El Morro, part 1

As promised (threatened?), the photos from El Morro National Monument:

El Morro is a cuesta, a long formation gently sloping upward and dropping off abruptly at one end.

It lies on an ancient trade route between Albuquerque and Zuni, a journey of 150 miles that could take nine or ten days. It had one big attraction for travelers: a sizable pool of fresh water filled by rain runoff and snowmelt.

Sandwiched between the upward pressure from underground forces and the weight of newer rock above, since eroded, the sandstone has developed cracks that gradually weathered into long vertical joints like these. The rock is called Zuni Sandstone, about 170 million years old, and held together by clay between the sand grains  It was never buried so deeply that the sand grains were squeezed tightly, fusing them.

This magnificent Ponderosa Pine was a sentinel at the beginning of the trail to Inscription Rock.

The soft Zuni Sandstone proved to be the perfect medium for carving names and messages. Because the clay is the only thing holding the stone together, scratching easily dislodges the grains from the rock.

 There are more than 2000 inscriptions and petroglyphs here.

This elegant inscription was carved by E. Penn. Long of Baltimore,  Maryland, a member of a US Army expedition led by Lt. Edward F. Beale to find a wagon route from Fort Smith, Arkansas to the Colorado River. The group first passed this way in 1857 but they made their inscriptions in 1859.

Engle, below, was Beale's second-in-command. While the mission was exploring a new route, they were also testing the usefulness of camels, of all things, in crossing the deserts of the Southwest. I learned about the Camel Corps when I was in the area last year. The camels proved to be extremely well suited. They could carry 700-1000 pounds, go days without water, were even-tempered, and would eat anything, even cacti. They were much preferred over the mules that also made the trip, and Beale wrote highly of them. They may have been used instead of mules in further explorations, but the Civil War intruded into Western exploration and the project was abandoned. It's an interesting story.

P. (Peachy) Breckenridge was in charge of the 25 camels in Beale's 1857 expedition. He returned home to Virginia to fight in the Civil War and was killed in a skirmish in 1863.

Many Spaniards wrote pasó por aquí or passed through here. The inscription is translated as On the 25th of the month of June, of this year of 1709, Ramón García Jurado passed through here on the way to Zuni. From the time he moved to New Mexico as a colonist in 1693 until his death at the age of 80 in 1760, he was witness and participant in the Spanish settlement of New Mexico.

This one reads Pedro Romero passed though here on the 2nd of August, year of 1751. The darkening you see here is a misguided attempt at preservation work by early park managers. They darkened the inscriptions with graphite (#2 pencils) so they would be more legible and last longer. The practice continued into the 1930s.

Here are petroglyphs of bighorn sheep. The jagged line to the left makes me think of a river.

Not many women left their mark but here is one exception. Miss America Frances Baley and her sister Amelia were part of a wagon party headed from Missouri to California in 1858. The group followed the route newly surveyed by the US Army, at the time known as Beale's Wagon Road. Just east of the Colorado River, 800 Mojave Indians attacked the 60 Anglo travelers. The Mojave killed nine and injured 17 while suffering 87 casualties themselves. The caravan retreated to New Mexico to wait out the winter in Albuquerque or Santa Fe. The Baley sisters eventually made it to Fresno County, California.

R.H. Horton became adjutant-general of California after the Civil War. In the early years of the war, the California Column, as it was known, was sent to New Mexico to reinforce Federal troops expecting Confederate hostilities. He may have made his inscription as he returned to California.

These inscriptions were made by a crew sent to work on the Santa Fe rail line. Looks like a bunch of engineers, doesn't it?

There was no descriptive label for this carving and I can't make out what's carved inside what looks like a basket handle. Someone went to a lot of work. Were they interrupted, or did they just run out of steam partway through?

Lt. J.H. Simpson, an engineer for the army, and R.H. Kern, a Philadelphia artist employed by the Army as a topographer, were the first English-speaking people to make a record of Inscription Rock. They spent two days copying the inscriptions and petroglyphs and their report shows that not a single English inscription could be found on the rock. Despite their careful duplications of others' inscriptions, note they misspelled their own carving with the word "insciption."

After El Morro was designated a National Monument in 1906, early managers tried to preserve and protect the records in a variety of ways. One planted yuccas that still grow along the trail to keep visitors at a distance. In the 1920s the first Superintendent decided to erease any carvings that were added after 1906 because they were graffiti and illegal. Large smooth areas are visible where they were erased. This is one, close-up example.

I was nearing the end of the inscriptions as I approached this cliff. The photo looks like a painting to me, but that's really how it looked.

A short way on was this view of one of the vertical splits in the rock common at El Morro, and where I stop for today. Next time, a hike over the mesa.

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Thought of the day:

Carve your name on hearts, not tombstones. A legacy is etched into the minds of others and the stories they share about you. (Shannon L. Adler)

Los Gigantes

Yesterday a friend and I were making our way to El Morro National Monument in New Mexico, and avoided the interstate by taking secondary roads. (You'll note that the abbreviation for El Morro is ELMO, but no fuzzy little red Muppets there.) We passed through an intersection in Witch Well, Arizona with this building on the corner, the only structure anywhere around. It always makes me wonder what are they thinking?! to see a tavern/liquor store with a drive up window.

The road took us though the Zuni reservation and a couple of really small communities but it's mostly wide open country. Beautiful, wide open country, and when I spied hoodoos off to the north we made a u-turn and traveled down a brand-new dirt road that was smoother than many highways I've been on.

A little farther down the road was this sign. I don't know what 32 Los Gigantes means - are there 32 hoodoos (giants)? Is it an address on the road? I don't know and a quick Google didn't turn anything up other than to say they're in Cibola County, New Mexico, which I already knew. They're so close to the Zuni reservation I have to believe they have a religious or cultural significance, but the new road gives me a bad feeling the area is being developed. Or maybe they're just geologic formations and nothing more.

I'm including a near-duplicate of the first photo simply because I like the dip in the mountains in the background.

Hoodoos are also called tent rocks, fairy chimneys, and earth pyramids. They're tall, thin spires of rock that protrude from the bottom of an arid drainage basin or badland. They range from 5 to 150 feet tall and typically consist of relatively soft rock topped by  harder, less easily-eroded stone that protects each column from the elements. Thank you, Wikipedia.

I can see where the name Los Gigantes came from, especially when seeing the figure below. I think these formations would be spectacular in glowing, early-morning light.

The photos from El Morro are all processed and are coming up next. Wow. What a place.

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Quote of the day:
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. (Sigmund Freud)

1/3 of the trifecta

In Lafayette, Louisiana which, incidentally, has worse drivers than Maryland and that's saying a lot, I hit the trifecta - a cathedral, cemetery, and museum all belonging to the parish of St. John the Evangelist. The cemetery and museum photos still await processing but I finished the Cathedral last night.

The Cathedral is the third church built on the site donated by Jean Mouton in 1821, when Lafayette was the town of Vermilionville. In fact, there is a sign in French and English outside the Cathedral that calls it St~ Jean du Vermilion. The cathedral was built in the style of Dutch Romanesque in 1916, and is on the National Registry of Historic Properties. (And another one bites the dust!)

The nave consists of a series of arches supported by columns, a blind story, and a clerestory.  Oil paintings of Christ the King and Apostles decorate the groin-vaulted ceiling. Flambeau stained glass, made in Munich, Germany, portrays the life of Saint John the Evangelist, the patron of the Cathedral. His red cloak usually identifies him.  As I worked on the stained glass photos I noticed a big difference in the processing effects from the other hundreds and hundreds of stained glass photos I've done. Increasing or decreasing highlights and shadows tended to act the same as if I was increasing or decreasing exposure; the entirety of the photo was affected, not just the highlights or shadows. It was difficult to get definition in faces, for example, or in the dove's wings, below. These windows don't feel like my best work, that's for sure. I tried looking up flambeau stained glass and found nothing other than a few references to it as a type of glass, but nothing as to the manufacture. Flambeau means torch and that might be a hint, but I found nothing. It looks like this window was donated by the Happy Death Society. You'd maybe have to be Catholic to understand. I worked a long time on this one, trying to correct the perspective - to get it to stand up straight and be even side to side, and this was the best I could do. It was taken from far below and off to one side and the original was really skewed. Believe it or not, this is an improvement. I include it so you can take a look at St. John, to Jesus' left. Have you seen The DaVinci Code? Sorry I can't make it bigger.  Another window with better luck on the face. There are many windows in the cathedral, but just one more. Dripping blood. Fourteen mosaic Stations of the Cross line the walls of the two side aisles. This is the only photo I took. The Italian marble main altar displays mosaic representations of wheat and grapes, symbolizing the bread and wine of the Sacrament of the Eucharist. The center mosaic, a mother pelican feeding her young, is also a Eucharistic symbol. Additionally, four stone medallions, as revealed in Ezekiel 10:14, depict the four Evangelists: Matthew by a human head; Mark by the head of a lion; Luke by the head of an ox and John by the head of an eagle. The evangelists' symbols are also represented on the podium in the sanctuary. The eagle for John: Located to the left of the sanctuary, the Blessed Sacrament altar is one of the most sacred places in the Cathedral. The tabernacle has the Ciborium (a receptacle for holding the consecrated Eucharist) inside and has two gilt-wood angels as its guards. Above this altar, a wooden crucifix hangs between the alpha and the omega. Priests, during the Sacrament of Baptism, use the marble baptismal font. Above the altar, the Holy Spirit is symbolized by a gilt metal sculpture of a dove and sun rays. On the altar are the repositories for holy oils used in the Cathedral during Baptism, Confirmation, Ordinations, and Anointing of the Sick. Behind the altar, a marble chair is fashioned with columns, Corinthian capitals, and a miter motif. A multi-colored mosaic of the first bishop of the Diocese's coat of arms decorates the upper portion of the chair. The Latin name of this chair is cathedra, which is the origin of the English word Cathedral. Only the local Ordinary (Bishop) uses the chair when he celebrates or presides at Mass or a special liturgical event. The Casavant Frères, Limitée organ was installed in the l985 renovation.  The organist came in to play while I was there.  I liked the shooting star effect on the ceiling. The side aisles don't have the glory of the main, but they usually have their own subdued beauty. One final photo out of many more, the gate guarding the stairs to the choir loft.

Many thanks to the parish for the copy & paste, unauthorized use of the text on their website, the plagiarism of which gave me no end of problems formatting this post, and I still can't get it right.

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		Thought of the day:
Ain't no such thing as a free lunch. (Anon.)

Back in the saddle again -

 - and not just working. It took a few days, and I know I'll hear cries of you wuss! from everyone north of me, but it was cold and it was windy so I delayed getting out in the park until the weather decided to behave itself again. It felt great to finally stretch my legs on the road to the Painted Desert Inn and I only huffed and puffed a little.

Without further ado, and not finishing all the photos waiting in the queue to be processed from when I left here in September, here are the latest from this wonderful place (but wonderful only when my water's not frozen in the morning because somehow I blew the GFCI and the heat tape wasn't on).

First off, some things don't change. People toss petrified wood out their windows when they see a sign that says there's a vehicle inspection ahead, and there are often small chunks of wood on the side of the road. This is the biggest I've seen and to put it in perspective, I have big feet and you can see the size of this chunk compared to the toe of my shoe. It must have weighed four or five pounds. I can see why someone wanted it; it's gorgeous.

Four deer! That was a treat.

There was the Painted Desert Inn, just where I left it, and Pilot Rock also still in the same place.

The late afternoon light was just starting to make soft shadowplay, softening the colors and smoothing the badlands.

Pilot Rock looks much closer than seven miles out. Petrified Forest has some of the cleanest air of all the National Parks and I never realized how clarity affects perception of distance until I left Big Bend National Park. Between it and Marathon, TX is a Border Patrol station. It was after dark when I could see the flashing lights for the station very clearly, right ahead, so I tapped off the cruise control and started slowing down. And drove and drove. There were the lights like they were on the next corner but I still drove. It was probably another twenty minutes' driving before I got to the station, but the clear, clean air made it look like it was close enough to touch. Pilot Rock looks about a mile out here, but you'd better pack a big lunch and carry a gallon of water.

This is from another day, when I walked down old Route 66, which skirts the eastern side of the Painted Desert, near I-40. I love this country.

There's something about the West. The light is so different here. I did nothing to enhance the color on this photo of the desert - the colors, the glow, are just as the camera saw them, with a little contrast and sharpening thrown in.

How could this be called Badlands? 
Before I go all dewey-eyed, though, I need to remember hauling a 35-pound pack through, over, and around this godforsaken landscape last summer. After swearing I'd never do it again, it's in the plans. Stay tuned.

Day's end can take my breath away, just as I remember. I'm so glad I'm back.

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Thought of the day:
I plan on growing old much later in life, or maybe not at all. (Patty Carey, 1901)

Tropical not-quite-paradise

Now that I've volunteered in all of one national park and one national historic site, I'm making it a point to see as many as I can - that includes the parks, monuments, historic sites, landmarks, and whatever else is out there. Valley of Fires, where I stayed a couple of nights in New Mexico, is a Bureau of Land Management property, and that counts too. Of course now, after I saw I don't know how many parks on my way to Arizona last year, now I'm deciding to get the stamps that all of them have. Many people buy the passport book, where there are pages for each of the regions around the country, and you can also buy sticker-like stamps for each of the locations, but I haven't jumped on that bandwagon. I just take my journal in and hunt out the rubber stamp station and mark my book. I know I'm the only one who cares about this; when I kick the bucket my kids will toss it in the trash, but it's a way of collecting something from each of the places I've been (since collecting anything else is a felony), and maybe a way of jogging my memory about that place. When I was at Andersonville, I talked to a visitor who had 70 parks stamped into his book.

I was surprised to learn that many parks/sites/monuments have more than one stamp. Andersonville had two: one for the prison site, one for the national cemetery. Big Bend, in Texas, had five: one for each of the visitor centers. That was the thing that kept me driving for 12 hours that day. I couldn't miss one stamp so I had to drive down all these miles-long spurs just to get a stamp. Crazy. What we do when we're obsessed.

Getting a stamp and seeing a Civil War site that I hadn't even known about before Andersonville was what took me to Fort Jefferson at Dry Tortugas National Park. Well, that and the prospect of good snorkeling, but really, it was the intellectual pursuit that counted more. Really.

The only way to get to Dry Tortugas is via a park-sanctioned ferry, the Yankee Freedom, or by float plane. When I compared the fares and saw the float plane was about 1000 times more expensive than the ferry, you can guess which way I traveled. It takes about 2 1/2 hours, breakfast and lunch is included in the fare, and it's a pretty pleasant way to go.

Fort Jefferson was begun in the 1800s to protect the lucrative shipping channel between the Gulf of Mexico, the western Caribbean, and the Atlantic Ocean. It is the largest all-masonry fort in the United States and was never completed because of supply problems (some materials were brought from as far away as New England) and because its weight was causing it to sink into the earth.

The tortugas part of the name comes from Ponce De León, who noted the large number of tortoises on the island. The dry part comes from the fact there is no fresh water in any of the keys. Even today, all water is brought in by the daily ferry. There are no services there either, no restaurants and no restrooms other than that on the ferry. The park allows overnight camping with a permit and campers have to haul everything in and out, but there are carts on the ferry that help to move their gear the short distance to the campground. I'd really like to camp there sometime. Just imagine the stars.

Fort Jefferson was used as a Union prison during the Civil War. I never know how to word it. The Union housed Confederate prisoners there. Probably its most famous inmate was Dr. Samuel Mudd.

This is the ferry. It makes one round trip a day.

 
Part of the fortification includes a moat. Look at the color of the water!

It's possible to climb to the top of the fort. I didn't. I was anxious to get in the water pursue the intellectual opportunities of studying history.

I imagine these are the stairs to the top of the fort. Atmospheric, aren't they?

Richer people than I arrived by plane. Once again, look at the color of the water.

If you were on cannon duty, guarding US maritime interests, this would have been the view out of your office window.

Approximately 4 million people have taken this shot, doorway after doorway and, unlike me, about 99% of them actually got it centered.

This pelican barely noticed me. He knew the ferry was leaving soon, taking all the pesky tourists with it.

Aren't these birds, whatever they are, fun? Yak, yak, yak.

This is a walkway on the interior of the site. The Park Service is pouring money like mad into preservation. There was a lot of work going on, and everything, including labor, has to be imported.

This is one of the snorkel sites. They're old pilings and fish were hanging around them like mad. For some crazy reason, you couldn't enter the water via a nice sandy beach that's just to the left of here, but had to walk way over to the right, get in the water by going across a broken shell (sharp) beach, and swim around a retaining wall, buffeted by waves, to get to the same place. It's the government.

Here's another park that seems to be an idyllic place to be stationed, but like Big Bend, no thanks. It's literally in the middle of nowhere. There's no driving even half an hour to get to the grocery store, rationed water, electricity by generator, no internet.... It's great for a day trip and for a couple nights' camping, but in general I like my regular creature comforts.

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Thought of the day:
I'm not really a tropical paradise kind of person. (Matthew Fox)