We had rain the next morning, which worked out well since we slept in. We ended up lounging around the hotel to wait out the rain, but played hide and seek with it for the rest of the day.
We headed west to Jemez Springs, a little town/village we passed through yesterday. We had a nice lunch, and then checked out the Jemez Springs Historic Area - some old ruins from when the Spanish were making trouble for the Jemez Pueblo people. They run the historic area, which was a nifty 30 minutes to explore.
Just up the road about a mile we hopped out to check out Soda Dam. There is a (hard to see in this photo) waterfall in the lower right corner, coming out through the terrace/landform. It is right off the road, so hard to miss.
We continued up into the mountains where it was on again-off again with the rain. We eventually made it to Valles Caldera National Preserve - a 12-mile wide dormant volcanic caldera. It last erupted a million years ago, blanketing the area in up to 1000 feet of ash - said to be 600 times more violent than the Mt. St. Helens eruption of 1980.
There really isn't much to see from a day-trip perspective, but there was a storm brewing which made the lighting fantastic. I haven't done anything in Photoshop or Lightroom with these photos, but am looking forward to seeing what I can pull from these.
After dodging some lightning and hail, we drove down to Bandelier National Monument. We got there right before the Visitor Center closed, but we made it.
We did the 1.5 mile loop trail that took us up to these old cliff dwellings. The Ancestral Puebloans had some multi-story housing built into the cliffs. The rock is the hardened volcanic ash from the Valles Caldera eruptions - pretty cool to see. The valleys all around are littered with evidence of home sites!
That wraps up our busy and long weekend. Cheers!
Marc
No comments:
Post a Comment