Catching Up round 2...Natural Wonders and Jake the Snake

Full Day Numero Uno in Santa Fe. Main excursion: Bandelier National Park. Bandelier was about an hour or so away from Santa Fe, right in the first big canyon of the mountains to the west. The main attraction of Bandelier was the Native American ruins. There was a pretty standard pueblo at the bottom of the canyon, but once you got up the north side a little you started seeing man-made holes in the mountainside, with blackened ceilings and small holes at the top for exhaust. Turns out the Natives that lived in this area actually built their homes attached right to the mountainside. From the pictures in the brochure, it looked like they would dig holes into the rock to insert poles into and build roofs and walkways along the side of the mountain. So they weren't actually living "in" the mountain, more just attached to it. But it's all good, these were my first Indian ruins so I was excited nonetheless.

So I don't know if it's St John's' curriculum or just the people I was staying with, but every time they came back from school we just jumped right in to some deep intellectual conversation, complete with points, counterpoints, arguments and counterarguments. It was really something else! I'm used to Michigan, where you get home from school and your brain is mush and the last thing you want to do is talk about the day's intellectual conquests. Maybe studying only primary sources instead of all of the varied criticisms and rebuttals of said primary resource leaves peoples' minds more ready to form their own opinions. I think I like this way of schooling. Apparently they have an Eastern Philosophy graduate program at St John's, I might have to look into that when I get back from PC. Talk about throwing your head into a spin! The farthest we got in Eastern philosophy in any of the classes I took on the East (particularly Chinese Politics and Zen Buddhism) was the conclusion that the fundamentals of eastern thought are pretty much the polar opposite of that of western thought. I can only imagine what spending an entire year immersing yourself in only those fundamentals would be like......awesome!

So yeah, if I remember correctly, that evening was the night of the Oscars, and my hosts also had "band" practice (they're in a band that started out as a joke then became reality. Anyone want to be in my joke/reality band?), so I met up with some friends of Greg's who he got me in touch with on the way in to town for some drinks. This was when I came to the stark realization that Santa Fe really did have no nightlife. First we met up on the town square around 8 or so (the square was virtually empty). Then we went into a bar/restaurant on the square that they recommended as being pretty good. We sat down and I noticed how high the prices were (yes, everything is expensive in Santa Fe), then I noticed how few people were in the bar (maybe a total of 6 people not including us or the waitstaff). The TVs were on to the Oscars but the volume was all the way down, so it was really hard to tell what was going on. This obvoiusly was not the scene on a Sunday night. But then my new friends told me that this is pretty much what it's like every night of the week. Crazy! I guess people only go out for gallery openings and other rich-person-type things. Or house parties for the college kids. It was kinda sad, to be honest. I don't think I could handle that in a town. I like going out too much!

But Greg's friends were awesome! Eddy, Greg's bud from volunteer stuff over the years, is working for the State restoring New Mexico's riverbeds, pulling out invasive species and replanting native ones (among other things). Tia, Eddy's girlfriend, is a struggling artist, like so many of Santa Fe's socialite hipsters. Maybe she can get with Jodie, the other struggling sociarthipster I met, to start that Co-op I think they should start! One can only hope..... They also told me I should visit Prescott in Arizona on the way down to Phoenix, as it had a similar young/artsy scene as Santa Fe and was cool, so I took note of that (but in the end ended up having a completely different experience in Prescott, as I'll get to later).

It was around this time that I found out that a few friends of mine were going to be in San Diego at different points during the second week of March. Originally, I had planned to be in San Diego the first week of march, but in light of this revelation, I decided to slow down my trip through the Arizona/New Mexico desert so that my arrival in SD would coincide with that of my friends, creating a greater chance that we might be able to meet up. So, taking this into account, I decided to extend my visit in Santa Fe by a day, along with stopping a couple extra times in Arizona on the way from Flag to Phoenix. In effect, I just decided to make my trip through the desert a bit more relaxed, which I will never complain about.

In the morning of full day number two in Santa Fe, Annie and I walked down the local art street (where all the galleries are, just a block from their house) and saw some interesting stuff, then went to a local coffee shop and read for a while over tea. In the afternoon, I decided to make use of the national parks annual pass I picked up the day before and go visit the Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks national monument. This place was not even listed on the NPS website, as it is maintained by the Bureau of Land Management and thus not deemed worthy of note by those elitist National Park Service goombahs. It not being listed at nps.gov got me excited though, it made me feel like I might've found a gem that not so many people knew about, and in the end I guess I was right! There were certainly still people there, but it felt much less crowded than Bandelier, and thus more personal of an experience. I hiked up a trail, through a narrow canyon, up the side of a mountain and onto a high mesa with an absolutely beautiful vista of the surrounding area. I could see mountains of all different colors in every direction, and below me were the most phallic rock formations I'd ever seen. It was a remarkable experience, not only because of the view but also because I was the only person on the mesa when I got up there (there were a few people heading up as I went down, but not more than 2 or 3 groups). It was so peaceful, I could just sit there watching the birds, letting the hard (but warm) wind blow through my hair. Awesome.

By the time I got home from Kasha-Katuwe, it was naptime, so I slept for a while until my hosts came back from school. That evening I taught them how to play Euchre and then they taught me how to play a game called Dos Manos (or something). All the while we drank beers and then I broke into the whiskey and ended up losing a lot of games, but still had a great time. Thankfully there was no betting or money involved, or I probably would've lost a lot more than my wits... lol

So that was pretty much my experience of Santa Fe. Adventurous day trips into national monuments and low-key evenings hanging with friends. A little art here and there, but I really didn't do a whole lot of exploring of Santa Fe itself. Guess I'll have to save that for next time.

Tuesday morning (again with a bit of a headache from the night before) I headed off to Flagstaff. On the way I stopped at a couple more national parks, first at El Malpais, an off-the-beaten-path national monument of million-year-old lava flows. Driving down the local highway to get to the park I picked up an Indian hitchhiker who called himself "Jake the Snake". Jake was hilarious. He told me stories about how his woman in Albequerque is always complaining, how he was married for four years, had six kids, and then his wife died of a heart attack, how good piñon is hard to find these days (he was in Albequerque looking for piñon... I still haven't figured out what piñon is.....), and how he was only going home to change clothes and then head out again to Gallup to meet his uncle for some sort of event (maybe a Rodeo?). It was an entertaining 20 minutes or so before I turned into the park and let him continue on his way. I would've driven him all the way to Gallup, since it was on the way to Flagstaff, but I was on a fairly tight schedule and didn't have the time to wait for him to get washed up at home. Oh well, I'm sure he made it there soon enough.

El Malpais is one of those parks that is really not very well developed. In order to truely appreciate the area you have to go backpacking for at least one night. It's a big park with lots to see, but only two roads that run on the north and south edges of the park, so the only way to see the inner parts is to hike in. I had to get through the Petrified Forest and on to Flagstaff by dinner time, so I only had time to trek in for about 15 or 20 minutes before turning back. Another thing to add to my to-do list for next time. I did see some pretty neat caves and sinkholes though! Shoulda brought my (currently non-existant) headlamp!

After El Malpais I stopped at the Petrified Forest national park. First of all, let me say that the Painted Desert is probably one of the most magnificent vistas I have ever seen. Absolutely beautiful scenes of desert hills in all different shades of red, orange and yellow in every direction. The air was so clean and clear you could even see the mountain neighboring Flagstaff, something like 90 miles away. Absolutely amazing. Almost more amazing than the grand canyon, if I do say so myself. Even just driving through the park was amazing, with all different kinds of millions of years old rock and petrified tree remains, the sense of natural history was so impressive.

The petrified trees were pretty awesome too. Beautiful colors in those rocks, so many different shades and hues. Great photos from there, here's a taste.



I'll leave it at that for today. Next up, Flagstaff hippies, the Grand Canyon, and more!