To celebrate our birthdays, @AMP2 and I went out to Coronado State Monument and then Jemez State Monument to look at the remains of some of the local pueblo areas.

Coronado State Monument is very interesting, but the pictures I would most love to have taken are not allowed. It's quite interesting to go through the museum and the ruins, but there's little left there and most of what is still visible is actually a restoration by the WPA built back in the '30s - and there's actually precious little of that left now. (Let me put it this way, I had to ask if one section was original Kuaua - it was not. Even though it was barely 6 inches above the ground and looked like melted adobe, it was actually the remains from the '30s!)

They have a kiva there, but with only one ranger on duty, he couldn't take us out there. We'll have to go back later to visit that on a day they're doing tours. (No photography is allowed inside any kiva ... perfectly understandable! I'm just glad we can even go inside.)

They also were able to save some of the murals from inside the original kiva and they have those mounted in a museum room - but no photography is allowed of that either. I'm going to have to go back with a sketchbook if that's allowed.

After visiting Coronado, we headed northwest to Jemez Pueblo and had a wonderful lunch at Dave's Burgers and More. It's a little roadside kitchen right on Highway 4 and the frybread was REALLY good. We drove through the reservation and deeper into the Jemez mountains and finally landed at Jemez State Monument. If I read the guidebook correctly, most of the ruins here are actually of the church complex, kind of sandwiched into the then-existing pueblo. Here's the church itself:

Then there's a couple of shots I couldn't quite resist taking ... windows....

And then there was the baptismal font area - this is actually in the wall on the outside of the church space. I guess it was a small chapel next to the church?

After we finished walking the trails and reading the guidebook for Jemez State Monument, we just continued driving north - just to see what was out there. It was really hard for me to concentrate on driving because I wanted to just take a million pictures of the mountains. They were just stunning - the colours in the rocks was just absolutely amazing.

And then we happened onto Soda Dam, a unique geologic feature - it almost looks like a cave somehow landed out in the open. It's made largely of calcium carbonate (kind of like hard water stains on plumbing if you have hard water). If you're curious about it, here's a bit more of an article. You can click on the second image below for a desktop wallpaper version of that picture.

And then @AMP2 saw someone on top of the Soda Dam feature and well ... we decided to head up there as well. The only problem is, after my bone marrow transplant for Hodgkin's back in 2001, I've had a very, very mild form of vertigo ever since. I can climb, but I can no longer get near the edge of a feature, particularly if it's very windy. I constantly feel like I'm tilting in the direction of falling off of whatever it is I've climbed. Most of the time it doesn't affect me very much, but it's really frustrating. I used to be able to climb all over just about anything and really wanted to go mountain climbing. Today, I'm lucky if I can just be a scrambler. I had a hard time taking pictures inside of the little cavelet, because I kept feeling like I was going to fall out of it. There was not that much of a slope to the outside ... it was just this stupid vertigo. So, while I did get up to the top of the Soda Dam feature, I couldn't really walk the very narrow path that would have let me walk out to the top of that waterfall and cavelet spot. Had I been able to get over there, the area was wide enough that I would have been all right, but ... well, *sigh* ... it just wasn't going to happen today. Maybe I'll try again a day when the winds aren't too high. But @AMP2 did manage to get up there!

And, as we turned around to head back to the car, I saw one of my favourite things ... graffiti!

On the way back home, I swung into Big Chief gas station ... a defunct little market and gas station across the highway from Zia Pueblo. It had the look of a 50s shop, something you'd expect to see along old Route 66 (we were on NM 550, I think, though).

I like the landscape someone's painted on the front. I'm not sure if the owners had done that (probably not) or if a graffiti wannabe started something and perhaps got caught. But if you look to the left of that shot, or the close-up here below, you can see they've helpfully labelled the landline. Is that where the telephone landline goes into the building? Or is it the horizon line for the line art that continues out to the right?

And then there was my favourite piece of graffiti in a long time on the side of the building. I love the commentary here, especially considering the horrendously 50s tacky "big chief" painted on the sign above the gas station. This is another image that you can click for a desktop wallpaper version.

It was a great day, but man are we beat now despite not having gotten to do much hiking. I think we spent longer driving than hiking today.

Posted by Red Monkey at 9:04 PM | Comments (0) Vacations and Photos | | Stumble

My drive to work is now about 30-40 minutes, depending on traffic. I've been trying to leave a bit closer to 7 lately and have been rewarded with a half hour show courtesy the Sandia Mountain sunrise.

And on the way home from work the same day I shot the sunrise, I saw this beautiful rain touching the Sandias.

But this shot is one of my favourites. Click it for a desktop wallpaper sized image.

Posted by Red Monkey at 4:30 PM | Comments (0) Vacations and Photos | | Stumble

Rather than clog up the front page of the site with a photo-intensive post, I've put it on an interior page.

Thursday morning we got up at 4a.m. so we could get to the Balloon Fiesta nice and early to see the Special Shapes inflate, possibly glow and then launch.

Unfortunately, the winds did not behave and the balloons were not allowed to launch. In fact, not only were they not allowed to fly ... they didn't even stay inflated for a full hour. I was crushed. I was really looking forward to possibly getting a couple of glow shots (I got one that's okay) and a LOT of shots of the balloons in the air. What I got was some nice shots of various balloons on the ground.

Click through for the four slideshows of balloons (some from flat to fully inflated, which was interesting).

Posted by Red Monkey at 10:37 PM | Comments (0) Vacations and Photos | | Stumble

Stay hungry, stay foolish.

Posted by Red Monkey at 11:00 PM | Comments (0) Design | | Stumble

Rather than clog up the front page of the site with a photo-intensive post, I've put it on an interior page.

We went to the opening morning of the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta this year and there were some stunning balloons out there. I think my favourites, besides the Darth Vader head, were the stage coaches and the alien head. And just in terms of patterns, there were some gorgeous black balloons with various bright colours - the contrast was stunning.

Click through for a few of the 200+pix I took.

Posted by Red Monkey at 6:10 PM | Comments (1) Vacations and Photos | | Stumble