Socorro - Valley of Fire - Salinas Mission- Mountainair

May 18, 2008
We left Socorro, NM first taking I25 south a few miles then turning east on route 380. It was a beautiful sunny day. The smell of the desert, creosote bush, filled the air. There are no clouds in the white wash of the sky. Once again we crossed the Rio Grande River, here it is fast flowing and wider than along the Mexican border with Texas where it is shallow and you could just step across it in many places.

We past the Trinity Site, the first atomic bomb test site. They give tours twice a year of the barn where it was put together and the base where it was tested. Yes, the soil is still radioactive, but they say you collect no more than if you were having an e-ray.

The road is straight across the vast valley of grassland where cattle graze. Then came the sandy soil and dunes covered with grass, sage brush and a few yuccas. Finally we climbed up through the pinyon pines to 6700feet and then drove back down to the valley on the other side. Several species of hawks have been perched on telephone poles along the way. As we came down we could see snow capped mountains in the distance. We reached the valley floor at 5300 feet and then began to work our way back up the next hill. Before the town of Carrizzo, NM we drove through a lave bed! An ancient one with vegetation starting to grow back over it. We pulled in to the Valley of Fire Recreation Area, part of the Malpais flow of 5000 years ago when Black Peak erupted propelling lava over 125 square miles. It is the youngest low formation in the continental US. Justin, the lava flows there in Hawaii are much younger! You might think about Mount Saint Helen’s eruption in the 1990s, but it did not cause a flow of lava; it is building a lava dome in its crater. There is camping here with full hook-ups and all the amenities for campers. We decided to hike the Malpais Nature Trail, newly completed as wheel chair accessible. We walked upon the ropy looking lava known as pahoehe and the jagged lava known as aa. While walking we saw a small lizard, a large lizard, rock squirrels, and tried to find the burrows of tarantulas, but didn’t find any. We did learn from one of the exhibits that tarantula females did a burrow and stay in it all their lives, about 20 years! It is the male that does a walk about looking for females. Animals here have adapted to the black color of their environment and have a darker color than those of other areas. The Sotol, which is often referred to as a yucca is actually a member of the lily family, were sending up their tall shoots. They make great walking sticks. We saw a few flowering cactus.

A pronghorn walked around and we caught him up by the Roadtrek! After breakfast we continued thru Carrizzo, crossroads of NM, turning onto route 54 and heading north. The hills in the distance appear flat like in a painting. Trains out west are long with over one hundred cars in many cases; we just saw one pass! About 10 miles out of town we left the two-lane road with a small burm to take route 55, an even smaller two-lane road with no sides. The road was straight as a stick with waves in it as it went up and down hills. There was nothing out here, by nothing we mean no homes, stores, or amenities of any kind including gas stations or camping facilities. A vast stretch of the open west for thirty or forty miles. Sometimes we see the remains of an old farmstead, a rusted bucket, or broken windmill. It is all fenced in on both sides of road; we see pronghorn from time to time or a small herd of cattle. Some fields are filled with chollo cactus and soap tree yuccas growing in them and others have only grass, but all in all there is nothing for miles. And just like that we are in the trees, pinyon pines, short stubby little trees and we came to Salinas Mission Gran Quivira. After a brief stop at the Visitor Center we walked the wooden switchback path leading up to the remains of the two 17th-century missions and over 18 housing units. At its height over 2000 Pueblo peoples lived here in stone structures. Today they are a maze of small stone rooms. The Christian church walls stand tall against the horizon. From up here you can see across the valley to the distant hills where the Mollgollon peoples had lived sheltered in pit houses called jacals centuries before.
Drove into Mountainair, NM.