A Short Flight

I've always been a fan of risk-takers, people who put their money on the line in the hopes of making a product or offering a service that will pay back their investment with great profits.

So I've tried, as often as possible, to support those businesses when I can.

A new air shuttle service exists between Los Alamos, NM, and Albuquerque's Sunport. The airline has small planes that seat about 9 or 10 passengers, and each plane has two experienced pilots.

Patty and I, on the trip back from Mexico, ended up stranded in Dallas thanks to summer thunderstorms. We had to spend the night and arrived the next afternoon in Albuquerque. We decided to take the little shuttle rather than spend three or four more hours waiting around for buses, trains, or friends to come pick us up.

The cost was just under $50 each for the one-way trip, and boy what a trip it was!

First, there was  no security, we just went to the desk and checked in. The luggage was weighed, and we were asked to give our weight too. (How embarrassing!). Then the pilots figured out where each of us should sit inside the plane to keep the weight balanced. I noticed the heaviest people were put in the back. I sat in a single seat and the woman seated across from me weighed about as much as I did.

The plane was a single engine and small. Seat belts were tight across the lap and had hard tight shoulder straps. After the bumpy liftoff into cloudy skies that threatened rain, I was thrilled they were tight.

We bounced and rose up through turbulence until, at around 11,000 feet, the plane leveled off and quit jerking up and down. From up there, we could see the colorful New Mexico landscape as I'd never seen it before.

For 30 years I've driven over what I was seeing below, and at no time did I ever guess that the hills along the freeway shielded the view of deep red exposed sandstone. There were ridges, hills, open swaths of denuded land flanked by piñon trees that looked like round green balls, mining operations, and caliche cliffs. It was gorgeous!

I wished I had my Cannon 40D with the lens that adjusts for movement, because the pics I snapped were blurry no matter how hard I tried to hold everything still. The plane simple vibrated too much.

Initially I was terrified but after a safe landing with such calm and professional pilots, I will travel to Albuquerque's airport this way from now on. A two hour drive reduced to twenty minutes just can't be beat for that price.

The Traveler at Home: Los Alamos, NM

Strange formations

New Mexico, where I was born and now live is a major tourist destination. Nearby Santa Fe is home to the oldest house and church in the United States, full of Southwestern charm, beautiful scenery, and a vital mix of Anglo, Hispanic and Native American culture.

I live in Los Alamos, the place where, during WWII, the US Government created a secret base to develop the atomic bomb. Way south of here, near Alamogordo, they blew up the first atomic weapon. The Trinity site is open for visitors twice a year. Just don't pocket any of the radioactive glass (called Trinitite) if you ever want to have normal children.

During the war and the following Cold War, the scientists at Los Alamos tested a lot of other things; rockets, explosives, bombs (non-nuclear) and other ordinances. The canyons are filled with blast holes and hiking trails with big signs at the road warning you not to pick up any ordinances and to report any finds to the labs. In all the years I've hiked around the area, I've never seen anything out of the ordinary. But I've sure heard stories of locals who found unexploded mines or grenades and kept them as souvenirs or used them for door stops.

Twice lately, I've hiked Lower Water Canyon, a watershed that is dry most of the year, but during the heavy summer rains can fill up and flood the whole canyon several feet deep. The trail starts at a turn off on State Road 4, where three tall poles hold up a heavy power line, with the ubiquitous signs saying the area belongs to the government with warnings about explosives.

Ancient Puebloans lived in this canyon, in cavates
like the triangular one in this photo. Look to the right
to see the curved walls that were once inside homes.

The trail has many hikers, dogs, and horses on the weekends, but weekdays, there are rarely any people in the canyon. Last Friday, I went with a group from the White Rock Senior Center. At 59, I was the youngest person to go the full four and a half miles to the saddle overlooking the Rio Grande River.

The entire canyon is bordered on both sides by welded tuff cliffs in various shades of pink over a layer of hard black basalt. A stream bed runs down the center and the trail crosses over it several times before finally heading uphill. The stream itself eventually reaches a hundred foot cliff dropping down to the river, a cliff that must sport an amazing waterfall during the rainy season.

Grooved trail in the welded tuff

The trail circles back towards the road in a big loop. Part of it climbs up the tuff cliff as a groove in the rock, worn down over many centuries of native American moccasins and in later centuries horse hooves, shoes and hiking boots. In places the groove is half a meter deep and no wider than the spacing of a horse's legs. Along the way, the trees change from piñon/juniper forest to tall ponderosas in the bottom of the canyon where it's cooler and wetter, then back to piñon/juniper as it climbs up the cliff. Evidence of flooding in the canyon bottom is everywhere: large clumps of debris piled up against trees, boulders left all alone on the flat meadows, and trees still alive, pushed over into other trees by the force of the water.

Several books by local naturalist and environmental activists Dorothy Hoard and Craig Martin document all the trails in and around Los Alamos with maps and directions to trail heads. The group I hiked with was full of retired scientists who have been exploring the area for decades. The senior center in Los Alamos also has a hiking group, and one of my octogenarian friends belongs to yet another outdoors group called the Wednesday Irregulars. In this town, getting old is an option.

An eagle's nest is seen by evidence of white droppings
 and sticks on the shelf in this cliff. 

Dead trees make a striking contrast
against the beautiful NM sky.

At the top of the trail looking
down into the Rio Grande Canyon.