Stones

 Karen and I were just listening to Neil Diamond, nay, singing to it….

The title of this trip, after all, is the Eurovision Karaoke Van trip. For those who are rolling their eyes, we have been belting out the tunes to John Denver, Neil Diamond, Joan Baez and many more during our drive. Thanks to the little Bluetooth speaker that Bryce lent us….

But I digress. Stones. 

North Central New Mexico is a geology candy store. This post includes some of that with our interpretations. 

From our hike today to Upper Frijoles Falls (no water) we saw more cliff houses and things called tent rocks, which are the pointy rocks below. 

All those holes in the rocks? Tafoni (so sez my Earthcache) which can be as small as a tennis ball or large as a Subaru. All of these thanks to the erosive effects of wind and water and time. 

The effects of water also noted where the 800ft drop of the canyon wall and a geocache was at the Rio Grande. 

Today after discovering the canyon and dry falls we motored to the Valles Caldera National Preserve. This area has 20k elk so sez the guidebook, we saw none. We did see a sign. This astonishingly gigantic volcano blew its top in a series of stages over 1 million years ago, leading to a collapsed center that filled with water kinda like Crater Lake. But as calderas do, it started blowing up again and created a new mountain in the middle with a moat around it. This all eventually became a huge meadow and much of the water drained down the hill. There is NO WAY to capture in a photo how huge and amazing this place is. Be I will try. Bear in mind that the drive up the side of this massive caldera was in places a bit of a nail biter. Karen endured and there are no finger imprints in the door handle. 

Speaking of doors, in the continuing van saga the lock button on the driver side has come off and the door on the passenger side briefly refused to open. We persevere. 

And who knew there were so many rocks here? Or was that stones?