Today, I had plans to go out hiking with baby B this afternoon.  But it felt hot and sunny when we walked up the street to the mailbox, so I didn’t feel like hiking.  OK, it was probably only 80 degrees out and I probably should have just gone.  Since I didn’t go this afternoon, after B was in bed, I headed out for a quick hike before the sun set.  By then, it was actually very pleasant out.

Of course, I had to bring the new camera along.

I have been focusing on trying to learn about the aperture settings.  For my simple purposes, this controls how much of the image is in focus.  For example, a large aperture is used in my portraits of baby B where he is razor sharp, but the background is blurred out.  A smaller aperture is often used in landscape photography when one basically wants the whole image to be in focus.

Just getting this basic principle down has opened up a whole world of options for me.

Here’s a picture of the trail I was on with the mountains in the background.  Have I mentioned recently how crazy fortunate I feel to live 5 minutes away from this trail system?

It was so gorgeous out and I easily could have stayed out for another couple of hours if it wasn’t rapidly getting dark.  (I was very impressed with how my camera did with the low light levels after the sun sunk below the horizon.)

A larger aperture also lets more light into the camera which makes it easier to get sharper images.  The picture of the tree above was taken at f/2.8.

I love the effect of a subject that is in super sharp focus with a blurred background.  While aperture has a lot to do with this, I’m finding it to be related to zoom level as well.  For reasons I don’t yet really understand, standing further back and zooming in makes the contrast between the sharp focus of the subject and the blurred background much more pronounced.

I’m sure any experienced photographer knows all about the explanation and some day I will too.  For now, I am just having so much fun experimenting and learning about all of this.

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It has been a busy, but fun week.

I recently had a birthday, so I am now officially 30!  It’s kind of a strange milestone, but I feel like I’m ready for my thirties.

I also bought a new camera with some birthday money (plus some).  I have really been wanting a good camera for some time.  For a long time, I was fine with the camera on my phone, but after baby B was born, I wanted to be able to take better pictures of him.  My phone seemed like it did better with landscapes than baby pictures.

I have spent the last few days playing with my new camera and trying to figure out what it’s capable of.  I have a lot to learn about all of it’s settings still, but I am determined to really learn how to use it.

In other exciting news, my mom came and stayed with B for a night so S and I could get away.  I missed B a little, but mostly it felt amazing!  This is the first time I’ve been away from him for the night.

S and I had a great time.  We stayed in downtown Santa Fe, walked around a bit, did some window shopping, ate at a couple of amazing Mexican restaurants (The Shed and Tia Sophia’s- both highly recommended).

Here’s a few of my first pictures with the new camera:

Santa Fe

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Then the next day we took off into the woods for a hike.  We went up the Pecos River and it was very gorgeous.  Lots of tall trees, some Aspens just starting to change to yellow, moss covering the rocks and fallen logs, wild flowers, and some gurgly streams that we hiked along.

The campground at the trail-head had these really cool little shelters with fireplaces built in.  It’s the first time I’ve seen something like this at a campground and they looked awesome.

At one point, the stream disappeared into a cave and then re-emerged down a bit lower.  We had fun finding the cave and then looking for where the stream came out again.  There were supposed to be some other caves up in the area, but we never found them.

The whole area was so gorgeous and our hike was pretty much perfect.  (We did run into a large, unleashed dog on the trail.  While it’s owner was busy assuring us that it was friendly, the dog was running towards us with a deep, menacing growl.)  It felt great to get some sunshine and fresh air.  Here’s a few last pictures from me experimenting a bit with the new camera:

Pecos Wilderness

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Quartz Mountain Nature Park was one of the original Oklahoma State Parks, although I’m not sure it’s still classified as a State Park.  It is still run by the state of Oklahoma and is very State Park like.  It is a gorgeous, unique area that is all the more precious because of the part of Oklahoma it’s in.

Many people think of Oklahoma as flat and although this is far from true for the whole state, part of it is very flat.  Western Oklahoma tends to be cow pasture or cropland with the occasional small town here and there.  It can be quite a challenge to find good places to visit in that part of the state.  Quartz Mountain is so different from the surrounding area.

It features these super cool, rocky hills that rise up out of the flat land.  There’s a nice lake with cabins and a lodge.   There’s a golf course, hiking trails, camping areas and rock climbing.  It also features a conference center and performance center.

S and I recently went out to Oklahoma city with baby B for a work conference and stopped by Quartz Mountain for a night on the way home.  Our lodging turned out to be a bit disappointing- we’d had a room booked in the lodge, but they were over-booked and we got moved to a cabin.

The cabin was old and a bit grungy, but we were tired and Quartz Mountain is far enough from any other lodging options that we stayed there for the night.  I had wanted to try out one of their cabins at some point and, well, now I know what they’re like.

The surrounding area was nice though.  We saw several white-tailed deer around our cabin, which all disappeared when I went outside with my camera.  Our cabin was surrounded by trees and it was a very short walk down to the lake where we went to drink coffee in the morning.

After our coffee, we went for a hike at the Baldy Point area.  One of the trails looked really cool, featuring just the exact amount of rock climbing that I’d be willing to do without gear.  It was so tempting, but just seemed like a bad idea to attempt it while carrying baby B.  It’s one thing to put myself at risk.  It’s quite another to put him at risk.  So, we stuck to an easier trail, but it was still a nice hike in a cool landscape.

Quartz Mountain Hike

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Once we got back to the car, we spent a while watching a couple of rock climbers scaling one of the rock walls.  The sign said the area is Oklahoma’s premier rock climbing destination.  Frankly, I’m not sure Oklahoma has many other rock climbing destinations at all, but it did look like a good place for it.  Then we were off for a long drive with a baby back to New Mexico.  Traveling is definitely more work with a kid, but still worth it.

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We made it out on a short trip last week that included two nights camping in the National Forest and a night at the lodge at Mesa Verde National Park.

The first night camping was in the Jemez Mountains near a spot that I went camping at last year and just fell in love with.  Unfortunately this year somebody else was already at my favorite little camping spot by the creek.  The spot we ended up at instead was still surrounded by lots of gorgeous tall trees, it just didn’t have the creek.  It was the perfect place to stop for a night on the way up to Mesa Verde.

Mesa Verde National Park is less than 45 minutes from Durango where I grew up.  It’s one of the places people visit when they visit Durango.  It’s the sort of place one doesn’t go at all when living in Durango.  My mom says she took me there once when I was a baby, but I have no memory of it at all.  I’ve always felt a little like I got jipped since I never got to go.  But that has now been remedied.

I know that verde means green in Spanish, but for whatever strange reason when I would hear Mesa Verde, I always thought ‘red’.  Having visited there has helped a bit to get that misconception out of my head.

There is a lodge in the park named Far View Lodge and it did live up to it’s name with sweeping views.  The views were definitely the highlight of staying at the lodge and breakfast out on the patio was super pleasant.  I have to admit I felt super spoiled staying there because as a kid my impression of National Parks were of places where one found a patch of dirt for a tent.  Staying in a lodge room feels so plush.

Mesa Verde is known as one of the best archeological sites with many cliff-dwellings and other ruins.  I have to admit that ruins of old places are kind of something I don’t really get that excited about.  They just look like dilapidated buildings to me and most of the stuff they say about the people that lived there seems like guesses at best.  Mostly I was there because I liked the idea of staying at the lodge in the middle of nowhere.  But since I was there, it seemed like we should check out the ruins.

Most of the cliff-dwellings require going on a paid tour to see them.  After seeing the crowds and some annoyingly loud kids at the museum where tickets can be purchased, we decided that we didn’t really want to go on a tour and would stick to the cliff-dwelling that is open to just walk around.  Unfortunately the trail to it was closed due to a rock slide and we had to make do with a view from across the way.

We ended up taking another trail 1.25 miles out to some petroglyphs.  It would have been a bit more enjoyable had we planned for a hike.  The way out to the petroglyphs I felt fine, but by the way back I was sorely wishing for a drink and a snack.  I also fail to get very excited about ancient graffiti, but it was a very neat hike along the side of the canyon with rock staircases and a few narrow passages.

After the hike we had a much-deserved lunch and then left the park for another night of camping in the National Forest in Colorado.  I know there are a bunch more ruins and things that we didn’t get the chance to see, but I don’t feel like I’m missing out.  It’s a pretty area and I wouldn’t mind going back if the opportunity presented itself.  I also don’t feel a pressing need to go back.

Clearly it’s the type of thing that some people are very into.  There were license plates there from dozens of different states and people at the restaurant there speaking languages I didn’t recognize.  If one is into archeological-type things then it’s clearly a must-see destination.  For me, I’m glad to have seen it but would probably be happier going to a new place next time.

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Moving to Albuquerque one of the things I worried about was being further from nature.  There are things I like about cities, but at the end of the day I think I like nature better.  This weekend, I had a chance to explore a couple of the trails in the Sandia Mountains.  There are trail-heads less than 15 minutes from my new house that head up into the mountains.  While I’ve always known the Sandia Mountains were there, I never quite realized how easily accessible they are from Albuquerque.

While the trail-heads are busy, once I’d get half a mile up the trails the number of people declined a lot. It was so nice to discover how easy it is to leave the city behind and really be totally out in nature. Both of the trails I tried this weekend were very cool (Embudito trails 192 & 193). They wound up little canyons and there were plenty of rocks to scramble up and other small obstacles to keep things interesting.

It was super nice to get outside and do a bit of hiking. Between moving and everything else that I’ve had going on, I haven’t been out hiking and exploring as much as I would like. Hopefully this is the start of that changing. I’m really looking forward to getting out and exploring more of the trails in the Sandia Mountains.

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The Catwalk is located in the Gila National Forrest close to the little town of Glenwood, NM.  It was originally built back in the mining days to hold a water pipeline that went to a mine.  Since it’s nestled in a skinny canyon with a turbulent creek, the scaffolding was drilled into the sides of the canyon making a ‘catwalk’.  Eventually the mine shut down and it was re-purposed as a recreation trail.  Then the wood was replaced with metal.

The day we were there was a sunny day in early December. It was a bit chilly at times, but the trees were gorgeous with fall colors. I also imagine that it gets crowded at times, but I only saw one other group that left just as we arrived.

The area has had a rough few years recently. There was a large fire in the area and then parts of the catwalk were dismantled to prevent it from being washed away in anticipated floods. A year or so later, the area experienced unusual flooding. Part of The Catwalk was rebuild, but part of it is still closed due to lots of flood damage.  (On a previous trip we’d tried to stop there but it had been closed for repairs at that time so I was glad to finally get to see it.)

It was an extremely cool place to check out. The area is gorgeous with the stream at the bottom of the canyon and the catwalk is fun to walk on. It is definitely a place I recommend stopping at if one is in the area, although it isn’t in a well-traveled part of the country which maybe actually makes it cooler.  Plus we saw some wild pigs on our hike.  Who doesn’t want to see wild pigs?

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This week I have journeyed from Socorro, NM to San Diego, CA via a couple of nights in Tuscon.  Things of this week involve lots of cool places, some of which I will make full posts about later.

The Catwalk

The Catwalk was our first cool stop of the trip, a couple hours out of Socorro.  It was a great place to get out of the car for a few hours and stretch our legs.  It is built in a skinny canyon with a creek that flows at the bottom and consists of a metal walk-way that is attached to the side of the cliffs.  A gorgeous location and a fun place to walk!

Kartchner Caverns State Park

Kartchner Caverns State Park is in Arizona.  It’s a limestone cave that is still ‘living’- actively growing formations.  Tour rules don’t allow cameras or phones in the cave, but you can hit Google up for some pictures if you like.

Saguaro National Park

We went on a day hike in Saguaro National Park.  The Saguaro cactus are the iconic cactus of the desert even though they only grow in a fairly limited area.  They are fairly fascinating and also massive.  They can live for over 200 years, grow as tall as a four story building and weigh 7 tons!!!

Driving

This week has featured a lot of driving.  The drive through the Gila National Forrest was gorgeous and the area still had some snow in places left from a recent storm, adding contrast and changing the way the landscape looked.  Driving to Kartchner Caverns I got the first speeding ticket of my life.  Driving out of Tuscon was kind of cool because there are more Saguaro Cactus and they each seem to have their own personality- some have no arms, some have lots of arms all twisty like they’re trying to reach to scratch in that place the just can’t reach.  The rest of the journey across Arizona was desolate and kind of monotonous, but traffic was fairly light and it wasn’t too bad.

After entering California, there were some cool Sand Dunes, and then a while later we started climbing up through these cool hills/mountains that had very neat looking large rocks on them.  Then came a bit of National Forrest and the decent into San Diego.  Since I don’t spend much time in large cities, the traffic and busyness are kind of a shock to the system, but in some way, it’s always exciting to be coming into a big city.

Food

On a long trip, I do a lot of eating out of the cooler- lots of sandwiches for lunch, apples, and carrot sticks.  I also like to take the opportunity to try some new places and the places we’ve gone for dinner have all been great.  Night #1 in Tuscon was  at the 4 Seasons- a very local seeming place serving Thai, Chinese and American food.  Night #2 in Tuscon was The Wild Garlic Grill – amazing food by a French-trained Tuscon Native and definitely some place I’d put on my list to go back.  Night #1 in San Diego was burgers at a place called Neighborhood- a relaxed atmosphere featuring waiters wearing hoodies with ‘Hood’ written on the back, proudly proclaiming ‘No Red Bull, No ketchup, No Hostess’ (and some other Nos that I forgot) on the sign outside, and serving up great burgers and perfectly cooked fries.  There are some great things about living in a small town, but getting to try different spots to eat is not one of them, so it’s been great to try these different (and tasty) places.

That’s it for this week since I’m off to see San Diego this morning, but I wanted to take the time to get this out before the memories of some of these places start to fade.

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Some years ago, my obsession for travel was really sparked.  Sure, I traveled for work before that and had enjoyed some other fun trips in my life.  When my obsession was really sparked was when I first discovered the Oklahoma State Parks and the fact that many of them had affordable, cozy cabins in gorgeous locations.  For several years, I’d been staying in one motel after another on my trips to Oklahoma, rushing from one work site to the next.  Then I discovered what I had been missing and the worst of it was that the State Parks are all on the map that I had used on all my trips.  Information is available on them at the Tourist Information centers in the state- places I’d never previously thought to stop at.  That made me wonder what I was missing in my own area.

For a while, I developed an obsession with the brochures, maps and magazines made for tourists.  I’d pick up a copy of each available and browse over them later, planning the places I wanted to see on my next trip.  (Eventually, it became clear that this collection wasn’t helping me and I threw away a lot of them.  But I still have a drawer or two in one of my filing cabinets filled with my favorites and I haven’t done away with the related travel obsession at all.)  During this time, I also stopped at the local Visitor’s Center for Socorro and collected the brochures for the area.

I also went to the nearby Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge and collected all of their brochures.  One such was the brochure for the Chupadera Peak trail.  I knew then that I wanted to make the climb.  It lingered in the back of my mind for years.  More recently, I ran across the brochure again when I pulled out my information on the Bosque to find the one for the Canyon Trail.  I pulled out the Chupadera Peak brochure at the same time and left it lying on an end table in my living room.

Earlier this month, Sam and I decided we were going to go do it.  The Chupadera Peak trail is starts at the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge. It follows across mostly flat land for a couple of miles, goes under the interstate, enters the Chupadera wilderness area, goes up a wash for a few miles and then up to the peak.  Having done the hike before, Sam recommended we just park on the interstate and go from there, saving ourselves a few miles.  This is probably not the official thing that I’m supposed to recommend one do, but it seems to be kind of a thing.

This trail winds up through very deserty terrain- filled with cactus and other deserty plants I should know the names of, but don’t.  It is definitely not the sort of hike I’d recommend in the summer.  An early November day however turned out to be perfect for it.  We had gorgeous weather for it- partly cloudy/partly sunny and warm, but not too warm.

The first few miles of the trail slope gently upward, partly following the wash.  Then the trail winds up through a cool canyon with red rock walls that make one think, “I’d like to go explore up in there.”

Once out of the canyon, the trail continues to wind up… and up… and up.  Every time I’d think, the top has to be just a bit further and when I’d get up to where I’d been able to see to, I’d see that I still had further up to climb.  It seemed as though each step higher provided a more sweeping view of the landscape below.  Once you get closer to the top of the peak, it becomes possible to see the Magdalena Mountains to the east.  Looking the other way, I could see the ponds and the fall colors of the Bosque del Apache down in the valley.  It made me wonder if one could see the birds taking off from there.

We ate sandwiches and chocolate mint cookies at the top.  We drank water, and leaned against our packs, soaking up the sun.  Finally, we decided it was time to head down since it was late afternoon and the sun would soon be setting.

Almost immediately upon setting out for the return trip, my left foot hurt.  I tried retying my boot a few times, but nothing seemed to help.  So, I figured that the faster I walked, the sooner I’d be done and I hauled butt back down the trail. The sun dropped behind the mountains and while sun rays were still visible in the distance, we were in shadow.  It gave things the feeling of an ending: the end of the day, the end of the hike, the end of this post.

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White Sands National Monument is a really unique place.  It features miles and miles of white sand dunes and, well, really nothing else.  The fact that there is nothing else there is what makes it so cool.  It’s a surreal sort of place.

Sam and I went backpacking there for a night.  White Sands gets a ton of visitors, but there are only 10 back-country camping permits issued a day.  Camping somewhere is a much different experience than driving around and maybe getting out to take a few pictures.  I like that feeling of really being places.

Back country permits are available on a first come, first serve basis, so we showed up at the Visitor Center mid-day to get our permit and then went to the Organ Mountains for the afternoon to avoid being at White Sands for the hot part of the day.  We came back in the late afternoon to hike in to our camping spot.

It was a relatively short hike in, maybe about a mile.  It does require packing in your own water since there is none available out there.  The weight wasn’t a challenge, but making it fit in our packs was.  We talked, only partly  joking, about bringing a sled to haul our stuff in next time.  By the tracks in the sand, I’m pretty sure somebody else had done just that.

We had a fantastic time.  Being able to watch the sunset and sunrise was a real treat.  It’s amazing how the change in lighting can make such a difference in an area.  I had been to White Sands a few times before this, but it was always for short visits during the day.  Frankly, the middle of the day isn’t a good time to be there.  The sun glares down and is insanely bright reflected off of all the white sand.  It was super cool to see the dunes in the soft light during sunrise and sunset.

When we went, the moon was close to full and it reflected off the sand making it bright enough that we didn’t need our flashlights.

Watching the sun rise over the dunes was a real treat.  The light was magical.  My pictures hardly do it justice, and my words certainly aren’t going to.

The only life we saw other than fellow backpackers was a few black beetles and some plants.  We did see a few animal tracks in the sand and heard a couple of squeaky noises at night.

One of the things that I find fascinating is that there are little ‘islands’ of plants mixed in with the dunes.  These islands start to disappear as one goes further into the dunes.  The hardiest of plants manage to hang on, but as the wind moves the dunes, they start to be overrun.

Something I didn’t expect was the total silence at night.  Thinking about it, the silence made sense as there isn’t much in the way of life out there.  We happened to be there on a clear night when the weather was still and silent.  The loudest noise was that of our breathing.  It was peaceful and calm.  It was also very strange because even out in the woods, there is normally noise: leaves rustling, birds and bugs and little animals scurrying around.  Here, it was just silent.

This was a one-of-a-kind sort of experience.  If you ever get the opportunity to go backpacking at White Sands, I highly recommend taking it.  Actually, if you’re interested in such things, I’d recommend making the opportunity. It’s totally worth it.

More information can be found on the National Parks website. 

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The Organ mountains lie east of Las Cruces, New Mexico.  Highway 70 from Las Cruces to Alamogordo passes through them and I’ve driven this road a few times but didn’t really pay that much attention to the mountains.  Highway 70 is important because it leads to White Sands National Park.  On a recent trip that included backpacking at White Sands, Sam and I took a few hours to explore in the Organ mountains.

To my great delight, one of the rock formations is named ‘Rabbit Ears.’  I could not pass up the opportunity to get a picture of Hoppy with it in the background.

The trail we took greeted us with a friendly sign, “WARNING MANY PEOPLE HAVE BEEN INJURED AND OTHERS HAVE LOST THEIR LIVES AS A RESULT OF ROCK CLIMBING FALLS OR ROCK SLIDES IN THIS RECREATION AREA.  RATTLESNAKES ARE ANOTHER KNOWN HAZARD.  HIKING OR CLIMBING ALONE IS NOT RECOMMENDED.  PLEASE LEAVE WORD WHERE YOU ARE GOING AND WHEN YOU EXPECT TO BE BACK.  AND BE CAREFUL!”  Yes, rugged is a good word for this area.

We hiked about a mile up the trail and then stopped by a very small creek.  Well, I’m not even sure that it was exactly a creek.  It was a steady stream of water, but not much more than a trickle.  The mountains there were steep and it made little waterfalls.  We were feeling oddly unambitious for us, so we laid down on the rocks by the creek.  There were a couple of small pools of water and we found tadpoles living in them.  I thought that tadpoles were baby fish, but Sam assured me they would turn into frogs.  We found an almond left behind by a previous person and broke it into pieces, dropping them into the pond in case the tadpoles wanted to eat them.  They didn’t.  (We weren’t surprised.)

I’ve written about this before, but one of the things I love about hiking and exploring is just finding small little treasures.  Not the sort of treasure that you put in your pocket, but the sort that you watch for a few moments and maybe take a picture of.  The sort of treasure that makes you say, “Oooh!  Look!  A lizard!”  This hike definitely had it’s share of those.  Along with the tadpoles, flowers and the little creek, we also saw colorful hummingbirds flitting around from one flower to the next, a lizard that looked very camouflaged on the tree it was hanging out on and shiny gold flecks in the creek that made me sure that real treasure was around somewhere.  Trying to gold pan with my hands didn’t really pan out for me though.

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