In the fall of 2016 Sandra and I had the opportunity to "dog sit" my sister's dogs while she and her husband took a vacation.  Which meant we got a vacation with free boarding!  I thought I had failed to save my pictures of the trip but I realized I didn't take pictures.  I took videos!  Sandra did take some pictures so the stills you see are hers or off the web.  I have learned how to link to YouTube videos so you can choose to watch the videos by clicking on the YouTube Icon, the video will play in a seperate window and then stop with a still picture for 10 seconds, giving you a chance to exit that window.  If you don't exit, it will stop and show other videos available which should not interest you at all.  Exit that window (click on the x in the YouTube label tab, not the x on the far right (if you click on the x on the far right you'll close the whole web site)).  Do it properly and you'll be back at this page where you left off.  I'll indicate the length of each video so you can decide if it's worth your time. For years Jeanne has tried to convince us to visit her in the Christmas season to enjoy the way Santa Fe decorates and to visit Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife Refuge.  We did it the week before Christmas, 2024.  I've added that to the end of this page.  Click here to go directly to our Christmas trip.  But first I want to introduce you to the dogs, Freddie and Blanche.

Our first expedition was to Pecos National Historic Park.  The script on the entrance reads "Humans have inhabited the Pecos Valley for at least 12,000 years. The fifteenth century Towa-speaking trading pueblo, Cicuye, had over 2,000 inhabitants.  During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Franciscan churches were built and rebuilt here under the direction of the Spanish.  By the 1780's disease, raids and drought had decimated the population and in 1835 the last 17 inhabitants moved to Jemez to live with their Towa-speaking relatives." A marker read "after years of oppression, and epidemics and droughts that killed many, the people of Pecos rebelled against the Spanish authority in 1680.  Here they destroyed the mission church, the symbol of Spanish power.  The revolt united pueblos across the region in a coordinated strike that drove the Spaniards out of New Mexico.  The Puebloan people regained their independence, but it was short lived. And now we're ready for the first video.  Click on the YouTube icon and enjoy my home moveie(s). 5:03 minutes   Pecos

Our next trek was to Bandelier National Monument, an excavated and explorable ancient pueblo.  We had been there many years ago and much more of it has been opened to the public.  It was windy that day so I adjusted some of the audio to decrease the sound of the wind against the camera microphone. 6:45 minutes

We really enjoyed our visit to Ghost Ranch.  It's history dates back to a man winning the deed in a poker game and his wife having the deed registered in her name, and then divorcing him.  She ran it as a Dude ranch for years, then sold it to Arthur Pack, who, as he aged, became concerned with it's future and offered it to the Boy Scouts, who who turned it down because they had just purchased Philmont in northeastern New Mexico.  He offered it to the Catholic church, the YMCA, the Church of the Brethren, none of them were able to accept the gift.  Fortunately, the Presbyterians could and did.  It is now a Presbyterian Retreat Center that offers tourist trap aminities to  registrants and vistors alike.

Ghost Ranch is probably most famous as the residence of Georgia O'Keeffe and the site of many of the landscapes she painted.  This has not been lost on many artists.  These are some who were there when we arrived.  (The property is also know for the prehistoric fossil deposits discovered there.  I visited the exhibit that showed some fossils and described the process of uncovering them.  I have no pictures of that process.) In case you didn't notice the banner at the top of this site, I had a ball riding horseback to the various O'Keeffe landscape sites.  I took my video camera.  Following are short videos of the sites.  The horse was not a steady tripod so you might get a case of motion sickness watching them.  I paused the video when it showed one of the sites.

We'll start the trail ride and view the mesa that O'Keeffe painted.  She painted it so often she said it was God's gift to her. 26 seconds

The next scene was what she called the Lavender Hills. 20 seconds

Her depiction of the red hills is much better than the real thing.  So much so I had trouble trying to decide which hills she was painting. 18 seconds

We stopped for an unnecessary rest to view the chimneys.  The guide got off and used the rider's cameras to take pictures.  He wasn't real sure about my movie camera but he got it done, so in this video you get to see the chimneys and the Dude! 42 seconds

After the chimneys we headed back to Ghost Ranch and passed what O'Keeffe called the New Mexico Hill. 11 seconds

She called this her backyard.  As we journeyed back we were able to take in her backyard.  I couldn't quite figure out what part of the formations this is because if it's the end of the formation, I think it is there should be some chimneys to the left. 20 seconds

The last thing on the tour was this dead tree she called Gerald's Tree.  The guide announced it, I'm not sure I've got the right one and if I do, it's from a view from the other side than this is depicting.  The guide said it's stood for so long because the arid climate keeps things like this from rotting. 16 seconds

I've forgotten how we found out about this place, but it is supposedly a location for filming some of the scences in  Star Wars, episode VII.  I was unable to find a scene online that looked anything like this area, but it is a bit interesting, and worth a short video. 1:31

Sandra cannot go to Santa Fe without visiting Taos (the pueblo, that is).  But on this trip we actually went to the town of Taos and discovered Kit Carson's home.

And some fairly famous frescoes at the Historic County Courthouse.  They were funded by the Public Works of Art Project in 1934.  It was part of the Works Progress Administration, a government project to get people back to work during the Great Depression.  The one pictured to the right is entitled "The Lawgiver" and depicts Moses.  ( I wonder if the artist might not have been up much on the Bible stories because there's a rainbow behind Moses and that goes with the story of Noah.) Below are the other three:

On the way back from Taos we stopped at the Rio Grande River Gorge Bridge.  Sandra took this picture and I put it at the end of the video so you'd know the video had ended. 1:57

I can't remember how we found out about this place but it was a most interesting afternoon and it's only a mile and a half past the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge so I imagine we saw a sign or someone mentioned it to us while we were at the bridge.  It's one of the longer short videos, but if you've never visited Earthship, it's worth the watch. 4:17

And that does it for this personal journal of our wonderful dog sitting chore.  Keep scrolling for a look at our 2024 Christmas trip.

	I hope you remember the movie Contact with Jody Foster and Matthew McConaughey.  Parts of it were filmed at the Very Large Array in southeastern New Mexico.  Sandra and I flew into Albuquerque on Monday the 16th, rented a car and drove to Socorro.  We spent the night there and then traveled the hour or so to the Array.
	We discovered they had four patterns for the array.  They move the dishes around using this machine.  The arrays are "A" "B" "C" and "D."  When we were there they were set in the "D" pattern, the one where the dishes are furthest apart, the least popular for photographers. They were going to be moved to the "A" configuration in February, the one where they are closest to each other, the one you see in the movie. I did get some video of it, click on the YouTube icon to view it. 1 min. 30 sec.
	After visiting the Very Large Array we drove to San Antonio, New Mexico, the small town close to Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Reserve and ate at the Owl Bar and Cafe, a place highly recommended by Jeanne.  It looked like a real dump and we would not have walked into it if Jeanne hadn't recommended it.  The food was great.  I was going to get the Hamburger steak plate and was telling the server I'd like french fries as my choice of the six sides that were available.  She said, "Oh, you get all six."  I opted out of the grilled onions and cottage cheese.  A cook from the kitchen bought me the green chili, pinto beans, and salad.  I took a small bite of the green chili and left the rest alone.  It was real spicy hot.   I told the server I wanted to sleep that night.
	After we ate we traveled the few miles to Bosque del Apache.  We stopped in the visitor center and talked to the volunteer behind the desk who told us the best way to travel the loop, where to stop to see birds and that with some luck we might see a javelina.  [Peccaries (also javelinas or skunk pigs) are pig-like ungulates of the family Tayassuidae (New World pigs)] I copied that from Wikipedia.  We did see one, keep scrolling.
	Our first stop was by this pond that had what we thought was a lot of snow geese.  We found out this was but a small sample, most were out feeding in agricultural areas fairly near by.
	The next pond had mostly sand hill cranes with some snow geese mixed in.
	This is a bit better picture of a trio of sand hill cranes.  We discovered that they slept in the water in order to protect themselves from coyote.  We saw a coyote near the birds the next morning.  I thought I had a good video of him but apparent I didn't push the record button on my film camera. Click on the YouTube icon for a short video of the birds we saw during the trip around the refuge in the afternoon. 1min. 40 sec.
	As promised, as we took the loop, about two thirds of the way around we encountered a javelina standing in the middle of the road.  I hopped out of the car and got a short, choppy video him. 30 seconds
	We spent the night in Socorro and woke up early the next morning in order to be at Bosque at Sunrise.  Jeanne had told us to find where there were lots of photographers with huge cameras.  We went first to the place they called the flight deck where normally there would be hundreds, maybe thousands of snow geese.  There wasn't a bird on the pond or a photographer to be found.  We found one place where there were three or four photographers.  They told us there weren't near as many birds at Bosque as would be normal this time of year and all the snow geese were in areas we couldn't get to.
	Be that as it may we still enjoyed seeing the cranes wake up and fly about a bit and while we were there the snow geese did fly over.  I caught this group of snow geese pictured left and you can see the white bodies with the black wing tips.  Then a string of hundreds flew over and I got a video.  On the video they look black because the sun was behind them, but you get an idea of the number of them as they flew by.  You'll see cranes in the water before the geese.
	That night we ate at the La Fonda, a famous historic hotel in downtown Santa Fe.  I had the best chicken cordon bleu ever.
	After dinner we walked a block or two to the Plaza.  Jeanne was correct, we needed to visit Santa Fe during the Christmas season.  I couldn't believe I left my good camera at the house and had to use my phone to take pictures.
	Thursday we lazed around the house until lunch, had lunch at Sandra's favorite Mexican Cafe, Tortilla Flats. Then Jeanne took us to the walk up to the Cross of the Martyrs.  She dropped us off at the foot of the hill and as you walk up to the cross there are plaques along the waist high wall that tell Santa Fe's history, the on and off conflicts between the Native Americans and the Spanish colonists and other important events in it's history.  At the top of the hill is the cross of the Martyrs, commemorating the twenty-one Franciscan Friars killed during a Pueblo uprising.
	Following our trek up to the Cross we returned to the Plaza where Sandra (in the red jacket) surveyed the products and purchased gifts for the grand children and herself.
That night we visited the Botanical Gardens.  We had a docent take our picture suited up. It's what we wore Tuesday morning at Bosque and we needed it at the Gardens as well. Luminaries were along all the paths.  It was beautiful.
	Here is just a glimpse of the wonderful decorations at the Gardens.
	There were several entertainment options in nice warm tents.  We stopped at this one where at least the lead singer was native American, I wasn't real sure of the other two members of the band.  You can see the row of native American flutes stacked on the floor at the right of the lead singer.  As they took a break Sandra asked him if he was going to play them, he said he'd play one when they got back from their break. He did, and Sandra recorded it on her phone.  It reminded me of Northern Exposure, especially the episode where Ed learns how to make the duck flutes.  (Since it's on her phone, it's recorded on YouTube as a short or reel. 26 sec.
	Friday I asked Jeanne if we could get a good hamburger for lunch and she took us to Santa Fe Bite.  Not only were the hamburgers great, the story behind the restaurant was wonderful.  The original restaurant was located in downtown and they lost their lease and moved and then had to move again.  After the third move, the owners (pictured on the right) decided they were too old to put up with the stress so they sold it to their employees, (pictured on the left).  The new owner in the red vest seated us.  The original woman owner was there and seating others.  Craig told us the original male owner still came in and ground the beef for hamburgers every day. We packed up and drove to Albuquerque to spend the night and catch our flight out the next morning.  It was another wonderful trip to Santa Fe!!!