Road Trip

August 8, 2021

Hello everybody,

Another week has come and gone and we've had a short burst of 90F weather for most of the week. Still decent at night, dropping at least thirty degrees before bottoming out right before dawn when I realize this because all three dogs are piled on top of me on the couch. We saw some interesting critters this week, including a huge, dead bull snake and a child-of-the-earth. These children of the earth are some of the weirdest things that we've ever seen. These crazy looking things are also called Jerusalem crickets and they are large, flightless bugs that are active at night​, burrowing and feeding on dead organic matter and other insects. Their name, especially the Spanish ninyo de la tierra(child-of-the-earth) or better cara del ninyo(child's-face), really highlights the 'faces' that these things have. We had an hours-long downpour two Saturdays ago and then another round two nights later for about two hours. I found a dead one of these children of the earth a few days later being torn apart by ants to be taken back to their nest. As for the snake, perhaps also as a result of the downpours, we found a very long bull snake entangled in some erosion-control netting along an arroyo, already dead, a couple of days after the rains. I'm still not sure if it strangled itself or starved itself or what, but it's too bad. These snakes eat rodents and keep rattlesnakes away, so they're great to have around. Erin has seen them in and around the garden, but is pretty sure that she saw much smaller ones than the dead one that turned up, so hopefully this wasn't the only one. My goodness, what might we see next?

We've been inundated with waves and waves of smoke-filled air this week. You can't smell it and it doesn't make your eyes burn or anything, but there has been a hazy film over everything that obscures distant objects and has also created some very intense sky colors and sunsets. Luckily, we're far from any actual fires right at the moment and there is only one in New Mexico at this time that is in the northwestern/northcentral area close to the border with Colorado. We're far from the horrendous conflagrations of fires that are happening out further to our west and northwest...the northern Rockies are on fire, not the southern! And speaking of running up and down the Rockies, we made a brief, mini-roadtrip over the weekend and headed north to hike in Raton, NM, before crossing the border via Raton Pass to check out Trinidad, CO. This certainly was not one of our big roadtrips of yore, but it was fun to get out and get off the ranch for the day. Raton really intrigues us and, though it looks a tad bleak along the main drag, there are tons of beautiful, old Victorians overlooking the town that were built back in the big days of coal and the railroad. We found the 2.7 mile Climax Canyon Nature Trail just a few blocks off the main drag, quite wild on the edge of town. We let the dogs out and hiked up it for a bit before heading back to the car to find something to eat. After finding the Asian hotdog restaurant closed that Erin wanted to go to, we went over the mountains to check out Trinidad. This, too, was a dying, old mining town, but it has recently been revived when Colorado legalized marijuana in 2012. Apparently, Trinidad accounts for close to 20% of the state's entire marijuana sales and draws lots of out-of-staters in, especially from Texas. You see Texas plates everywhere! We checked it all out and marveled at the 'Weed Mall,' almost twenty dispensaries crammed into one square block of the town. I just thought to myself, 'Where was all of this back when I did this stuff?' Ironically, things may soon change between Raton and Trinidad as New Mexico will make marijuana fully legal as of January 1 and the out-of-staters driving to Trinidad then won't have as far to go. Trinidad has seen an explosion in restaurants and stores and tax receipts, but maybe some of the empty storefronts will start filling up on the other side of the mountain in Raton once the new year begins! To cap our trip before heading the two hours back to home, we found Habanyero's, a great, tiny, little Mexican restaurant nestled underneath the overpass of the interstate and right along the tracks about 100 feet from the Amtrak station in town...chimichangas and molcajete! We ate outside on one of their four tables sandwiched between the building and parking lot and then let the dogs lick up the plates and few bites that we left before cruising back home. We stopped in the pass to try and find the ruins of an abandoned mining village but took the wrong exit, however, we did end up seeing a cool railroad bridge and nice, little creek, where we saw a chipmunk, something that I haven't seen since Pennsylvania!

Now, for the best part, some new pictures to peruse. First, two shots of the aforementioned bull snake that I found, caught in the netting. Next, a closeup of the child of the earth as the ants dismantle it. Then, a shot of Erin chilling with her laptop after being out in the garden all afternoon, with her bounty displayed on the counter. Next, a shot of two of the horses(Nanette & Felipe) one night when the sky, and even the air itself, literally turned Mars-orange. Then, two shots from the jobsite: one gazing down from the second floor while the horses filed by one-by-one...they stop every morning to see what we're doing; then a shot from the roof as I was taping up holes that were cut for lighting fixtures and vacuuming all the roof in preparation for spray foam insulation. Then, four landscapes: the sun going down in the pasture in smoky skies; then the ground of the pasture literally turned orange while the sky was blueberry blue; another great sunset from the driveway; and, then, one of the ponds that Kim has made for the horses. Finally, five shots from our little roadtrip over Raton Pass and back: first Wagon Mound looming in the distance on the way up; then the dogs loaded back up in the car in Raton after our hike; then downtown Trinidad looking up from the river(there's a huge mountain looming over the town, if you look closely through the smoke); then, tiny Raton Creek on the Colorado side of the divide; and a rail bridge that created these two tube tunnels, at the same spot.

Be good.