This first bunch was from the Ojito wilderness, at the White Mesa bike trails in Albuquerque. It's a really interesting area!
Me with my very first geocache
Somewhere out there the largest seismosaurus fossil was found
Luke, with his first geocache. And antlers.
These next few are from our travels in Texas.
Dino showdown, somewhere in Texas
Luke with Pancho, the dog who loves him.
Pancho would jump into Luke's arms for a cuddle whenever he could.
How much longer until we have a trail dog I wonder?
Badass Dino mural in a Texas rest stop bathroom.
Texas knows how to do it.
Sooo, now back to our more recent travels. We went back to Santa Fe for a day (too short!). We spent the night at the Big Tesuque National Forest Campground, where there was still snow.
So the next day we went back down to ride the Windsor trail from the bottom, sans snow.
I didn't make it as far as Luke, so I missed the interesting encounter he had further up the trail:
At one of the trail intersections Luke ran into a fellow hiking who was having trouble figuring out how to get back to his vehicle. Luke gave him the instructions on how to get back and went off to bike a loop off the trail. As he returned to the same intersection the same fellow was coming off of a different trail to the same spot. The hiker had gotten turned around again, and since Luke was going in the same direction he walked with the fellow to make sure he got to the right spot this time. They got to talking and Luke learned he had been out there for hours....and that he was the curator for an Ansel Adams museum in California! So they got to talk photography and Luke has an invite to the museum :)
Afterwards, we were talking with our friend Laurie from Albuquerque and she told us lots of people go missing in that area...so it's possible Luke saved his life! Recently an older woman, who knows the trails, was mushroom picking with her husband there and went off the trail for a few minutes and hasn't been seen since. Scary stuff.
We spent a couple of days in Albuquerque, and spent a night at our favourite Walmart parking lot in town. In a previous post from November I had a photo of the pretty flowers in the parking lot, and now this tree was in bloom in the same spot:
I went geocaching with Laurie and more than doubled the amount of geocaches I found (which wasn't hard, since I'm a very unambitious geocacher and only had 15). We then went to a geocaching event (at a bar, involving beer) and met some great people. One fellow retired at 44 from working with nuclear weapons at Sandia labs and is an anarchist pacifist that has been traveling the world for almost 30 years...which made for some interesting conversations!
We then made our way over to Flagstaff. Man, I love Flagstaff. It's kind of the perfect town for me. It has mountains and pine trees and trails and everything feels like a lovely small town. It has a fantastic yarn shop, and when the weather is too cold you can pop down to Sedona.
We camped in a free camping area for a couple of nights, and got snowed on a few times. So then we went down to Sedona for some warmer weather--and to meet up with friends at the geodesic dome! More on that next time....
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