Today (September 16/07) we drove from Amarillo Texas to Alamagordo NM. This was the first time we have taken time to stop and photograph. 'What you see is what you get' when you stop by the side of the road in this part of New Mexico. It's a 'High Prairie' for part ... then we were in the Capitan Range of mountains. Temperature, about 32C!
Monday morning we headed to White Sands NP. Most of our friends know that 'first thing' for us is usually after breakfast ... so we arrived at the park about 9:30am. It promised to be an unusual day. The forecast called for a fully overcast sky. That's not the norm for this part of New Mexico ... clear, bright skies rule! We had a morning shoot about 3 hours in unusual light with dark layered skies. And we were alone, there were very few others in the park. About 5pm we returned, with bright skies and puffy clouds. What contrast ... and it shows in the photographs.
Tuesday, September 18 was a 'driving day' but we included brief visits to the 'Valley of Fires', a huge lava field just west of Carizozo, filled with cacti and Bosque del Apache. The Bosque is famous as a bird sanctuary. We knew we were 'off-season' (think: October to December) so we didn't see masses of birds. However we now know where it is ... and if we ever invest in 600mm f2.8 lenses we will return , maybe in December.
Wednesday was a Gallery Day in Santa Fe. We spent several hours on Canyon Road ... and there were many galleries we didn't visit. As usual, they were all hospitable, always. For personal amusement Tom decided to photograph an eclectic collection of windows and doors and stuff. Yes, he has done this before, in other places.
Our travel plan was that we leave Santa Fe and get into the Bisti Wilderness area just before we left New Mexico. It didn't happen that way. Tom was pretty miserable with a cold (then June 'got it') and the weather forecast was 'wet and windy'. The 'roads' to Bisti are rated as dirt roads, really bad in wet weather. We took a different mountain route that took us near Abiqui, Georgia O'keefe's favourite part of New Mexico. Yes, it rained. The two photos to the right tell the tale.
