Welcome
to the wonderful Friday each month where Nature Friday comes together
with YAM Aunty's FFF!! Make sure to visit YAM Aunty HERE to get the Rulez and join the FFF fun!!
My New Happy Place
by Rosy
Rocks to climb
Lovely skies above
Lizards to hunt
I'm in love
Show
us your nature! It can be flowers, your current weather, a scene out of
your window, or maybe a picture from a vacation, walk or other journey!
Any kind of nature picture will do! If you don't see a link below,
click HERE to go to our Hoppity Page.
Our last minute trip to Grants, NM was totally pawesome! Grants, NM is a small New Mexico town which, like a LOT of the towns we have visited, started out as a railway camp. It was also part of the old Route 66 route that Mama likes to visit.
We really thought the pawrents would be looking at trains and visiting old highway signs and we would just be hanging out in CeCe relaxing the whole weekend. Little did we know we would be on the go for most of the trip!
We stayed at the Grants, NM KOA Campground. Even though is a campground mostly for overnight campers, it was perfect for us. It was mostly empty during the day, making it easier for us to hike without running into other campers!
There was some fun hiking to be done right at our campsite. An actual lava flow ran behind the KOA Campground. They made a nice trail even had signs with descriptions of the different sites to see. Today, we're going to show you some of the fun things we saw(we had Mama put the words on the signs in italic underneath our description).
It's hard to explain just how much lava rock ran along(and sometimes in the middle of) the trail. Who thinks of lava and volcanoes, when you think of New Mexico, right? Obviously, the Spanish Explorers didn't when they traveled through the area.
El Malpais
The Spanish explorers called this land El Malpais and it means "the badlands". When the Spanish came through 500 years ago the lava was too rough for their horses and carts. They had to go around the lava. There are five major lava flows
If you look all the way at the back of the picture, a little to the left, almost touching the sky, you'll see Mt. Taylor...the volcano that "blew its top"
Mt. Taylor
The distant high peak behind this sign is Mt. Taylor. It is the highest mountain peak in Western New Mexico at 11,300 feet above sea level. The elevation here(at the campsite) is about 6,500 feet. Mt. Taylor is a volcano that was active about one million years ago. It didn't have a lava flow. It just blew its top.
There are 15 inactive volcanoes in Cibola County, NM(where Grants is located) along with a lot of lava flows. We suppose sometimes they just had to take an educated guess on which volcano the lava flowed from.
El Calderon Lava Flow
You
are looking at a lava flow from 115,000 years ago. All this lava rock
may be originated at the El Calderon volcano. When the volcano was
active the lava flowed over the ground 25 miles to get here. The lava
flow was up to 25 feet deep.
The pawrents took a ride to see the Bandera Crater AND the ice caves. We'll let Mama share her pictures in a couple of weeks on Nature Friday.
Bandera Crater
The low blue mountain beyond this sign is a volcano called Bandera Crater. It had lava flows thousands of years ago. There are caves in the lava flow that are filled with ice all year round. Bandera Crater and the ice caves are open for tours for a fee.
Here is a video Mama made of our trip down to Grants NM, along with some views from our campground and more hiking moments!
Feel free to watch it HERE at our YouTube Channel too!
Thanks for tagging along with us on our little hike through the lava flows!
Welcome
to Nature Friday, where we get to meet new friends and maybe share a
picture or two of what nature looks like around Blogville. This week we are going to give you a preview of what our Summer is going to look like here in our backyard!
Seems the word about our Mama's birdy buffet has reached all across the USA. We are seeing all kinds of different birds around our backyard. We are pretty sure this is a relative of Olly Oriole that has been stopping by our backyard birdy restaurant!
We also have a bunch of birdies helping themselves to the buggies in the grass. Mama is pretty happy about that!
The hummers are humming all around our back porch. We can promise Mama has been busy recording lots of hummer drama on her trail cam!
Here is Mr. Tanager taking a bath!
Mama also is keeping an eye(or the trail cam is keeping both eyes) on our fountain...so we can hear all the local birdy gossip!
Looks like Mr. Grosbeak and Mr. Tanager are on the outs....
Seems Mr. Grosbeak has been monopolizing the beak sharpener again!
You can find me hiding around the Spanish Broom.....
Why, you ask???
The lizards think I can't find them back there!
Silly lizards, I'll find them where ever they try to hide!
Here is a video of some of our Birdy trail cam footage so far!
You can also watch it HERE, on our YouTube Channel
You can bet you'll see more of all of our backyard wildlife this summer!
What kind of wildlife visits your backyard during the Summer??
Show
us your nature! It can be flowers, your current weather, a scene out of
your window, or maybe a picture from a vacation, walk or other journey!
Any kind of nature picture will do! If you don't see a link below,
click HERE to go to our Hoppity Page.
We are still getting used to the lack of rainy days compared to when we lived on the northern coast of California where it rains a LOT! Here, in New Mexico High Desert, we get a few winter bouts of rain or snow. Then for a couple of months around this time of year, we get "monsoon season". This is when we get afternoon rain or storms a few days a week. Then, after the rain, the sun comes back out!
Now, during rainy season,Mama and I love to go outside, sit on the porch and watch the storms. This is one of the few things Rosy is a bit scared of, but I enjoy. I also don't mind walking in the rain. Mama doesn't mind either, as long as there is no thunder or lightning
Mama made a video of a storm that came through the other day...
You can also watch it HERE, on our YouTube Channel
Whoah....that thunder was a little close!!
We sure are thankful for our occasional Spring rains!
Welcome
to Nature Friday, where we get to meet new friends and maybe share a
picture or two of what nature looks like around Blogville. This week I am going to recap the
final part of my Day Trip and some of the beautiful scenery
I experienced on a nice walk along the Jemez River.
If you need to catch up, you can read about Soda Dam and Valles Caldera HERE, and lunch in Los Alamos HERE.
After a big lunch, the pawrents thought a walk would be in order. When they saw this picnic ground, they parked JeeJee and off we went!
We passed big cottonwood trees with leaves just starting to spread
I couldn't believe all there is to see along the river.
There are big mountains, towering above on every side. Some, like the ones above, look almost molded!
Red rock can be seen everywhere
The mountains go on and on and running right along side of them....
is the Jemez River.
It rushed by us, and although it was full, it wasn't as high as it had been when Mama drove past here last year.
Last year it was so high,it flooded most of the picnic areas.
Above you can see one of the places the water goes when it is too full,
After looking at the river, we turned around and headed back to JeeJee
After another look at the Red Rocks of course....
As you might have guessed, Mama made a short video...
You can also watch it HERE, on our YouTube Channel
Thanks so much for tagging along with me on our little day trip,. I have a feeling there will be a few more of these in addition to our CeCe trips this year!!
Show us your nature! It can be flowers, your current weather, a scene out of your window, or maybe a picture from a vacation, walk or other journey! Any kind of nature picture will do! If you don't see a link below, click HERE to go to our Hoppity Page.
