Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Seminole Canyon State Park

Since we retracing some of our steps we only spent 1 night at a Walmart in Las Cruces and then a night in Marfa, TX where we didn't see the famous "lights".

Then we pushed on to Seminole Canyon State Park in TX a park on the Rio Grande.
 Will did some work while I took a hike around the rim of the Canyon.
Cactus!
 The hike followed the canyon rim which was little like walking along a fractal.

Fossils are even better than petroglyphs and this was cool example of some sea creature and a fully 3D fossil of a sponge.
 The park is pretty nice. We spent a couple of nights here because the weather was pretty crappy for one of them.
Native Americans lived he in past and I was on the lookout for my elusive arrow head.
 Down in this cave there were pictographs but you could only go visit them by a special boat tour.

The Rio Grande which we hung out near on a number of occasions on this trip.

Friday, February 19, 2016

Side trips from 3 Rivers

Since our camping at 3 Rivers is so cheap and nice we took some day trips from there.

We checked out Valley Of Fires where as recent at 4000 years ago there was a flowing lava.
 It was fun to explore the lava beds (Not as cool as Lava Beds National Park in the Pacific NW).

It is kind of odd that the lava flowed where it did on basically a smal area of plains between two big mountain ranges.

We had some great sunsets while camped there too.

On our side trip to the lava we also went to a big rock shop with awesome rocks including some Trinitite (Glass formed from the Trinity Nuclear Test). The shop was right near the northern boundary of the Trinity Test area, sadly you can only visit it on 2 days each year and it isn't today.
 After leaving 3 Rivers we were heading back to Las Cruces and stopped at a Pistachio Farm. We only stopped for snacks and skipped the tour.
Tina a former Survivor winner had visited too!

Thursday, February 18, 2016

Three Rivers Petroglyph Site

Three Rivers Petroglyph Site in Tularosa, NM was one of my favorite places we visited on this trip.

It is run by the BLM and has a few campsites right at the site itself and a larger campground a few miles down the road.
 At the site there are some 21000 Petroglyphs carved into the rocks. They are everywhere and about 600 years old.

There are also the ruins of a little village.

 In true BLM spirit the camping cost just 9$ a day for the full hookups.

Also in the free-for-all spirit of the BLM you can just wander anywhere you want to look at the glyphs.

There is a trail down the main ridge with descriptions and such but we actually found much better glyph off the beaten track.
On each side of the main ridge there were several other smaller rocky hills which we explored and were also covered with carvings.
Seriously I could wander around here for days looking at them.

Some are really cool using the bumps on the rocks or the corners to make 3-D faces or animals.
 I don't know how they really counted all the carvings but there are a lot of them.
We spent 2 nights here and took 3 different walks around the area.

That hump on the left was one place we explored.
 Although Tucker wasn't allowed on the main trail the very helpful and friendly camp hosts showed us on the map where we could take him which was basically anyplace else.
 I'm not sure how big the BLM area is but it was more than enough for Tucker to run around and chase bunnies.

We also found some pieces of pottery which is probably also 600 years old.

I wanted to find an Arrow head someplace on this trip but I never did.







 I took a lot more pictures but I only posted a few.

But you can tell I liked this place.




Green Chili Everything!

After the visit to the VLA we drove a while and stopped at The Owl Bar and Cafe in San Antonio NM for some lunch.

These were an appetizer of green chili cheese onion rings!
 And of course we ate green chili cheese burgers too!
Food was awesome and the place had a lot of character and characters.

 We are staying in NM at a petroglyph site.. I will bore you with tons of pictures later...

Dude!

The Very Large Array

After getting the truck fixed (it took an extra day to get a part they didn't have) we were off and on the road again. We stopped for a night in Datil at a 5$ BLM Campground. We only had one other camper a guy on a motorcycle.
 It was a really nice campground actually although it had no services and only a self serve pay station (It has a camp host once the season starts but that is in a month or so.).

We scrounged wood and had a campfire one of very few we've had this trip.
In the morning we did a nice 3.5 mile loop hike from the campground, Tucker was happy to stretch his legs and be off leash after a few too many days in cities.

We did lose him for a bit when he went coyote ugly chasing a rabbit barking and yipping for about 15 minutes.
 Just a quick drive from Datil is the Vary Large Array a giant radio telescope in the middle of no-where.

Of course that is on purpose to prevent any contamination from other radio signals.
 They have a good movie and self guided tour plus a small museum. It is really cool when you see them all move to point at something new almost creepy.
 After all our touring we ate some lunch and got back on the road.