Wednesday-Thursday

Hiked with LL group yesterday.  Did Graduation Flats explore, starting on FR36, just before cattleguard, downhill to gravel pit, then along east side of Pines Canyon and over to west side of Spruce Canyon, near Graduation Flats for 4+ miles on dirt roads and motorbike trails.  14 of us - at the start, ailing leader walked part way out with us and then turned around.  She drove her car to the end point of the hike (1 1/2 miles from the beginning) and then walked out to meet us on the way back.  She took a nap in the shade while she waited.  Because of her illness, she's painfully slow and lacking in energy. 

The LL hiking group has a certain chemistry that is very appealing - a familiarity and ease and teasing humor toward each other.

I'm going to give up on puffball mushrooms.  I collected 6 small ones yesterday but by the time I started to prepare them (had them sitting on the counter for several hours) they seemed to have turned.  Or, perhaps they were old when I picked them though they hadn't formed spores yet.  I threw them out.  Boletus edulis is a lot more reliable.

Took myself to Pajarito Mountain today - up the Logging Road on the west side, over to the Rim Run viewpoint, to back of the mountain to Yeamans Memorial Bench, down to Sunier picnic deck, behind south side of water retention pond, down the Zero Road East and back to Lodge on Lone Spruce ski run.  I was happy to see that lots of barbed wire VCNP boundary fence is down.  Everyone is sick of not being allowed to access that private public land!

I hope that Pajarito Mountain Ski Area plans to landscape the area around their snow-making water retention pond.  It makes the back of the Pajarito Mountain so atrociously ugly.  It's not a big enough mountain that it has room for this ugly scar on its south side.

I walked behind the pond just to see what the back of the mountain looked like before.  There is almost a trail in the "talus slope" of dirt and stones but then it ends and I scooted down to the grass to continue walking around.  It would be nice if the ski area puts a real trail at the back of the pond so hikers can easily skirt around it to see uninterrupted views.

Also, what do they plan to do with the jumble of huge boulders they wrested from the earth?  They're unaesthetically heaped at a corner of the pond.

Hopefully they plan to either chip or haul away the enormous tree stumps that were jerked from the ground.  I see that the logs are stacked like there's a plan for them.

I thought today about how wedded I feel to this land that I live in - northern New Mexico.  I really have no real reason to ever want to leave it because I have all that I want right here.  Tell that to my husband though.  Next year, let's forget about a 9 hour drive to Estes Park and instead go to Salida, CO and make that our vacation headquarters!