Wagon Mound Walking

Okay, so to pick up where I left off on our road trip from Tucson to Florida, we had crossed into NM and was heading up toward Santa Fe. It was getting late, so I unbuckled my seat belt and laid my head in James's lap, and gazed out the windshield at the twinkling masses of stars against the clear black backdrop of the western sky. Eighties music played on the radio, and I was transported down memory lane; earlier that evening, Joel, my best friend in high school and community college, sent me a Facebook message with pics. One was a picture of a ticket from the second concert we attended together (the first was Cyndi Lauper, lol):

We LOVED REM, and one day, Joel got it in his head that he would drive us in my somewhat new car up to Georgia to see if we could find any band members on the streets of Macon. So, me, Joel, Joey (the drummer for our band), Jan (Joel's cousin visiting from England)and an older friend, BJ, who would act as chaperone, set off for Macon one winter day way back when.

The drive didn't take too long, and as we drove into Macon, lo and behold, Joel demonstrated his immense good luck in picking a street to drive down, because it wasn't long before we saw Michael Stipe himself walking along the edge of the road with a McDonald's bag in his hand.

That experience retains a dream-like quality to me, because I was still intensely shy, and I was looking out the window at one of my idols. And finding that he was just a normal guy--shorter than I was, with kinda stringy hair, but an aura of laid-back calm that I could tell made people feel at ease around him. Joel was stoked and not shy at all. He struck up a conversation as we slowly rolled alongside Michael, and Michael eventually asked us if we'd like to come into the studio to meet "the guys."

I think Joel probably screeched the tires to a stop so fast that dogs started howling five miles away. Anyway, the studio was small, a little cramped, and sorta dark, but the band members had an easy way about them, and a quick wit that had us laughing. I watched them eat thier McDonald's (they offered us fries, but I declined--Joel ate a few, though) as Joel asked them a million questions that I can't remember now.

It was a neat trip and we all ended up with autographed black and white photos. Mine is in a box in the garage. Joel came prepared, though, and I don't remember him having this, but he sent me a pic of  it that night as we trucked along I-25.

Anyway, I'd never realized they'd written my name on there. I was so happy in memories that night, and thankful that Joel sent me the pics.

Around 11:00 pm, we arrived at Heart's Way Ranch, where we would stay in the guest cottage for the night. The winding road up the mountain had me worried that the twenty foot U-Haul with the twenty foot trailer attached wouldn't make it up to the top.

And when the paved road turned to dirt, and the ice and snow covered road curved steeply upward, we were forced to try to park off onto the side of the road as best we could and hike the last half mile up the steep slope, luggage in hand, to the guest cottage. Which we did, and it was hard. But my clumsy on ice self only slipped and fell once.

After a night of sound sleep, we woke early because we had exciting plans in Santa Fe before we got back on the road.

As we walked out of our cottage and headed across the path to the main house where the owner said we could take pictures of the scenic views over the Galisteo Basin and Turquoise Trail, two VERY large dogs appeared from the trees and ran right up to us, barking ferociously. James and I froze and talked calmly to them, but they kept lunging and snarling and barking. I thought for sure one or both of us would get bit.

I videoed the tail end of the bark attack, but I might've deleted...let me check...nope, I must've erased it when storage got full...Oh well, it was pretty terrifying, but we kept our calm, and the dogs eventually ran away.

We had a beautiful view...

Later, on the walk down to the truck, we found a couple women in an SUV that had slid off the side of the road and into a little ditch. We spent about an hour helping to get them unstuck.

Little did we know the adventure we'd experience for the next four hours was eerily similar to what we'd just helped these women escape from.

The truck's radiator was pointing up a hill, and we were on a dirt mountain road. There was a little garage with a clearing beside it, and I thought it wouldn't be too hard to back up into there and turn around. Well, it wasn't easy at all. Visibility was bad, and we got stuck in ice and snow several times before we even backed up onto the small dirt driveway that would just barely allow us to turn around.

And I didn't factor in the ice on the driveway that made the trailer in back slide into a depression next to large heavy logs when he backed onto it. So, we spent four hours digging our way our of that mess. A lady with a Jeep came down to offer help, and she watched as James and I worked together to get unstuck, sometimes with him spotting me while I drove, and sometimes with him spotting me as I drove. The bent arm of the trailer didn't help with maneuverability, so that caused tension.

When we finally had the truck turned around, the lady said, "I have just got to say that you guys handled that really well as a couple." When we said it wasn't a big deal, she stopped us, and said, "No, it really is a big deal. I'm a marriage counselor and you guys handled a difficult problem very, very well together." I think we both blushed.

I'll have to ask James if he took any pics of our snowy predicament, but I think we were both too worried about our plans being ruined for the day to stop and take pics.

Well, the four hours in the snow did ruin our biggest plan, but as we got back on the road, we made a quick stop at Wagon Mound. It was an impressive sight, and what caught my attention was the giant W and M emblazoned on the side of the hill.

Here's an old pic I found on the Internet of Wagon Mound, named for it's wagon shape along the Old Santa Fe Trail. Look, that guy is riding a buffalo!

And below the mountain were train tracks, and an old rail car sat on them, almost in the shadow of the mound. So we found a place to park and walked the tracks to the car and explored. We checked out the old rail car, and then James pointed to something in the distance.

"Isn't that the thing you were talking about?"

I turned and looked. "A semaphore! That must be Levy over there. Let's walk the tracks over there and check them out."

Which is what we did.

On the street where the train tracks crossed, we found this:

And when we reached the semaphore, which is an old train signal and almost extinct in the US (Levy boasts one of the last active semaphores in the US), we found another interesting thing.

Here are a couple other pics around the semaphore. Some grandma probably thought there was too much dirt on the dirt and provided the workers with a broom.

And we saw some cool bird prints in some wet sand:

And James found a railroad spike:

Before we left, we noticed the sun was casting the perfect Fenn shadow, so we snapped a pic of ours..

On our way through Levy, I wanted to check out an abandoned house that some people had posted about on the Internet. We actually found the house, and since we were running short on time, I darted inside for a quick peek, then ran back outside. The interior was dirty, musty with the odor of old newspapers, and rusted appliances lying sullenly on their sides. There were rat's nests everywhere, and the floor was broken through in many places. Thinking I might be next to break my leg in a fall through the kitchen floor, I tread softly right out the door. Lol...

The rest of our trip was uneventful as we drove through the twilight out of New Mexico through Springer and the eerie, otherworldly nothingness of the Kiowa Grasslands. 

There's a little more to tell about this trip, but I'll save it for another time. :)