the owls have it

Here’s an account of our week in Texas and New Mexico. 
We got a hoot out of visiting the wildlife rehab/rescue center where my sister, Becky, has volunteered for the last several years.  This insane-looking owl family was recently rescued.






Although we weren’t really night owls, all the graduations and the heat wore us out.

The 320 mile drive between Albuquerque and Lubbock makes Lubbock look like a great place to live, by comparison.  We actually drove over tumbleweeds.

After graduation my parents went home and Jack and I had several days to explore the area around Albuquerque and Santa Fe.  Our goal was to do some hiking that differed from what is available to us in the northwest.  As you’ll see, all three of our hikes met this criteria.

Tree Spring Trail up Sandia Peak

• 6.5 miles, 1830 feet of elevation, up to 10,290 feet above sea level

This was the highest elevation either of us has experienced, let alone hiked at.  The last half mile, straight up a steep meadow that is a ski slope in winter, was pretty hard.  We were very out of breath and our hands were swollen but thankfully we didn’t experience any nausea.  The views were extraordinary and it was even a little bit chilly at the top.  According to the guide book, this is what passes for “lush” in New Mexico.

Big Skylight Cave in El Malpais National Monument

• 5.6 miles, following cairns rather than a trail

The directions in our guide book lead us miles down a dirt road and then had us turn off onto a primitive dirt road.  We ended up parking the rental car and walking 2 miles to the trailhead.  The rocky terrain made trails impossible so we had to follow rock cairns.  That, along with walking over and around rocks the whole time, took more mental focus than usual.  This hike wins the award for the most isolated day hike we’ve ever done.  The junker pictured below was one of two other cars we saw during the whole adventure.

The entire Malpais area is a 10,000 year old lava flow and the hike we did took us to several lava tunnels (many of which are collapsed) and rock bridges created by the lava cooling in various ways.  This first picture is a rock bridge, though I think it plays tricks on they eye making the brightly lit central rocks look like they are in the foreground when they are actually in the background.

Alcove House at Bandelier National Monument

• 3.1 miles including ladders

This was novel because it included climbing up lots of ladders. Bandelier is the site of a village of Ancestral Pueblo people (Anasazi) that was abandoned in about 1600.  They built walls and roofs out in front of the naturally occurring caves in the soft rock that resulted from a huge volcanic ash eruption.
It was impressive, but we couldn’t help but be reminded of Petra (see our Petra posts), which would win in almost any competition between the two sites.  Bandelier does have the advantage of year round water in the Frijoles river.  The river, which was surrounded by beautiful Ponderosa pine trees, flash flooded in 2011 to the level marked above Jack’s head in the last picture. 


Returning to my theme, here are some owls we saw in the Santa Fe Museum of International Folk Art and on the terrace of a restaurant in Santa Fe, near the cathedral.