Today's Adventure at 8000 Feet

By calling today's outing an adventure, I certainly don't mean to imply that anything particularly exciting happened when we went up to the Lincoln National Forest this morning. The exciting thing to me is that we continue to include some form of exercise in our daily routine.

Today's goal was to walk and bike in the thin air at 8000 feet up. After Beez set out on his bike, I followed on foot. This is little Weetzie, my excellent hiking companion. We headed up (why is it always up?) this logging road, keeping a careful eye out for lovely deer and fierce, protective, and combative mother bears. 

At one point, Weetzie made an unexpectedly loud snuffly noise which made my hair literally stand up all over my head. Once I had ascertained that no mother bears were charging, we decided to wander back down the road toward the car, my chair, and a book for some nice forest-y contemplation. 

Looking closely at the ground, we could see that there were tiny little wildflowers, which you will hardly be able to make out in these iPhone photos I took. In my defense, I have a very difficult time making out what I am taking a photo of when then sun is shining on the screen. But, oh dear, I do wish they would be in focus just for once.

Think of these as impressionist photos of flowers.

The mixed pine, aspen, and spruce (I think) forest was beautiful (except for where someone had thrown empty beer cans into the woods). Everything was so quiet, except for the birdsong, the whirring sound of iridescent green hummingbirds going about their business, and the wind sighing through the pines. 

The smell of the piney air was delicious.

I must give a plug to the beautiful Sacramento Ranger District Visitor Center. It was like a lodge inside, with a stone fireplace and lots of natural wood everywhere. The rangers were friendly and eager to introduce us to their forest home. And I must say, the restrooms were pretty amazing, with advanced technology toilets that could flush two ways, depending on need--a water-saving feature for this drought stricken part of the country.

We met some people from New Hampshire out in the parking lot and, as people will do, established that we knew someone in common within the first 25 words of our conversation. It was a pretty good example of our small world. 

On the drive back home, there was a turnout for gazing at this view of the Tularosa Basin, with the White Sands National Monument sparkling out there in the middle. 

Road Trip: Capitan, Home of Smokey Bear

After I get my knee fixed and can walk again, I'd like to spend some time in Capitan, located in the heart of Lincoln County, right up there in the Lincoln National Forest at 6530 ft. There's a nice little side road we always stop on to get out and stretch and to give the dogs a little R & R. It smells like pines and there is the tantalizing sound of trickling water nearby.


Capitan is the home town of Smokey Bear (also known as Smokey the Bear from a song that was written about him), a little cub who was found in a tree after a forest fire. After being treated for his burns, he became the national symbol of forest fire awareness, spending his life in the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. When he died at age 26, his remains were returned to Capitan, where he was buried in what is now Smokey Bear Historical Park.



You can find out more about the village of Capitan at its website, and at its Chamber of Commerce website. For a further glimpse of life among the pines, see Taste of Capitan and Capitan Farmer's Market.

Getting a Mountain Fix

A couple of days ago we drove up from 4300 feet in Clovis to over 8600 feet in Cloudcroft, New Mexico, located in the beautiful Sacramento Mountains. What a gorgeous drive! After several months on the high plains, we needed another mountain fix.

We took Hwy. 70 from Clovis past Roswell, to the beautiful Hondo Valley. Here we passed through the tiny towns of Picacho, Tinnie, Arabela, Hondo, and San Patricio. If I were 30 years younger, I would love to live in this uniquely scenic area.

We continued on to the Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation, passing through Ruidoso. We turned off on Hwy. 244, a quiet two lane road that travels through Elk Canyon, where we stopped to take pictures and could hear elk bugling on the hillside above us.
We traveled in and out of the Lincoln National Forest, an area rich in history. According to the Billy the Kid Scenic Byway web site: "The Lincoln County area...has been home to Billy the Kid, the Lincoln County War, the Mescalero Apache tribe, Kit Carson, "Black Jack" Pershing, the Buffalo Soldiers, the world's richest Quarter Horse race and Smokey Bear."

For the first half of its history, those going to the village of Cloudcroft went by excursion train from Alamogordo, traveling 16 miles up from the desert floor. The first highway to Cloudcroft was built in the mid-1940s, and the train service was discontinued in 1948. We found a delightful small mountain town with abundant fresh air (and abundant tourists, too). After a delicious lunch of green chile meat burritos that we ate on the front porch of a little cafe, we started back to our home on the plains.

Here are some points of interest on our journey.

• Apache Point Observatory: http://www.apo.nmsu.edu/Site/apo.brochure/apo.brochure.html
  
  
• Billy the Kid National Scenic Byway: http://www.billybyway.com/
  
  
• Cloudcroft, New Mexico: http://cloudcroft.com/
  
  
• The Hondo Valley; Picacho, Tinnie, Arabela, Hondo, and San Patricio: http://www.southernnewmexico.com/Articles/Southeast/Lincoln/TheHondoValley-PicachoTin.html
  
  
• The Lincoln National Forest: http://www.fs.fed.us/r3/lincoln/
  
  
• Mescalero Apache Reservation, an article from New Mexico Magazine: http://www.nmmagazine.com/NMGUIDE/mescalero.html
  
  

For additional information:

• "Black Jack" Pershing: http://www.nps.gov/pwso/honor/pershing.htm
  
  
• Buffalo Soldiers: http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/people/a_c/carson.htm
  
  
• Kit Carson: http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/people/a_c/carson.htm
  
  
• The Lincoln County War: http://www.southernnewmexico.com/Articles/Southeast/Lincoln/TheLincolnCountyWar.html
  
• If you like gambling and horse racing, see the Ruidoso Web Site at http://www.ruidoso.net/

• The story of Smokey Bear: http://www.smokeybear.com/vault/story_main.asp
  
  
• To hear various elk bugles, go to http://www.elkheaven.com/elk_sounds.htm