Melanie's friend Hope visited from Chicago. Mel and Hope watched several hours of Pride and Prejudice while eating chocolate (That's only partially true. We also took care of Scott. Cooked lots of food, went on errands to get ready for our Saturday adventure, exercised, and peeled and chopped a load of peaches to make peach jam.) Friday night we all went to the El Pinto restaurant.
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| The picture is so blurry, but it was the only one of us together. |
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| Stan got the red chile ribs (of course). |
On Saturday we went for a drive up north. We hiked to a cliff dwelling that Stan had heard about.
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| We saw some wild turkeys before starting our hike. |
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| This is the cliff dwelling. It had a lower and an upper part. How did they get up to the top anyway? |
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| This looked like a square kiva, with a fire pit in the middle and a bench around the edge. |
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| This was the wall of the kiva. Notice the spiral petroglyph on the right side of the wall. |
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| Some rooms along the side. |
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| Mel, Hope, and Scott enjoying the shade. It was hot and there was a steep hike up to the ruin. |
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| Another view of the main ruin. The cave on the left was pretty cool, I wish we could have climbed up and seen where it went! It was pretty deep and you could see the smoke stains on the roof |
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| Stan hiked up along the rim and here is a view of the main ruin from where he hiked to |
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| Another view. We also wished we could climb up into there. Who knows what's in there! |
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| More rooms on a different side. |
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| A closeup of one of the walls in the previous picture. |
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| They had partially plastered this hole. If you look closely, you can see their fingerprints in the clay. |
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| This looks like original plaster. |
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| Hope and the ruin |
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| Family picture! Thanks Hope for being our photographer! |
We then drove along a dirt road to our dinner destination spot.
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| This is Teakettle Rock. Huge rock in a beautiful meadow, totally random. |
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| Hope and me |
And then it started to rain so Stan and I stood in the shade of the rock for our picture:
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| From the other side |
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| The trees are changing!!! I am SOOOOOO happy!!! |
We decided to stop for a bit so that Stan could fish. We laid a blanket out on the grass and Scott LOVED rolling on the grass!
We decided to go find Stan while he was fishing and these flowers were everywhere
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| Behind me is where Stan had been fishing. He caught a brown trout and let it go before he could get a picture. |
We drove up to a peak for a delicious BBQ of hamburgers (with our home grown green chile!!)
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| After dinner we went on a little hike up to the top of a mountain, here's our shadey selfie |
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| These little flowers were everywhere and I loved them! |
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| We struggled with our selfie, this was the best one. |
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| View from the top |
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| No description necessary :) |
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| Stan was able to talk to a friend who was at home in ABQ on simplex radio from the top of this mountain, we were about 60 miles away. It was pretty fun! |
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| And another family pic :) |
It was a super fun day. Hopefully we didn't tire Hope out too much with our 13 hour adventure. It was so so so so fun to have her here. Sure is great to have friends you have known about fifteen years :)
