(September 2nd-3rd) Inch by inch, the summer crept to an end. Amazingly, between the end of my trip to Chicago, and my trip to Vienna, I managed to stay in New Mexico for an entire three weeks. It's these small victories in life that give me hope of staying put one day again...
To celebrate Labor Day, Kim and I decided to get one last backpacking trip in for the season, so we set off to a spot just North East of Taos to check out Wheeler Peak, the highest point in New Mexico. Somehow, I had managed to go years without getting close to Wheeler, so I was chomping at the bit to have my first chance to climb it. Sure, it's not quite as high as the 14ers in Colorado, but it's pretty close.
Given that we were taking this as a relaxing weekend, we managed to get off to a late start on the 2nd, which meant that by the time we finally arrived at the trail head (no doubt, this was only helped by me miss-estimating how long it would take us to get there by an hour!), we didn't have too much time to daddle...
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| Carson National Forest |
Note those dark grey clouds looming above in the photo of Carson National Forest. Not only did we want to get our camp site established well before dark, but we also had the looming threat of rain over head. Rain in New Mexico? It happens! Just not too often. Nonetheless, we ended up making better time than expected, and next thing we new we were at Lost Lake. Good enough for the day we both said, after having climbed up a few thousand feet over 5 miles. Kim's little dog couldn't have been happier to stop as well!
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| Kim, Soju, me, and the new tent. |
I don't think I've mentioned this yet, but new tent. It's growing on me. I really liked my old tent a lot, but REI told me that they'd rather give me a new tent than replace the one broken pole in my old tent...since the cost was the same to me either way, I said why not. Turns out that my old tent was a *lot* warmer on a cold night than the new tent...but we'll get it figured out eventually I'm sure.
The next morning was, for lack of a better word, frigid. The incentive to get out of my sleeping bag early and go for a quick run up to the top of Wheeler while it was misting just wasn't there. Instead, we took our time and hiked up to Horseshoe Lake, just below Wheeler Peak.
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| Wheeler Peak and Horseshoe Lake |
12,000 some feet up, and still not there. I love the rockies. Not even in the Himalayas can you find the type of solitude that awaits adventurous backpackers in this part of the country. You can go days without seeing people. And on this extremely busy weekend, we saw a grand total of two other parties once we got off of the day hiking trail. I was slightly disappointed that we came so close to Wheeler without climbing it, but that'll be something for next time!
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| I'll get you next time Wheeler. You and your little friend too! |
Coming out of the forest, we made our way back to Taos where we stopped at
Graham's Grille by Lesley Fay. It looked good enough that, even though we were starving, we decided to wait an hour for them to open for dinner. Poor us, we were forced to go sit at a bar and drink margaritas while relaxing off our feet. Tough life. I won't pretend to remember exactly what we ordered, but it was good. Pictures and brief descriptions follow:
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| Chef provided appetizer (think fried pita strips plus hummus), plus libation. |
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| Mussels in a spicy chorizo tomato sauce? Yummm |
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| Mushroom, spinach, and squash ravioli in a cream sauce. |
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| Blue Corn crusted Red Trout |
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| Pecan Pie. |
But, that's not all! Astute observers will notice that Graham's Grille has a doggy menu too. Well, little old Soju hiked 14.5 miles with us this weekend, so it was the least we could do to order him something, right?
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| Kim splurged and got Soju an Angus burger with veggies. |
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| The after picture. |
Like little kids the world over, Soju refused to eat his veggies. Instead, he pushed them around in an attempt to trick us into thinking that he ate them. We let him off easy this time, but he hasn't gotten away with it again!
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| Soju wasn't the only one that was stuffed! |
And with that, our Labor Day vacation ended and we headed home to Albuquerque.
While you wait for my next post (it shouldn't be too long now that I have my computer back), I've updated a few older posts:
Elizabeth in the news
Mid August Miscellany
Our Neo-Pagan Age (warning, very liberal views)
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