New Mexico Road Trip

Re-posted from two years ago today.

Yesterday Donna and I took a little day road-trip (in the Z, of course). First stop was the Bradbury Science Museum in Los Alamos. This fine museum is a must for anyone with an interest in science or history. We stayed about an hour, but promised each other to return soon for a more in-depth look. If you’ve never been, go. It’s free. And watch the short film.

Next we went over the pass west of Los Alamos, shaking our head at the bald hills, forested before the 2000 Cerro Grande fire, and at the newly burned trees, dead and dying, from this summer’s Las Conchas fire. Destruction as far as the eye can see in some cases. (156,000 acres burned this summer.) We saw where the fire had crossed Highway 501 onto Los Alamos National Laboratory property. (Where they keep the plutonium!)

Though encircled on the east and south by burnt, brown trees, and not as green as usual due to the drought, the Valles Caldera is still one Earth’s sublime sights. And the National Preserve was open to visit. We drove down the 2-mile gravel road to the visitor center, expecting just to enjoy the view from inside the valley, rather than only along the ridge from Highway 4 as usual. To our delight, we were offered a shuttle ride back into the Preserve to pick up some hikers (for $8 apiece, senior rate). We let them twist our arms.

It was wonderful to see — mostly in isolation as personal vehicles are not allowed — some of the other valleys and ridges in the Preserve, the original ranch buildings and old movie sets. Most exciting was seeing scores of elk enjoying the single-bar action of their fall rut (and if you’ve never heard a bull elk bugling, it is one of the great natural sounds — here’s a short Elk Call video from Yellowstone, if you can get by the people talking and the camera sounds. Why must people always talk?).

Alas I had forgotten my Nikon at home, so was forced to rely on the iPhone. Click any image for a version twice as large.

Looking south across the Valle Grande. That's the visitor center that appears as a white speck in the center. Highway 4 is on the distant ridge. The hills in the distance were all burned.
This bull had a large harem, apparently all to himself. One bull often controls a large number of females during the fall but exhausts himself in the process. It's not unusual for the dominant bull to die during the winter, so run-down he is from the effort.
Elk, including several bulls, bugling and challenging each other and trying to assure immortality for their DNA.
Looking east. A third of the Preserve's 89,000 acres was burned during this summer's Las Conchas Wildfire.

We ended the day at the Los Ojos Saloon in Jemez Springs in beautiful Jemez Canyon with green chile (fresh!) cheeseburgers, God’s personal gift to New Mexico.