Days Nine and Ten

Day Nine 

Begins in Santa Fe with a tour of the Plaza District - here is a statue of the first Native American to be given sainthood.

And no tour of Santa Fe is complete without walking past all the artsy shops.  Eiley couldn't pass up mimicking this statue outside one posh shop.  And since the city irrigates, there are cottonwood trees, big big old cottonwood trees.

After that, we bugged out of town and drove through a hailstorm(!) and just beat out the rest of that storm to head towards the Jemez Mountains.  The Garmin took us a completely different way and we ended up going up the west side of the mountains, up through the Jemez Pueblo and these lovely redrocks.  Just loads of stunning valleys here, no high mountains. Yet.

Farther up, we came across the Jemez River and this waterfall that is building curious sulfur deposits alongside.  One of those deposits had these extraordinary caves...

Which we all had to go up and climb in...  To find the source of the sulfur (mineral?) seeps.

Farther up the valley (and it is unbelievably "I am going to retire here" beautiful), is Battleship Rock.

And at one of the numerous pullouts, we had to stop and take a selfie.

After about an hour of this drive, the valley turns east and we stopped to look back the way we came at the San Diego Canyon lookout (we couldn't see the Diego Fire that was south of here).

We decided to gamble on the weather - after all we had outrun the worst storm already and camp at the Jemez Springs campground.  There was almost nobody there.

Jamey decided we should hang up the swimsuits from the morning's dip in the pool to dry.

We then spent the evening curled up in blankets and sleeping bags as it got cold and then POURED all night long.  Needless to say, the swimsuits weren't dry in the morning.

Day Ten

But we were determined not to be down about it since it was a clear blue sky, and so we headed out to the Macauley Warm Spring, 2 miles down the trail from the campground.  Here's a shot of us with "Castle Rock" in the background.

Eiley named this rock and we couldn't think of a reason why she couldn't make it the official name for herself.

A bit farther down the trail Bri named this outcropping "Great Green Pillars".

And after 1.5 miles of steep downhill, we were in a good mood, but looking forward to the warm springs very much!  The hills are amazing, but we stopped naming them.  There were just too many of them.

And then we found the springs - four pools arranged up a hillside.  "Hmm, how warm do you think they really are?"

First Pool: "This is pretty warm.  I think a minnow is nibbling me again."

Second Pool: So big, we can really swim around.  "Look I can float like a minnow"

Third Pool: Prettiest yet!

Fourth Pool: "This is the warmest, and it is shaped like a heart!"

 Jamey was kind enough to get the car on a very steep upward hike and the girls and I headed downhill along the river.  Beautiful views, old lava flows, a hawk, a striped lizard, and many side adventures to the river got us down just in time to meet up with Jamey.

The tent was finally dry after the hike and after a stop at La Cueva for cold drinks, we were off again eastward towards Los Alamos.  This is a view of the Valles Caldera, which we couldn't stop at (this time around).  A stunning dome in the middle of a wide grassy valley.  No elk visible today.

Once we were through Los Alamos (and its security checkpoint!), we headed towards Colorado and realized that the Garmin lead us north then east, instead of the east then north direction that Eiley plotted.  This lead to us having both the GPS and a map handy on the dashboard.

It also led to our new motto for the Garmin:
"Doesn't take you the way you expected to go, but takes you the way you are supposed to go."  It always seems to find the most scenic (although, in my opinion, not fastest) routes regardless of the settings.

We aimed northward towards Taos through a long string of small NM towns with crazy beautiful rock formations all around them.  "I wonder if the folks who live here even notice where they live..."

Then we spent a long hour cruising northward (thanks to the GPS) to come to the NM/CO border...

And another insanely intense storm with hail.  2 days, 2 storms, 2 hail downpours.  There wasn't anywhere to hide from it, no shoulder to pull off on, and only dirt (mud, really) roads leading off.  So, we drove on!

After another long bit, we finally made it to the Rocky Mountains and saw 3 14,000 ft peaks in an hour  - then sunset and another large storm shut us down and we stopped in Colorado Springs.

Tomorrow we're off to Boulder, Rocky Mtn National Park and the Continental Divide, then down to Utah and camp at Arches.  Monsoon season has started for the West, so there are storm warnings from here to Vegas (Day 13).