Valentine’s Day in Rinconada Canyon

I’m sitting in the Austin airport drafting my final entry for this trip while we wait for our flight home. The trip has been great, but it’ll be good to get back home to a routine and to see Elvis and our friends.

On Thursday afternoon, the boys and I retraced our steps down the Turquoise Trail. It’s funny how different the landscape looks when you approach it from different directions. “Desolate” is the word that keeps coming to mind when I think about the New Mexico landscape, but that’s not a fair term. It carries too many negative connotations. It implies that the land had been beautiful once but is now spoiled, an inscription of pillage and destruction.

On the contrary, the scenery along the Trail is barely and, for the most part, lightly touched. A landscape like rural New Mexico’s presents a different face than what those of us who grew up in the Midwest would call “beautiful,” but beauty is there, nonetheless. It’s quieter. It requires attention and contemplation. The small patch of green nestled at the base of a dead stalk of grass preparing for a new season of growth. The tiny blue-green leaves along the branches of dense stands of dark gray, wind-twisted shrubbery. The lone beetle crossing the path in search of shelter or water. The snake and rabbit and prairie-dog holes. The scratchings of ancient peoples telling stories forgotten or well-hidden.

Mark and I bought a small Mata Ortiz pottery at a turquoise and gift shop on the north end of Madrid. According to the wizened woman running the shop, Mata Ortiz pottery is becoming more and more expensive and in demand, but we bought it as an acknowledgement of and connection to the indigenous peoples of the southwest. And it’s just really pretty.

We also bought a sand painting from an estate collection that I have to research further.

Surprisingly, just as many shops in Madrid were closed on Thursday as on Monday, so we didn’t get into many places. We did stop in Kevin Schaffer Photography and really considered buying a print on metal for our kitchen, but we decided we need to settle on a color for the wall where it will hang before committing to anything. We’ve got his card.

These are just a few random shots in Madrid.

Jeff and I bought some chocolate at an artisan chocolatier—it was nothing to write home about—and we got back on the road. Lunch at Greenside Café, over to Kevin and Jeff’s friend, Steve’s, home where they would finish their trip, and then down to our VRBO. We tried to have dinner with the three of them that evening at a local food hall, Sawmill Market, but the place was packed, and we couldn’t find a place for all five of us to sit together. When two busloads of college students started tromping in, we gave it up as a lost cause. We ended up at a brewpub around the corner, and that was just fine.

Mark and I had breakfast at the market the following morning and drove along historic Route 66 before heading off to take a tram ride to the top of Sandia Peak. Unfortunately, when we got there, we learned that the tram had been shut down for the day due to high winds. Since that was our main planned activity for the day, we were at a bit of a loss what to do, so we had donuts and muffins at Dunkin’ while we figured it out. I’d been craving a double-chocolate donut, so it was a perfect lunch. 🤣 In the end, we decided to go back Rinconada Canyon, the trail in Petroglyph National Monument that had been closed earlier in the week, and just hike for a couple hours. The trail was open today. Yay!

We saw a lot more petroglyphs on the Piedras Marcadas Canyon trail, but we saw more vegetation on this trail, and that was a nice contrast. It was, however, a windy day, and a couple sprinkles of rain blew in—not enough to be a problem, just enough to know it was there. When we finished the trail and returned to the parking lot, ours was the only car left. I don’t know if the rain scared the handful of other folks away or if they were just done. The sky certainly looked threatening to the east, but the wind was out of the west, and we weren’t worried.

After our second two-hour hike of the week, I needed a nap, so we returned to our VRBO and veged for a couple hours. It really was a pretty lazy Valentine’s Day. We drove around the city a little more and then went back to the Range restaurant for an early dinner. Two Miss Marple movies on TV until bedtime, then up this morning for the journey home.

Thanks for following along. We’re about to board, so I’ll call it a completed vacation. Until next time….