Rain ain't no thing, it just makes everything green

On July 19^th we had a fun camping trip planned. We had been told of a beautiful canyon that, although popular and bit of a drive, would be so worth it. It is actually the same canyon we drove up back in December(see this link http://melssweetlife.blogspot.com/2012/11/a-road-less-traveled-byor-not-traveled.html). We tried to get off early Friday afternoon but were thwarted by quite the random HUGE hailstorm.

We were finally able to leave town and thought/hoped we had left the worst of it. As we drove the couple of hours to our destination we felt like were Frodo and Sam facing the huge storm over Mordor. I wish we had a picture of it. It was as black as can be. I gave Stan lots of chances to say maybe we could just find a hotel at a close by town but he didn’t take any of them. :( He kept up hope that if we kept driving it might not be raining as hard up farther. So up the canyon we drove. We passed a ton of RV’s and campers and I’ll be the first to admit I was a bit jealous. We were able to find a really nice camp spot away from all the campers and the rain had slowed down enough that we could get our tent set up without it getting soaked. With the back door of the Explorer as our perfect sized rain shield, we were able to cook up the most delicious hamburgers and I didn’t feel too bad about the weather.

The next morning was brilliantly green because of the previous day’s rainfall. We enjoyed a lazy morning and a beautiful hike. The colors of the wildflowers were so bright.

This trip was the first of many green experiences in New Mexico. Who knew it could be green here? :)

Man vs Mountain: Conquering Mt. Withington

One of the first drives we went on when I moved to Albuquerque was to Mount Withington about three hours southwest. Stan made me promise that we would only drive on the planned course so that we could be back by a certain time. Sadly, when we got to the top of the mountain there was a road he wanted to drive on to check out and I had to put my foot down and stick to my promise. It was a pretty drive and we got to see the VLA's!! (We have since watched the movie Contact and now I appreciate the VLA's even more).

Well as Stan tends to do, he studied the maps and found a route to take us back to finish the road without having to drive on roads we had already been on. We set out again to conquer Mt. Withington. We drove south of the mountain range, around the backside, through a small town called Monticello, through Monticello canyon (which basically was a small canyon with a river running through it that doubled as a road), and came out on the west side of the mountain range ready to venture through it back to the east side. The roads were not clearly marked and the next thing we knew we had missed it by a long shot and ran out of daylight to complete our mission :( Us-0 Withington-2

This trip around we saw all kinds of fun animals, a javelina, roadrunner, and some...antelope? I can never remember what is what :) We were going to have a BBQ on top of the mountain but ended up having it in the middle of a dirt road in the middle of the desert because we never reached the top of the mountain :(

if you look really closely right in the middle but a little to the left, you can see our wild boar friend

So on February 16th we set out a third time. We decided to take the road we missed on try 2 to the road we were forbidden to take on time 1. We found it with ease this time. It was a beautiful drive and nice pine forests. We stopped and had a delicious BBQ of steak and potatoes then headed up and up. The higher we got there began to be small snow patches. We came to the side of the mountain that rarely saw the sun and there was a long stretch of snow. Long story short: we should have stopped. Us-0 Withington-3.

Lucky for us there are nice BLM rangers that will pick us up off the mountain, and nice small town marshalls who give our car keys to the nice small town tow truck man to get our car off the mountainside, AND we have good friends that are willing to pick us up an hour south of home at last minutes notice on a Saturday evening.

Well we weren't about to be bested by a mountain, so in July we headed back to finally conquer the mountain, and without a hitch we did!! We stopped at two different fire lookouts and visited with the men that were staying there. They sure knew a lot about the land and in our conversation with one of them we found out he had heard about us because of getting stuck adventure. We weren't sure if we should be embarrassed or feel awesome about that...We found the desert to be much more green than it had been in the past and loved every minute of it. We finished the drive with a picnic at a beautiful little park and a movie in the car on our awesome air mattress :)