part!

After we checked out Tinkertown, we drove up to the top of the peak. It had a wonderful view of Albuquerque

And of course, that big, beautiful sky:

About 90 degrees to the left of Julia was this forest of antennae:

We considered it a day well-spent, but were anxious to explore the small towns north of Cedar Crest since we were hoping to strike out for points east early the next day. As it was, we only had time to do some shopping in the first town to the north, Madrid (pronounced MAD-rid, perhaps to distinguish it from the Spanish capitol). Madrid was an old mining "ghost" town that's had something of a renaissance. They now boast a main street with several galleries/stores, a thrift shop, a good coffee shop, although no stop light. They have an annual Chili Festival which was featured in the 2007 movie Wild Hogs (filmed on location in Madrid) starring John Travolta, William H. Macy et al.

On the way to Madrid, we saw our first rainbow of the trip. The weather in NM is extremely variable, and it always seems to be raining somewhere on the horizon, so rainbows are pretty common, even double rainbows.

We closed our visit to Madrid with a visit to its local bar, The Mine Shaft Tavern, which apparently boasts the longest stand up bar in New Mexico (who knew?). Jim had warned us away from it, saying it wasn't someplace you would meet your best friend in. He cast aspersions about the clientele. Does it make us bad people that his description of the place only made us want to go? What did we find when we went? Leather cowboy hats, worn without irony, yes. Leather and teflon jackets, grizzled men with tattoos, yes and yes. But plenty of people you would find anywhere else, stopping in for a beer or a burger. And a mural painted by none other than Ross Ward of Tinkertown fame:

And though I was a bit too shy (and wary) to take a picture of the bar, I cadged one from the world wide interweb of a busy night:

It was nowhere near as crowded the night we were there, but we were thoroughly satisfied with The Mine Shaft. The wall behind and above the bar also had paintings, one of which featured an angel approaching miners with a banner that reads (in Latin, no less) "It is better to drink than to work."

On the way back, we had a gorgeous sunset, as we often did in NM.

Shaky hands:

New Mexico Road Trip, Days One and Two

I'm taking us back to the first day because, let's face it, I have a crazy number of photos, and it seems the only way to cover everything! Hopefully Julia and Cara will also be adding their photos (hint, hint!).

The very first day, we got into Albuquerque in the late afternoon and went directly to our hostel, Route 66 Hostel. We ate dinner, went to sleep, end of story. So I'm going to skip it, though perhaps Julia will share some of her outstanding pictures of the mural at the Albuquerque airport.

A few road trip themes you'll notice first off:

Driving pictures, not only of each other in the driver's seat, but also out the windshield and passenger windows. For those of you in faraway places where driving is the norm, please bear in mind that for New York Sea-ites such as us, driving is a novelty, and therefore completely picture-worthy.

Documenting the obsessive documenting:

(That's Julia documenting the difference between her tiny li'l soy cappuccino and my big bad funky drink that had five—five!!—espresso shots in it. Don't worry, I spilled it all over my bag instead of imbibing it, so my brain didn't actually explode from the caffeine.)

And bikers! I didn't take too many pictures of them, because they can look a bit forbidding, but they were everywhere. And they weren't the kind we have here in the northeast who are podiatrists and dermatologists during the week. These were full-time, hard-core, grizzled, cherry-chapstick-eschewing, for real bikers. These two were making friends. What could have been their topic of conversations? The dubious efficacy of her SPF? Leather chafing? One can only speculate.

I guess those are the three big themes that ran throughout the trip, although perhaps Julia can point out a few more. That first day, we noticed the cute signage all over Albaquerque's Central Avenue (aka, Route 66). Here are a few examples:

Ladies Choice Clothing Store [sic].

If you're wondering what they sell there, the side of the building had a mural that answers the burning question:

Elegant, no?

There were *lots* of cute motel signs. After a while, I just stopped taking pictures of them because there were too many.

Octopus Car Wash

After coffee, the first thing we did was check out the Buffalo Exchange, a huge thrift store close the campus of the University of New Mexico. Julia found this Pee-Wee Herman shirt, and I'm still a little shocked she didn't buy it. Are we getting old?

Our next stop was the University of New Mexico's Maxwell Museum of Anthropology. Sadly, we didn't get much time to look around the collection, but we did have a nice walk through UNM's lush, landscaped campus.

It didn't seem so out of place then, I think because we'd just come from New York, but all that green grass is an unusual site in New Mexico, and kind of stood out when I looked back on the trip. One wonders about their water usage! I guess the university bows to the stereotypical ideal for college campuses, when what would really be more appropriate is deserty scrub and piñon trees.

Our last stop of the day was the Rattlesnake Museum, where there were a lot of, oh, you know!!

That night we rolled into the Sandia Mountain Hostel, but since it was dark and we couldn't fully take in the charm (donkeys!), I'll save that for the Day Three post.