New Mexico!

New Mexico!

Goals

Our trip to New Mexico featured ten goals:

1. Enjoy riding on the train.
2. Visit with our NBF’s.
3. See enough new birds to get our Life List up to 400.
4. Experience exotic New Mexico Landscape.
5. Experience Bosque del Apachee.
6. Experience the Santa Fe art scene.
7. Improve our photography.
8. Decide if we want to live in New Mexico.
9. Be surprised by things not on our list of goals.
10. Cut back on our drinking.

Eight out of ten isn’t bad.

Amtrak

Travel was good. We drove to Chicago in the rain, which led to some good from-the-car shots that someone with an artist's eye like Kim's will notice.

We found Amtrak not quite up to Canada’s VIA Rail, but good. We especially enjoyed watching the scenery roll by,

the people we met at our meals, the food (not gourmet, but good), walking around while moving, and not driving. On the negative side, our “roomette” on the way small was, as Kim noted, about the size of a coffin, so we elected not to fold down the beds to enclose Kim even further, sleeping slouched in our seats with the door open. We upgraded to a larger room for the trip home.

M&M&O

Our more-than-a-week stay with Megan and Miguel was amazingly warm and comfortable – we were guests, but we felt like family. Our hosts graciously adjusted their work schedules to accommodate our visit, so we got to spend a lot of time with them. And with Oliver, their delightful dog, on whom Mom and Dad are practicing their parenting techniques. In fact, they were so successful in taking care of us old folks that we thought they could operate a geriatric home on the side. Miguel suggested (among other things) that we got along so well because they are “old at heart.”

Our visit included, in addition to their hospitality, daily field trips to Albuquerque birding hotspots, including their back yard.

Bushtit

Rufous Hummingbird

Our hosts, fortunately, made it difficult to achieve goal #10. Together we consumed a case of Menage a Trois, plus a couple of beers. They promised to cut back when we left.

400

Yes! Our visit featured 51 New Mexico species, 19 new to our lifelist:

Band-tailed Pigeon

      Black-throated Sparrow
Broad-tailed Hummingbird
Bushtit
Canyon Towhee
Cassin’s Finch
Dark-eyed Junco (Red-backed)
Mountain Chickadee
Nashville Warbler
Plumbeous Vireo
Say’s Phoebe
Scaled Quail
Swainson’s Hawk
Townsend’s Warbler
Virginia’s Warbler
Western Scrub-Jay
Western Wood-Pewee
White-winged Dove
Wilson’s Warbler

Here are a few of the many shots Kim took:

Cassin's Finch

Wilson's Warbler

Canyon Towhee

Cactus Wren

Western Scrub-jay

Black-throated Sparrow

Say's Phoebe

Curve-billed Thrasher

Wood Duck - not new, but a nice shot

Wildlife

We actually thought we had a few more than 400, but going over our list revealed that one of us had been careless with our entries in the past.

Landscapes

We drove to the Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument just north of Albuquerque. Here's what the park is named after:

Hiking the trail meant squeezing through narrow passageways between the rocks - not easy when lugging camera gear. We did not make it all the way to the top.

The top that we did not reach

Thanks to a tip from a very helpful park ranger, we were able to drive up to a scenic overlook with views of Kasha-Katuwe.

 Closer to home (Albuquerque), we saw stunning landscapes wherever we went birding. Below are two shots taken from Embudito Canyon, the first featuring Sandia Mountain.

After a tiring day of shooting, sometimes we just wanted to relax . . ..

Santa Fe and Beyond

We spent most of our time in Santa Fe walking the length of Canyon Road, which is almost entirely filled with galleries. As much as we enjoyed the artwork, we loved many of the architectural details of the historic homes, especially the gates.

We had a delightful second (for me) breakfast at the Tea House, featuring oatmeal whose recipe we noted.

We followed John and Penny’s suggestion and took the back road to Taos, though the attractions were such that we did not make it that far. We stopped in Chimayo to purchase a small rug and visit the historic church, Santuario de Chimayo.

detail from cross in above photo

By the way - we were driving a rental while we traveled from Albuquerque,

and we looked at potential housing as we drove.

We enjoyed coffee and cake at the Sugar Nymph Bistro in Penasco, which was as far as we made it toward Taos, but we were too busy to take any pictures.

Bosque del Apache

We decided not to travel to Bosque del Apache, though it has a reputation as a Mecca for birders and we had reservations at a nearby ranch / b&b. Heavy rains had flooded area roads, and more was in the forecast. Besides, we had plenty to enjoy with Megan and Miguel in and around Albuquerque.

Surprises

As is the case on many of our travels, we were surprised and delighted by the people we met. We already knew we loved Megan and Miguel, but we did not know about Ollie (yes, we are counting him as a person). And we met people on the train, most of them retired, sitting across from us in the dining car. And the guy in the Albuquerque Amtrak Station with whom we had an animated two-hour discussion about nutrition, metaphysics, and near-death drug highs from large Mexican toads. And all the people from the Santa Fe Raptor Center involved in releasing Swainson’s Hawks back into the wild.

Tinkertown was a surprise . . ..

Tinkertown Bottle Display. We did not drink it all.

We were also (again) surprised by the beauty of our country, especially when viewed from a train without the repetition of highway signs, gas stations, McDonald’s, etc. – though we use all of these when we drive. Here are a few samples that Kim took from the window of our room. 

 

We decided, tentatively as many decisions are, that we do not want to live in New Mexico, beautiful as it is. Probably. We did not experience a miraculous cure for aging, and we missed the rich greens and the lakes of Michigan. And our friends and family Back East.