Had the urge to take a walk in the Jemez today. Thought that the Dome Road, starting from its intersection with NM4 and going out to Graduation Flats, might be just the ticket for a flat, easy walk to soothe my recalcitrant right foot - WRONG! It was a nice enough walk - not much wind, warm, sunny and dry BUT... I picked Thanksgiving Day weekend when everyone and his brother get the urge to drive in on that road to gather their Christmas trees. (What a lovely tradition - go murder a tree and then decorate the corpse for your living room. Oh, well, curmudgeon, there's plenty of trees up there and if it brings joy to someone, then so be it... I hope, at least, that people will try to somehow recycle the trees after Christmas. Here in Los Alamos County they can be taken to the Eco Station to be chipped and composted.)
I counted close to 50 vehicles passing me on that road. Some slowed down as they passed and that helped to keep the dust down. Others sped by in a cloud of dust but waved a friendly greeting as they bore down on me.
In addition to breathing in lots of dust, I'm sure that I caught a welcome whiff of freshly cut pine as the trees trundled by! Most of the trees were normal size but two were quite large and had to be hauled out on long, flat bed trailers.
The road is in fairly good shape although the wash-board-y parts are no more fun to walk than they are to drive. The road is not as kind to my sore foot as FR181 aka American Springs Road.
On one of my pit stops in the woods, I saw a coyote trotting along the Bandelier XC ski trail. It stopped and looked at me and wouldn't move away until I spoke. It wasn't dangerously close but I didn't think it would be prudent to pee while it was hanging around!
I have to email Bandelier about the "Area Closed" signs I saw. They say that the public can't use or travel the area of Bandelier National Monument that's behind the signs. It happens to be the area of land between two parcels of private property in the national park. Makes me mad because it's giving the private property owners defacto exclusive possession of land that belongs to all of us!!