Exploring the "Petrified Forest"

 I've posted about this area in New Mexico where there are petrified logs and large and small fragments of such. But two friends of ours Alan and Sam had never been there and Alan is a geologist by profession and was interested in exploring a bit. This area of the dessert was once a lush forest. Climate change is not a new thing.

The area is not easy to get to. It is a good half hour on secondary dirt roads from the main dirt road where the gate is maintained by the Bureau of Land Management. 

This is one of the many areas that Park Ranger hubby has to patrol; mainly doing such chores as checking counters, repairing barbed wire fences and placing new signage as needed. He gets to see interesting areas that most people don't even know about. There is a place where thousands of shark teeth are part of the geologic deposit. And supposedly there's a mastodon skeleton somewhere "out there".

It was a gorgeous late winter day and very comfortable to be out hiking. And best of all: No crowds. Actually we were the only ones  there.

Alan and Sam and Leon in the background

The largest petrified log

Cute little cactus growing in the rock

It was a very bumpy ride in the Ford F250

Some other large chunks of petrified wood

Alan, Leon, Sam

Some More Photos From Leon's "Office"

I guess he hiked about nine miles today, patrolling a trail he hadn't been on before. Some interesting snapshots with his iPhone.

 

Hubby Sent Me This Clip Yesterday From His "Office"

Sometimes Leon really loves his job. This was take at Elk Springs...the Elk explain why it's called that.

(Too bad converting to YouTube lost considerable video quality)

 

At the Office

My hubby, Park Ranger Leon is assigned to Kasha-Katuwe/Tent Rocks National Monument near where we live, just a few miles down the road. In most seasons hundreds of visitors to Tent Rocks can hike the narrow trail up to the mesa. Because it is a terminal trail, people must come back the way they went up, sometimes passing others in the very narrow canyon.

The Monument has been closed since mid-March, because of the COVID pandemic, not only because of the close quarters on the trail but because visitors must go through a part of Cochiti Pueblo land to get there and the Pueblos have all been closed to non-residents as a precaution against COVID.

Because his work station has been closed, Leon has been reassigned to more remote areas under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management. These are wilderness areas set aside as wilderness study areas or for hiking, biking, hunting, camping and shooting. Leon patrols the trails, does trail maintenance, removes trash (he can't believe the amount of garbage people dump in these remote locations) repairs/replaces signage, repairs barbed wire fences, and generally does a lot of traveling on dirt roads.

So Leon wanted me to see one of the area where he's been patrolling and yesterday took me to "the office" where he works. Here are a few photos of the views from his window.

Cabezon on the left

 

 Hike to the Guadalupe Ruins, an outlying Chaco culture structure.

View from the Ruins

Benni inspecting the stonework

Kiva

A piece of Chacoan pottery

Along one of the roads...on the way to an old Stagecoach way-station.

Another view of Cabezon

Cool rock formations are common in New Mexico

 

 

The people who build this old Stagecoach structure were not quite as precise or adept with stonework as the Anasazi/Chacoan peoples whose structures lasted thousands of years longer. This structure is caving in in several places.

Concrete

I haven't had the inspiration to write much here lately. (Not to mention that it is a nightmare to upload photos lately.)

I could post infinite political articles and videos but, so tired of 1) all of it and 2) preaching to the choir and 3) to what end?

Other than the daily horror show, things on the local level are not that interesting.

We left town in our tiny camper for a week in mid September. Social distancing and staying safe precluded browsing in quaint shops or eating in restaurants except for take-out.

Road trips, hiking, lounging around the campground was the extent of our activity. We walked around Antonito, Pagosa Springs, and Durango Colorado and Chama, New Mexico.

My sweet hubby, Leon...I am indeed a lucky guy

Attitude!

Snow in them there hills

Cano's Castle Antonito, CO

Enlarge to read about the Penitentes - San Isidro Catholic Church

Remnants of the Church

Have a beer

We had friends over yesterday for dinner...(A nice salad, green peppers stuffed with ground turkey, eggplant, and other tasty ingredients, homemade Italian bread, wine, crepes with sweetened ricotta and strawberries and peaches).

Having guests and cooking something special for them...something I've missed doing during the pandemic...we have had guests infrequently, mostly visiting outdoors on the deck. All of our friends have been very diligent, very careful almost to extremes. So we have felt both safe and, I think we have an enhanced sense of camaraderie and "family".

Back at the ranch, there has been a project I've been wanting to do and have been putting off for four or five years. Patching/resurfacing the concrete driveway which is/was cracked and crumbling. Spalling concrete is the technical term, but I think ours was a bit beyond that.

Not one to pay a company several thousand of dollars to do the job professionally, I rely on my proclivity to do it myself at a fraction of the cost or "Why spend good money to have something done right when you can do a half-assed job yourself for the price of a couple of dinners at a lousy restaurant?"

So, this afternoon, Leon and I got to work on the driveway. So far we've used five 40lb bags of Quikrete vinyl concrete mix to fix one section of the driveway. We are not quite done yet...maybe we'll try to finish up tomorrow.

I seem to take to concrete the same way I take to bread or pasta dough. Maybe it's in my blood. My maternal grandpa was a stone mason, my paternal grandpa could lay a walkway, one of my cousins is a mason.

I am an amateur do-it-myself-er. Leon assists with no complaints.

Before

Before

After

After