New Mexico Roadtrip - Part 3

Saturday
For breakfast we headed to a small cafe we had heard about on "Diners, Drive-ins and Dives" called Telcolte Cafe . Stuart had the 'Huevos Yucatecos' - a corn tortilla layered with black beans, two eggs, Swiss and feta cheese, pico de gallo, potatoes, fried bananas and of course New Mexico Green chile. I on the other hand had Weightwatchers playing on my mind so a poached egg and, well, a biscuit (British scone) – they didn’t serve toast, actually they made a big thing of it since it said it everywhere ‘No Toast’!

We had an early start because they were a lot of sights to see. First on the list was to visit Los Alamos and the National Laboratory Science Museum. The road wraps up the side of the hills and when you finally arrive on the plateau. Los Alamos was founded as a secret planned community to provide housing for the employees of the Manhattan Project during World War II. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Alamos,_New_Mexico. The museum was small but good and would certainly recommend it if you are passing – it was interesting and shocking. On the fun note you get to try out the Geiger counter!

Next stop was to visit the Bandelier National Monument which is an archaeological site of ancient Pueblo cliff dwellings. The park road winds down so you are at the base of the cliffs. A short walk in you start to see holes in the cliff face. The path takes you right up to the cliffs and some if the holes have wooden ladders that you can climb up and just imagine what it is like to live in one of these holes. Some are very small I guess for sleeping, others were bigger that you could see evidence of fire smoke so must have been more like a living room! While walking around the site, we heard a buzzing/hissing noise. Stuart said it was probably crickets as he had seen some earlier. I knew it wasn’t crickets and suddenly I saw it! – I shouted 'Watch Out!' as Stuart nearly stepped on a coiled Rattlesnake. He then started to take close up photos of it until a ranger came and told us to get back about 6 feet because when they are coiled they are ready to strike and can attack up to 6 feet away! Tourist!!

We had a quick lunch in the car before moving on to our next stop was to look at the Valles Caldera a 12 mile diameter hole left by a super-volcano over 50 thousand years ago. It was so big that you couldn’t get the real impression of the caldera except the extremely flat plain surrounded by hills. We had heard that there were lots of geothermal hot springs in the area, so we headed off to find one with some very vague directions. After looking at the GPS and various guide books we found the informal car park at the side of the road and headed off into the forest to find it. Apparently the forestry service doesn’t like to advertise the location of the hot springs as there are 'bares in the woods'! With this knowledge we cautiously approached the hot spring, looked over the edge …… To our relief everyone was in bathing costumes. There was about 10 of us at the hot spring, including 2 other Brits. The temperature was like a hot bath except near the source where it was warmer. The view was spectacular looking down the mountain through the trees. It was almost a shame we had to share! On the way back to our car, we spotted a tarantula walking across the road. Once we had seen one we started to notice lots of them crossing the road over the next few days.




Sunday
Breakfast again and "Diners, Drive-ins and Dives" recommendation. This time we went to place called the Tune-up Cafe . This morning Stuart had the Chile Relleno and I had Corned Beef Hash. Corned beef in the U.S is completely different to the tinned variety we get back in the UK and it was a lot nicer it looked just like pieces of steak, actually chunks of salt beef. Anyway our breakfast was a good filler for a day in the field!

The day before we missed one of our stops because it was dark by the time we headed back to Santa Fe. So our first stop was Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument . The cone-shaped tent rock formations are the products of volcanic eruptions that occurred 6 to 7 million years ago and left pumice, ash and tuff deposits over 1,000 feet thick. Perched on many of the tapering hoodoos are boulder caps that protect the softer pumice and tuff below. We took a nice walk around all alone but I had been given strict instructions by Stuart that we needed to be moving on to our next stop of the day by 10am at the latest!!

Back to the car on time, we then drove a long way out west to the San Juan Basin Badlands to see some more hoodoos. It was about a three hours’ drive and the last part was on dirt roads even though they were describe as State roads! A wrong turn on the desolate dirt road took us in the wrong direction but we managed to work out that we had gone the wrong way having found a simple map on my Blackberry. These hoodoos are off the beaten track and are not covered by any guide book. The last turn to them was down a track, avoiding a sign, saying something or other. Stuart was off watering the plants when I walked over the edge and let me tell you ‘wow’ it was an incredible site. We walked down among the hoodoos with no one to be seen or heard. I was very conscious about us tracking where we went since we needed to be able to find the car again which was well out of sight. It was the most wonderful find by Stuart, but because the land is delicate where we walked I am afraid I am not sharing the name you will have to find it for yourself.

Once again it was after 6pm before we were back at the hotel. We had now realised you got cheaper parking around the corner at the local car park than paying the extortionate valet parking fee. Since it was Halloween there were plenty of Halloween revellers while we looked for somewhere to eat.

Monday
Monday was a very early start to pack up and drive to Albuquerque for a hot air balloon ride. It was still dark (and cold) while we were getting the balloon ready. Inside the balloon, there was our pilot and 2 others from California that were celebrating his birthday. The ride was about 2 hours over Albuquerque with drops into a forest and the Rio Grande. The take-off was so peaceful and I thought the idea of being in a wicker basket high in the air would be a little scary but not at all! There was not a cloud in the sky and the beautiful autumn leaves along the Rio Grande made for some beautiful sights. We actually managed to pick up a bit of the trees on route! Before landing we were giving the low down on what to do for a landing. The pilot described the landings in one of three ways:

1) A Cessna landing –low winds conditions, smooth landing
2) Boeing landing – it goes down but jumps a couple of times along the ground, but usually you will stay upright
3) fighter jet landing – the most extreme landing in high winds and involves you hunkering right down below the edge of the basket, hanging on for dear life as you are certainly going over while being dragged along the ground!

Well we were lucky it was a Cessna day for us! Once we had landed and helped pack up the balloon – stuffing it into an oversized sail bag - we were given doughnuts and champagne – dead posh!!!
The drive home was a lot longer, about 14 hours. We passed lots of very long goods trains, saw more tarantulas, tumble-weed and there was a huge lightning storm just past Dallas that was lighting up the whole sky. It was an excellent road trip with the final tally of 2700 miles in 5 days. I am telling you Texas is big and most of the mileage was getting out and back in!