National parks not far from Santa Fe.

Thus far we've visited Bandelier, Tent Rocks, Fort Union, White Sands, Capulin, and Petroglyph. This blog includes photos of all but the first two mentioned. In case you're keeping count, that leaves El Morro, Gila Cliff Dwellings, Salinas, Aztec Ruins, and El Malpais. Our little caravan has voted: next stop, El Malpais.

We'll also revisit Kasha-Katuwe (Tent Rocks) and Bandelier so we can post photos here.

By the way, the 90th anniversary of Bandelier National Monument is coming up...check out the planned festivities.

NP map from Santa Fe New Mexican, uncredited, Jan. 22, 2006.

Museum of International Folk Art exhibits beds.

'Dream On: Beds from Asia to Europe' at MOIFA displays hopes to 'offer visitors an enticing glimpse into other people's bedrooms.' The snoring sound effect is a little disconcerting.

This Sunday the Museum folks had bits of fabric, lace, buttons, little boxes, and shiny this-and-that on hand, and they encouraged kids to design their own miniature bedrooms. Results from our ten-year-old above.

Capulin Volcano National Monument.

Another astonishingly beautiful national park site...Capulin is the cone of a volcano that erupted about 60,000 years ago. You can hike up the crater rim and look into the distance at the Raton-Clayton volcanic field. On the way, we spied mule deer and black bear tracks. That's quite a mitt, eh.

You can see four states from here.

Not to mention another, but smaller, cinder cone, Baby Capulin. We are looking down from about 1,100 feet above Junior.

On the road out from Capulin, we saw this house and wondered if Dorothy was anywhere near by.

Pie in the sky.

New Mexico may have just received a D+ in emergency health care, but by golly, we're going to have a spaceport. Discuss.

Nature's first green is gold...

This evening the air...
Originally uploaded by mdboxer.

...her hardest hue to hold.

Volkwagens in Santa Fe.

I see The Samba. I see Vanagons. I see Beetles. However, in Santa Fe, I never see the VW I drove in college: the sublime squareback.

Encountering the prairie.

After a trip to Fort Union (see below) it’s easy to find yourself imagining what a trip might have been like on the Santa Fe Trail in its 60-year heyday.

"In spring, the vast plain heaves and rolls around like a green ocean," wrote one early traveler.

The trail stretched 900 miles of the Great Plains between the Missouri and Santa Fe, peopled with traders, soldiers, gold seekers, emigrants, mountain people, hunters, guides, and families.

What did you need to make the journey successfully? Flour, sowbelly bacon, coffee, sugar, and salt. Beans, dried apples, or buffalo and other game might be occasional treats. Buffalo chips for fuel. Wagons, yokes, harnesses.

The trail crossed the hunting grounds of the Comanche, Kiowa, southern bands of Cheyenne and Arapaho, and Plains Apaches, as well as the homelands of the Osage, Kansas, Jicarilla Apache, Ute, and Pueblo Indians.

Travelers may have encountered bison herds or Plains Indians but far more so they experienced dust, mud, gnats, mosquitos, and heat. Violent weather—floods (well, swollen streams, anyway), wildfires, hailstorms, strong winds, or blizzards—could put wagon trains in peril.

Illustrations from sangres.com.