Southern New Mexico and Arizona Trip

Jeff had a few days of vacation he needed to use and honestly, although I would love to go diving, I cannot imagine enjoying a "tropical" vacation at this point. I am afraid I would take a long plane ride only to get off and not enjoy the humidity, the bad food, the garbage and stray animals. When you vacation you don't really see all that stuff but after 7 years of it I am not ready to return. At least not to the Caribbean. We decided to head south and off to Tucson. It was a whirlwind trip that involved a lot of driving without all that much time in any one place. We found some places we want to return to and others we will skip. Definitely was nice to have a change of scenery.

First stop was White Sands. We drove 4 1/2 hours or so to Alamagordo, NM stopping at Elephant Butte (big lake/dam) and in Truth or Consequences (town name is more interesting than the town but we had a nice lunch). White Sands is amazing! Even though it had rained it was just a weirdly bright and strange area of gypsum dunes. Despite the overcast, cloudy day it was still very bright but probably not as white as usual. I was hoping for a sunset (cloudy) or sunrise the next morning (cloudy) but it was not to be. These were not interesting clouds. We headed off to a Space Museum and then headed out of town toward Tucson.

It took about 5 1/2 hours of driving for us to get there. There were interesting mountains on all sides with interesting rock formations and vegetation. When we got closer to Arizona the landscape changed and there were the giant Saguaro cactus and organ pipe cactus everywhere. No one was on the road and the roads were wonderful the entire way - such a pleasure! We didn't reserve hotels ahead of time so we had to figure out where to stay. This proved to be kind of a bummer since we hadn't really figured out what we wanted to do or where it was. Thankfully Tucson is small like Albuquerque and nothing was far away. I absolutely do not like hotels and don't sleep well. They are all overpriced (it is a bed for christs sake) but the difference between an $89 hotel and a $115 one is worth it. The Alamagordo one is not to be repeated. There was one in Tucson too close to the hi way and one we did like best of all of them except for some kind of annoying fan or ventilation system that was always on. We slept the best we could and did day excursions. On the first night we ate at a nice seafood place and plotted our couple days. We had visions of doing all sorts of stuff but Tucson has a surprising amount of stuff to do. Our hit list included a mine tour of the Asarco Mine, the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, the Tohono Chul Gardens. A church was close to the mine and I am a sucker for the creepy statues and displays you find in churches and I appreciate the architecture. We managed to do only these things and other stuff on the list have to wait.

We went to the mine on day one but it was too muddy for them to take the tour up the roads. We went to the Tohono Chul Gardens instead for a couple hours. The gardens were nice and I got a few ideas for our courtyard. Next we went to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum for the rest of the day. You can spend HOURS at the place. It is a zoo-garden-aquarium (sort of) and it is extremely well done. Exhibits are thoughtful and natural...we had a nice lunch with a prickly-pear margarita...wandering for hours looking at super cool cactus and animals and  and and....

I was stuffed from lunch so Jeff got a light dinner and we were off to a different hotel. Once we found that we settled in. Went to the jacuzzi then to bed. The next morning was the mine tour which was amazing in all it's destructiveness. They had a nice museum and a nice tour. It is a huge open pit mine. It was pretty amazing what they go through to extract a little bit of copper from tons of rock. They actually seem to do a decent job of recycling water and restoring habitat but it is still a hugely destructive operation like most human activities. It was very interesting. We had to skip the space museums on this trip since we were headed back. We stopped at the Mission San Xavier del Bac which is an 18th century adobe Baroque church. It was beautiful and had all the creepy crap I like about churches...elongated fingers, fake bodies in glass, creepy candles and "offerings" little bowls of water...etc. Copper rock and barrel cactus at Asarco mine.

 All these carvings look like wood but are adobe.

We decided to head to Bisbee because we had heard the name mentioned in novels and elsewhere. It was not at all what we expected. It turns out that March is the high season in Arizona. There was some odd music thing in town and no where to stay so we had lunch, cruised the town quickly and since the mine tour there was fully booked we headed home. We saw a lot of stuff but didn't see a lot of what there is to do. I would consider flying to Tucson next time so we could actually do more or maybe drive the northern route to Sedona or take more time. There were space museums, observatories, museums (including photography museums) and botanical gardens. I would definitely be better planned next time since now we know how long a drive it is. All in all we had a nice time and it was a different kind of vacation for us!

How Our Lives are Different - One Year in New Mexico (and away from Puerto Rico)

Wow - it has been a year already! We are settling into our new home, making friends, exploring our new home and basking in the glow of everything that is NOT Puerto Rico. Do we miss some things? Yes. We miss diving a couple times a week. We miss caving during the dry season. We kind of miss trying to surf. We miss the avocados. We miss some friends. For the most part though it is just a RELIEF to be out of that place! Here are some ways our lives have changed.

ROADS
OMG the roads here are clean, pothole-free, well marked, and free of DDA's (dead domestic animals). One of the main reasons we moved was the heartbreak of seeing mistreated dead injured dying animals ALL THE TIME.  There are no water fountains from broken pipes...no people pulled over dumping shit over the side of the slope or in turnouts...no giant speaker cars blasting super loud advertisements or "music" at all hours. The lights are all in working order and people stop at them. No ping pong moves, red rover or sling shot moves. People let you in and know how to merge. The speeds are pretty scary though - 75 on the highway! Merging onto the highway and powering up is kind of like the Star Ship Enterprise going into warp!

This was the road to our house in Moca - the way things are done there is to put a stick in the hole with glitter streamers and a feed sac. It'll stay that way for months if not years! Cars with speakers and or microphones would drive around screeching "oro oro oro" and I guess people ran out to sell their gold OR the screaming told you the car had baked goods in the trunk etc etc. OR in the case of a funeral something was being blurted out with wailing people walking for a mile behind the thing.

Another difference is NO FOUNTAINS in the road. In PR water lines were all exposed PVC pipe an they made fountains when people ran over them, tried hooking into them to steal water or broke them just for fun. Water here and all the utilities in Placitas are underground. You don't see any of it and they come for free and tell you where stuff is if you want to dig.

FOOD

Food was terrible in Puerto Rico and very expensive. There were no choices and nothing was fresh. Restaurants were horrid and filthy. Roadside stands burned chemical laden pallets to cook over and there were no bathrooms or running water for the cooks. Yuck. The guy at the San Sebastian farmers market had his avocados in a cage because everyone picked up and squeezed all of them and then didn't buy them - no one would then buy a dented avocado. Restaurants were all paper or foam clamshells with plastic utensils. Imagine paying 25 bucks for a fried fish and "salad" (iceberg lettuce with a single slice of not ripe tomato and thousand island dressing slathered on it) and having plastic utensils and eating it on an always sticky and gross table. Ah, "island life" is pretty filthy.

You couldn't find anything. You had to go to lots of stores to do a single shopping trip. I couldn't find more than 8 cans of cat food because no one bought cat food - they threw their left over rice and beans on the ground.

Food here is not as great as in Seattle but it is more than acceptable. We can find fresh fish, Indian food, great breakfast spots, Mexican food, New Mexican food (green chili everything) and other ethnic stuff. We are still discovering places. Everywhere has real plates and utensils. Everywhere they bring water and bread without you waiting or asking for it. Service is fast and efficient. We haven't had anything screwed up and everyone gets their food at the same time. Supermarkets vary and even the worst here is far better than the best there. Lots of vegetarian selections, tons of fresh produce, so many kinds of bread you just stare at them. Every store has just about everything.

NOISE
What noise? We hear lots of birds, coyotes, a train (real - not just a car fake out). It is so quiet at night all you hear is your heart, snoring partner or content kitties! We haven't heard any one or anything on a microphone! No religious crap blasting out over the countryside or car turnout. No "promise parties" or parandas going all hours of the night. No head spinning pentacostal rantings on super loud microphones. Nope. Quiet.

Religious folks yelling through the rejas at people getting them to come to the gate and be converted I guess.

GETTING STUFF DONE
OMG all it takes is a phone call. You don't need a birth certificate, social security card, marriage certificate, etc etc to do things. You don't wait in lines all day or for more than a person even. You call on the phone and things get done pretty darned fast and are done correctly the first time. My driver's license the first time in Puerto Rico was around 15 hours and a couple days and I had to prove I had a head, arms and legs! Here my license is for 8 years or something and it took 10 minutes. It came in the mail in a couple weeks. They send reminders for car licensing which can be done on line.

Do you have eyes, arms and legs oh and a head? You can drive in Puerto Rico. And parking? Most people park nose in, none of this park in reverse crap.

GARBAGE
In Puerto Rico this photo says it all. We stopped the car and looked with binoculars at a new waterfall we hadn't seen before. Sadly it was a waterfall of garbage the neighborhood just shoved over the cliff.  Here if there is any garbage on a trail it is a single piece and we can spot it easily and pick it up. Garbage stays in garbage cans that actually get picked up before they are full. No banging of garbage cans at 4a.m. in the morning, no dogs knocking them over because they are starved and looking for food. They come at a reasonable hour. Everything goes in the can. There aren't animals all over trying to dig through stuff.

ODDS AND ENDS
No fart cars, no cars stacked high with scrap metal or bananas or grass. No cars on the highway going 20 with animals tied to the trailer hitch. No one wandering around with a machete or scuffing on the side of the road like the Walking Dead. Shopping carts are all in the shopping cart holder. You can walk into banks and not have to go one at a time and get buzzed in. You don't get ignored at government agencies or stores or any where! There isn't a constant assault on the senses of smells, noise and horrific visual stuff. Nope - things are just so much better and it is so much more relaxed here.

A lot of this is starting to seem humorous now that we don't have to put up with it. Also though we can't believe we DID put up with it for 7 years. Are we sorry we moved to Puerto Rico? No - we had wonderful experiences there. Are we happy we moved away? Absolutely! Having lived there has given us an immense appreciation for a lot of things we took for granted. We are very pleased to be living in a beautiful place that functions.

Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge

We took a day trip to see if we could see the sandhill cranes, snow geese and other migratory birds that overwinter here. Jeff doesn't like being anywhere at sunrise so we didn't get to see the morning bird lift off but we tried to see them come back at sunset. The refuge is near Socorro so it takes a couple hours to get down there. We scoped out the visitor's center and drove the loop stopping at one area to do a little walk about. The ground was a little sticky/caky due to recent snow but the day was gloriously sunny and warmish. A nice day to walk a little!

The refuge is 57,000 acres (give or take) and it is at the northern edge of the Chihuahuan desert along the Rio Grande river. It is surrounded by the Chupadera and San Pascual mountains. The water is diverted into wetlands, riparian zones and farmlands with channels in dammed up areas. Not much was going on during the hot part of the day so we went back to Socorro for lunch and then returned hoping to see birds fly in at sunset.

Not many birds (compared to other years) were around but I found myself mainly fascinated with all the reflections of grasses and twigs and mountains. The water was like glass and as the sun set the colors and reflections were spectacular and very beautiful. Some cranes did fly in but I was mainly interested in the colors on the water! We did see ravens, a group of peccary (javelinas), roadrunners, some mule deer and lots of ducks. Next time we will go in the morning or at sunset and just sit in one place for an hour or more before sun rise or set.  Any way, I did take some photos of the area. It is very nice and deserves a yearly trip.

Finally, a Post about the New House!

Well, we were pretty stressed out living next to people who were actively rounding up the free-roaming "wild" horses that live in Placitas. After living near awful behavior in Puerto Rico we decided we did not want to put up with it here. We rented near some nasty people who lured baby horses into corrals they erected with the sole purpose of rounding up horses...but THAT is another post.

We started looking for houses figuring it would take a while to find something we could afford and something that was to our liking. Fortunately/unfortunately we found something pretty darned fast after looking at a dozen or so houses in Placitas that were in the realm of financial possibility. Many houses were expensive and not cared for, or were situated on the lot stupidly (didn't take advantage of views) or were on "horse hater row." We did find a few that we liked and finally decided on THE one. We offered less than listed and started the process. 28 days later we had a house! The process involved a pre approval, then house inspection, appraisal, septic pumping, well inspection, heating inspection and on and on. To our amazement these inspections are primarily paid for by the SELLER. We got a super interest rate of 3.125 percent and moved in on December 8. The Unfortunate part is that we are still trapped in a broken lease paying for the rental until someone else moves in (and it is the holidays and winter). If we waited the house would most likely be gone (it is in beautiful shape), the interest rate would rise etc. We just did it. Of course we screened the neighbors when we were on bike rides and sat out nearby checking for activity. We asked about water problems and horse problems and all that. We now live in a place where our cluster of neighbors get along, like each other and leave each other alone! We live near a lady who puts hay out for the horses and no one else cares if we have water out. Everyone leaves them alone. Everyone was pretty happy when we took out all the wire fencing aimed at keeping horses out. Now for the pictures...

The house is 2200 square feet (a mansion but one of the smallest things you can find in Placitas). It is the true South West Adobe style inside and out. We love everything about this house - everything is very thoughtfully done from bent baseboards, to little niches, to heat registers under the sink in the kitchen and bathroom. There is radiant heat in the master bathroom floor, a light sensor for the laundry room you go through to get to the garage. Everything is wood. Just about every room in the house has a very nice view. Every time you go to turn on a light the switch is in the right place and the whole house layout is just right. Even the heater, refrigerator and house mechanics are placed away from the bedroom. It is just awesome. We don't have much furniture yet (and are taking our time) so things are a little empty looking but we don't plan on crapping it up with a lot of stuff anyway. I have big plans for the outside (courtyard wall and gardens) but they require some thought and $. So here are some shots!