A weeks' catchup and a few missing pictures

My last post was a quick note absent any pictures, so after a week here in Santa Fe I wanted to get caught up and show you a couple pictures.  We have been experiencing sensational weather, low to mid 70's in the day, and down in the 40's at night, and no humidity.  Santa Fe is a comfortable place for us as we've been coming here for 20 years, and with family right down the road in Albuquerque, it feels pretty homey to us.  It also gives us an opportunity to see and visit with more family, especially now that Karen and Tom are building in Taos, so both Jan's sisters and their families are here, her mother Vivian, and our niece and her family, and our daughter and her family isn't too, too far away in Lubbock.  We tend to get together, enjoy meals together, get some errands done, ship in some stuff we need, and do a few of the things that need done even as we travel, such as flu shots.

So first back to Jan's mom Vivian's birthday lunch.  It was 10 days ago but I was remiss not putting a picture up in celebration of her 94th birthday.

From left to right:
Jan, Tom, the back of my head, the Birthday girl Vivian, Nancy, and CT
Karen the photographer is missing

We had a nice time and will get to see Viv a few more times before we officially head east to Florida for the winter.

I mentioned that Jan, Karen, and Tom went on an epic horseback ride in Taos before we came down here so I wanted to put a couple of those pics on as well.

After we met for green chili cheeseburgers at Santa Fe Bite, we walked around for a few hours near the square, and then Tom, the only one still working, had to go back east to the real world:)

Jan and I had in the past driven by a place west of Los Alamos that captured our eye.  It is a huge caldera, 13.7 miles in diameter that has hundreds of elk grazing at certain times of the year.  We had never driven in the entrance road as it appeared to be a private ranch or something.  

We are huge fans of the TV show Longmire, a story based on Craig Johnson's books, the Walt Longmire Mysteries.  It's a story of the sheriff, Walt Longmire, set in fictional Absaroka County, Wyoming as he deals with various issues and the nearby Cheyenne reservation with his best friend, Henry Standing Bear.  It is, at least to us, a very appealing show, a great plot line, Walt and Henry are very upstanding role models, it is set in an absolutely gorgeous place, so the scenery in the show is amazing.  Jan and I have this little dream of having a small log cabin with a view, set in the west with a wooded backdrop, and since seeing Longmire's cabin, we have said his cabin is ideal, almost exactly our dream place.  Now the funny thing is the whole show is shot in New Mexico, not Wyoming, and guess what, Longmire's cabin is right there in the caldera!!  The Valles Caldera National Preserve.  Once we learned that, we wanted to go if we ever got a chance.  Before you think we've lost our minds, we have never done anything like this before, there is just something about this place that really intrigues us.  Turns out the first time we saw the caldera it wasn't open to the public so we weren't that far off, but now it is administered by the National Park Service, so our pass got us in.  You drive into the visitor center, a couple miles, but the rest of the preserve is regulated, they only allow 35 vehicles past the gate onto the 40 some miles in the park.  We were lucky and got a back country pass.  We talked with a very informative ranger about the caldera and it's history, then we asked our question, "Where is Longmire's cabin?", we got a "look", but then she smiled and we found out that there have been many, many movies and TV shows filmed in the caldera.  She took us out on the porch of the visitor center and pointed a mile or so away to Longmire's cabin!  And yes we could drive right up to it along the road to the rest of the park.  We were tickled.  

The caldera itself used to be part of a land grant from Mexico, a square portion of land comprising 100,000 acres given to the Baca family, it was later owned by a family, Bond that ran sheep on the property, than changed hands again, and was logged, and then finally in 2000 the federal government bought the property minus a small corner sacred to the Santa Clara Pueblo, and minus another corner for the Bandelier National Monument, so now it is 89,000 gorgeous acres of mostly grasslands that are golden this time of year.  It also has several creeks and a river that cut through it that you can fish in for trout with your back country permit.  We wondered about that as these rivers are at most 3 feet wide meandering through the grass.  We spent most of the day driving through this beautiful place, had a picnic, fished a little, quite the challenge I might add, walked a bit, and finally had coffee sitting on Walt Longmire's porch!  It was a fabulous day in a fabulous place.

An example of how small the rivers were but,
amazingly full of trout

This is an old sheepherder's cabin way up in the north end of the caldera

He had quite a view huh?

Now I've saved the best for last:)

Walt's cabin

Driving up, you see this scene often in the show

On the show this is the view from his cabin

And another

Jan finishing her coffee on Longmire's porch
She's not posing, she's hiding the No Admittance sign:)

I know you're sick and tired of this info by now, but I bet you'll have to admit this is a pretty idyllic and gorgeous place even forgetting it has anything to do with a TV show.

So we decided to take a "shortcut" back to Santa Fe, saved us 20 miles, but added about 45 minutes to the drive.  It was a rough narrow road that dropped down off the Jemez Mountains to the Cochiti Lake.  This was the site of a Las Conchas fire in 2011, the largest wildfire in New Mexico's history.  The area is still devastated.

Looking down at the Cochiti Lake, you can see the evidence of the fire

Heading down, down

We caught a quick glimpse of a bear as he ran across the road.

Through the windshield unfortunately

Good bye bear

So we still have about a week here before we move down to Albuquerque.  I can see several restaurants in our future as well as a few more expeditions.

Taos, now Santa Fe

We only had a week in Taos, and most of it was spent visiting and catching up with Jan's sister, Karen.  We had a pretty drive over from Durango and arrived at the Monte Bello RV Park north of town, a small full hookup campground with exceptional views where Karen has set up temporary domicile while building a house in Taos.

And a lot of catching up was needed as we hadn't been together since a very quick lunch in Albuquerque in the spring.  And we had another real pleasure as brother-in-law Tom arrived a couple days later.   We haven't seen Tom in a dog's age.  

We made a special trip down to Albuquerque to join Jan's other sister and husband, Nancy and CT to celebrate their mother Viv's 94th birthday with a really nice get together over lunch.  And at least Jan and I learned it is a long, long way from Taos:)  But it gave us all time to visit some more on the ride.

We had some great lunches and dinners all together and spent some time getting a tour of the under construction house. 

The short visit culminated in a fantastic horse ride for Jan, Karen, and Tom, no, I don't do horses, about 20 miles into the mountains north of town.  They had a wonderful time, but I think some butts were getting a little sore near the end:)

Jan and I had a nice drive down to Santa Fe to the Santa Fe Skies RV Park, our favorite campground in the area.  We have been coming here since they opened almost 20 years ago.  It is a very nice full service park, with a nice walking path and lots of art throughout the park.  Tomorrow Karen and Tom will join us here, and then we will go meet Nancy and CT for lunch at Santa Fe Bite, home of the very BEST green chili cheeseburgers in the world!!

So just a quick post to catch up.

Our 5 weeks in Durango has flown by!

Wow, tomorrow we leave Durango, one of our absolutely favorite spots in the west.  Our fall destination for the last two years and we just made our reservation for next fall as well.  We often talk about where would we go if we stopped our life on the road and we both have to admit Durango is way up near the top of the list.  It's a nice size town, big enough that there is most anything you need right here and there is always Farmington, NM, down the road about 50 miles.  There is plenty to do here, lots of hiking, off roading, interesting old mining towns, world class fishing, a wonderful bike path through town and along the Animas River, phenomenal scenery, majestic mountains, and with all that, it is a really nice walk around town with lots of shops and many restaurants.

You get the picture.  But at this time of the year, you can feel the cold winds of winter making themselves known.  We took a drive to a favorite overlook near Pagosa Springs where you can get the idea that winter is right around the corner.

This is a view of the Wolf Creek Ski Area

Another view of the nearby mountains

And the road we drove up!

I also mentioned we wanted to go back and poke around behind the Purgatory ski area where we saw the old Harris Ranch.

Harris Ranch

A view down the gorgeous valley

  
We had a spectacular day roaming the back roads.

A great day!

Just beautiful

Even got to check the boating ability of the truck:)

So we say goodbye to Durango and the beautiful surrounding area until next year.  We move down to Taos tomorrow and will spend some time with Jan's sister, Karen.  So from another superb coffee spot we move on.

Cheers!

Still busy, but time's flying

The weather has really started to change, you can feel the frosty harbingers of winter.  There is snow on the mountaintops, but more importantly we can only sit out in the evening, even with our fire pit, for about an hour before one of us succumbs to going back inside.  But it is gorgeous, the clear skies are even clearer, the aspens are passing peak and many of the leaves at higher elevations are already gone, but it's opened new vistas to see that are normally hidden by the trees.  It's a wonderful time to be in Colorado!

We're down to less than two weeks, so we've even started making lists of what we still want to accomplish before we move on.  We haven't gotten in as much fishing as we wanted to, but we heard at the local fly fishing store that a fairly unique place to fish with the potential of huge fish was only an hour away in northern New Mexico, below the Navajo Lake dam on the San Juan river.  We decided to take a drive down and see what the big deal was.  It was a pretty drive south of Durango, you cross by the dam and go down along the face of the dam to the river where we found......fishermen, tons of fishermen!  It was a weekend after all.  We got parked and walked down to scope things out.

A pretty section of the river

A drift boat working

A few fishermen:)

An example of a big trout,
one we hope to have in our net when we go back

We are going there tomorrow and try our luck.

We also took a ride over the ridge to Vallecito Lake to check it out.  We started to take the road around the lake, but only made it halfway as they had closed the road for the season, so we turned around and drove out on the flats on the head of the lake and enjoyed the view with our coffee.

Coffee time

Then we noticed a road we had never been on before, these things call to us you know, and poked our nose up along the Los Pinos river above the lake.  It dead ended after several miles at an absolutely beautiful spot where the trail continuing up the river began.

Awesome, huh?

Jan had planned and scheduled a horseback ride back in the spring, but unfortunately it was cancelled due to bad weather.  They couldn't reschedule as it is nearing the end of the season, but the stable kept Jan's info just in case.  Well, the phone rang, an all day trip was available and off Jan went, no I don't do horses:)  This time the weather was exceptional, but cool.

Getting ready

Through the aspens

Views on the way up

Pretty steep

A happy Jan!

Nice

Along the way

Looking down at Electra Lake

Needless to say she had a glorious time.

We decided to take a picnic up to Andrews Lake on yet another beautiful day, but since it was only 41 degrees decided to eat in the truck:)  But we did hike around the lake.

Andrews Lake

Jan found yet another road we had never been on, she saw it on her horseback ride, so we poked into Purgatory Ski Resort, and the road went right through the ski slope, back and forth as we climbed the mountain.  We started back down and found a beautiful meadow area, where before selling to the ski resort and eventually becoming part of the National Forest, was the summer grazing area of the Harris Ranch.

What's left of the Harris Ranch

We are going to go back there with a picnic, and maybe see if there are any trout in that stream, and poke around back in the hills.  Tick tock.......