2.25.2006
2.19.2006
Ta Lin market.
Ok, it's in Albuquerque, not Santa Fe, but sometimes we have to shop in that sprawling town. We recently ventured there to seek Thai cooking ingredients. Mission accomplished.
China, Japan, Thailand, and Korea are all well-represented at Ta Lin Market. By the way, do you love the old-fashioned label art? Gar-zilla.
In Santa Fe, Geoffrey is depressed.
They are closing the local Toys R Us and the representative waving giraffe seems listless and weary now. And he is unkempt...look, his underwear is showing. What, after all, is the point?
2.10.2006
One of the best day trips from Santa Fe...
...is to Bandelier National Monument. The detached Tsankawi section of Bandelier is near Los Alamos; it's 11 miles north of Frijoles Canyon on NM 4. This large unexcavated ruin on a high mesa provides sweeping views of the Rio Grande valley, the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to the east, and the Jemez Mountains to the west.
Tsankawi petroglyphs.
Among the petroglyphs are figures of people, animals, birds, stars and other designs. These carvings were made in the soft tuff stone, which easily erodes. The sight of the carvings as you come around a long trail is stunning.
Pathways of ancestral Pueblo inhabitants.
The 1.5 mile trail through Tsankawi takes you along centuries-old paths. In many areas, trails have been worn into the rock 8 to 24 inches or more as people traveled from the mesa tops to their farms in the canyons below.
What they left behind.
"An unlikely place so beautiful...."
Poem about Tsankawi by Jacob Arnold.
The people of Tsankawi spoke Tewa (Kiowa-Tanoan language family) but those in Frijoles Canyon--now the main section of Bandelier--spoke Keres.
Peaceful past understanding.
San Ildefonso pueblo, eight miles away, has a tradition that it was their ancestors who lived at Tsankawi, probably in the 1400s. In Tewa the name for Tsankawi (saekewikwaje onwikege) means "village between two canyons at the clump of sharp, round cacti."
The village ruins are reached after the trial winds through cliffs covered with petroglyphs and climbs to the top of the Mesa. The village was built out of tuff stone plastered inside and out with mud.
The Tsankawi mesa top is serene and peaceful.
2.08.2006
Volcanic hometown.
Our recent visits to El Malpais and Capulin (scroll down for photos), along with Valles Caldera, the Jemez range, and so on, put us in mind of the concept Volcanic New Mexico.
The NM climate (which right now is cold and dangerously dry) helps preserve volcanic phenomena. Every major volcanic landform (composite volcano, shield volcano, volcanic caldera, major ash-flows, pahoehoe and aa lava, maar crater, fissure eruptions, cinder cones) occurs here! Check out this nifty PDF file that provides an overview (for the 'non-specialist'...yep, that would be us) of New Mexico's eye-popping volcanic fields. The photo above the drawing depicts the Valles Caldera from space.
There is a 1 percent chance that NM will experience a volcanic eruption in the next 100 years. Wait....whooaaa....what's that rumbling sound---------
Dr. Larry Crumpler's informative site.
Drawing from http://tikioneworld.net
2.06.2006
Put your tray tables in their upright position.
Flying into Santa Fe Airport. For other swell airscape photos from jneil.com, click here. And whoooaaaa, check out these eye-widening tips for flying into mountainous New Mexico.If you are piloting into Santa Fe, you need this information.
2.05.2006
El Malpais National Monument.
Another Santa Fe day trip well worth a day. The latest journey for Our Little Caravan was to El Malpais NM, a couple-hundred-thousand acres of lava flows, mountain ranges, and mesas near Grants, NM. Native American, Spanish, and Anglo travelers have through the ages persevered over the rough landscape of "the badlands."
Learning at EMNM.
In photo below, a BLM ranger shows that grinding corn was a difficult and time-consuming task.Picture of kids' hands by A. Cavanaugh.
2.03.2006
Rootless, wind-tossed, and pesky.
They break away from their roots in the autumn, driven by the wind. Rootless, wind-tossed tumbleweeds are large enough in Santa Fe to plonk into the side of your car and cause damage, not to mention alarm among vehicle occupants.But tumbleweeds are not native here. They are Russian thistle from the arid shrub steppes of the Ural Mountains. They snuck into America in the 1870s with flax seed brought by Ukrainian farmers and spread across the West. A Hopi name for tumbleweed translates as "white man's plant." It's also called "wind witch."By the time the Sons of the Pioneers recorded "Tumbling Tumbleweeds" in 1934, this bizarre weed came to symbolize restless Western culture. They keep spreading because tumbleweed drops seeds - a single plant can produce up to 200,000 seeds. They are a symbol of what happens when we tinker with the balance of arid environments.
Tumbleweeds, the cartoon character, by T.K. Ryan; see http://www.tumbleweeds.com/.
Russian thistle photo from DesertUsa.com.
2.01.2006
Santa Fe. New York. Santa Fe. New York.
If you are in the mood for a New Yorky restaurant here in SF, then try the Back Street Bistro, reminiscent of the Seinfeld soup nazi but without the hollering. Or Andiamo! on Garfield Street, which is like a sidestreet cafe in the Big Apple. Both are better and far less expensive than the oft-reviewed and oft-publicized other restaurants in town.
When transplanted New Yorkers who live in Santa Fe miss their hometown, they can check out one of these two blogs for a happy fix.
Peruse the photos of New Mexico by this transplanted New Yorker. Or browse transfixing photographs of Santa Fe and environs by Jal.
Really when you get down to it, there's just Santa Fe, New York, and, like, Earth.
Photo copyright Jal 2004-2005.
NM campgrounds + Vanagon = serenity
We have it on good authority from friends who've camped in dozens of states that New Mexico has among the nicest state park campgrounds in the U.S. Wow! We beat California and Texas by a mile! We're good at something! Revel in the moment and check out some options.
We look forward to the day when we can climb into our shiny new Westfalia Vanagon and head off to truly discover this beautiful region. But if like us you're still counting your shekels and sitting in an office waiting for that golden day when you can launch into the wide open spaces, make do with some top-notch VW doodles and check out the tales and travails of Spud the Vanagon.
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