I found out yesterday, Sun., Nov. 11, why there’s so much haze over the normally crystal clear Santa Fe skies. Forest Fire ! ! !
This is taken about 13 miles from home, out on my favored Caja del Rio plateau looking West toward Valles Caldera. Tent Rocks is out of the picture to the left……………….

I was trying to get to the Frijoles (Frrree-HOE-lays) (Bean) Canyon overlook on the White Rock Canyon of the Rio Grande River. To get there, Der Bug took me over some of the roughest roads I’ve ever seen…………..

Der Bug is in dire need of a tune up - in particular those big dual Weber carbs are seriously out of whack and it will run out of snoose and die on a moderately steep slope, where previously it’d almost climb a wall. Today, I almost climbed the wall. We got down to the 1st big rock in front of the car and I had 2nd thoughts - this is VEry steep - and tried to back up. This is miles from anyone and a loooong, rough, dusty hike back out. The engine died. Over and over. Couldn’t back up. Racing the engine and slipping the clutch didn’t help. Oh Shit ! ! ! With a lot of cussing and re-starting of the engine, I finally managed to turn around on the spot, and it did - barely - climb out forwards……………

This is on the edge of the mesa and in the distance you can see the continuation of the road and the edge of White Rock Canyon………

Remember Frijoles Canyon and Falls last January ?? There’s the outlet of Frijoles Canyon just left of center, White Rock and Los Alamos higher and just right of center, and higher yet and nearly to the right edge is the distinctive triangle of Chicoma Peak. See ?? All this gally-hootin’ around is all within just a few miles of home in Santa Fe. Spent the whole summer exploring here and never did get as far as Taos, just 50 miles away.  ‘Course, Taos doesn’t really turn my crank anyway, so didn’t really try all that hard………………

Chicoma Peak and Los Alamos…………..

And, of course, hadta see how the new lens would do on a close-up or 2………….

Jury’s still out on that’n. Gonna hafta do some head to head testing between the 2 old and 1 new lenses. The new Tamron appears to be a good lens, but the old Nikon lenses were very, very good, tho’ inconvenient. Gonna take some serious work to decide.

Posted: November 12th, 2007 under 07-11-11 Frijoles Overlook, 08 New Mexico.
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