We started this last Saturday morning off by going on a hike up Bear Canyon (for which Bear Canyon Ward is named). It was so green compared to other places we have seen here in Albuquerque!
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This is a drier picture of Bear Canyon - but it was great hiking, and a place where you could leave the trail and just clamber up the mountain if you wanted to. There were lots of mountain bikers, runners, dogs, etc. We were really glad to be there with our good friends, the Fords. There will be an update on them soon!
It was so fun to go hiking - I loved the clear blue sky, and the green of the sagebrush and cactus, and all the beautiful desert flowers.
What I did not like so much is incidentally something that I will not post a picture of - the Bull snake that the Fords and Greg saw (I closed my eyes while Greg led me away and around it). Yikes! If it weren't for all the snakes and snake warnings here in ABQ, I would enjoy it even more.
After hiking and showers, we decided we had to see a Pueblo before we left. We researched several, and found one that was advertised to have many makers of jewelry and craft making persons in the settlement, and there wasn't a $40 fee to get into it ($20 per person was the fee to another place), so we decided to go!
Nestled in the valleys of the nearby mountains, and with a river running through it, we found a dusty, lonely settlement, with hundreds of adobe houses, trailers, and the like. It looked almost abandoned - we saw less than 25 people in total while we were there, but signs of life were all around. Most interesting to me was the contrast: seeing trailers, trucks, and people in modern attire with these in their yards:
Once we arrived in the center of the settlement, we parked outside a sign saying "No picture taking allowed," and thus didn't take a single picture.
We did visit the old Mission church, which was over 400 years old! It was beautiful - brightly painted in blue and yellow, and simple, but with dark wooden ceiling beams and lovingly decorated walls, etc. It was striking to think of the hundreds of years of devotion and prayer that the walls had experienced.
When we asked the caretaker if there were other places strangers might visit in his town, he mentioned the trading posts down the street, and the silversmith next door.
The silversmith wasn't at home, so we walked down the dusty dry street, past the community center with ambulances and vans, and tried the door of one of the bigger shops. Unfortunately, no one was home, so we went across the street to a smaller trading post which had an "OPEN" sign tilted in its window.
Wow! Alongside the pop, white bread, candy, and flashlights, were pottery, moccasins, jewelry, a collection of large and small ornate spurs, a child's winter coat made from some animal's pelt, baby carriers, japanese figurines, antique coca-cola bottle knick knacks, Indian rugs, pelts, stuffed animal heads, arrows, and WOW!
This was real - this was amazing!
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http://www.trespueblosturquoise.com/images/Santo%20domingo%20jewelry.jpg
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We also saw signs like these:
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The Santo Domingo Pueblo Indians are known for their work with jewelry and pottery - we are sad that we did not get to see any of them at work. After seeing the trading post, and deciding not to purchase a pair of children's moccasins that cost $60, we decided to leave. It kind of felt like we were intruding.
I certainly learned alot from this trip. Though it wasn't the New Mexican Pueblo discovery trip we had hoped for, I feel like I have learned more about the people who live here. Specifically, I feel I have learned how much I don't know, and can't yet appreciate about the people here, and the history they have with this part of the country. I want to learn more - I feel incredibly ignorant.
On our way home, we stopped for a treat: Real Navajo fry bread! There were vendors selling it on the side of the road - so we stopped and enjoyed some with honey and powdered sugar. Yum!
And the day was even better when looking out the window at the beautiful Sandia mountains on our way home:
Thus ends our adventuring time in New Mexico.
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