4 April ‘08
Friday
Last night we pulled into The Valley of Fire National Park and found ourselves a great camping site. There are only 6 sites that have water and electric hook-ups and we found one available. Valley of Fire campground is the location that over-looks the lava flows that have covered more than 150 miles of New Mexico. We sit about 80 feet above the flow and have a view over all the flow and a part of the White Sands Bombing Site…fact is, we just had a couple jets do a low run over our heads and disappear into the mountains in front of us. The deafening sound of the jet and then the blast in the distance of their bombs, made it kind of exciting. Below us, there is a wonderful pathway that winds around for over ¾ mile over the top of the lava.
Friday
Last night we pulled into The Valley of Fire National Park and found ourselves a great camping site. There are only 6 sites that have water and electric hook-ups and we found one available. Valley of Fire campground is the location that over-looks the lava flows that have covered more than 150 miles of New Mexico. We sit about 80 feet above the flow and have a view over all the flow and a part of the White Sands Bombing Site…fact is, we just had a couple jets do a low run over our heads and disappear into the mountains in front of us. The deafening sound of the jet and then the blast in the distance of their bombs, made it kind of exciting. Below us, there is a wonderful pathway that winds around for over ¾ mile over the top of the lava.
You can stay on the path or wonder down into the flow to get the close up view.
Last year at Lava Beds National Monument in northern California, we learned that the lava flows can be very sharp, so we stayed on the wonderful path that was provided for us. At the end of the boardwalk we were stricken with the artistic beauty of a "One Seed Juniper" tree...it was striking in contrast with the black lava.
There are a lot of stones in the Salinas Valley as we found when we visited the Pueblos.
The Salinas Valley Pueblos were built over 300 years ago by the Anasazi and Mogollon societies. Now I don’t have any idea as to who they were but they definitely were builders. All around the pueblos, the Indians developed a large farming and living community. The pueblos at Salinas Valley were individually small but as for the complete community it was considered large.
What we visited today was the contiguous stone and adobe homes of the Anasazi. It is estimated that at one time, more than 10,000 people once lived and worked here. They not only raised, and gathered their maize (corn), pinon nuts, beans, and squash, they were hunters. Soon after Spain conquered and colonized Mexico, they (the Spanish) traveled north and soon found their way to Salinas Valley. We read a little of the differences of the Pueblo and Spanish priests and the direction of how things went from there…not always friendly!!! During the times that were a little rough, there were “hidden” rooms that some of the Pueblo peoples would go to for their safety. The dwellings seemed to be either single or double floored, but where the hidden rooms came in, a larger hole was dug and then rocked over with a hidden entry someplace un-noticed.
The rock walls for all the pueblos were at least 2 feet thick, and this gave the people the insulation that was needed for the winters and hot summers, and of course, for their security.