Also in New Mexico...

Although I didn't actually go to these places last summer, I figured I may as well show them while I'm talking about places to explore in New Mexico.



First, there's Lake Abiquiu. Close to Abiquiu town and the famous Ghost Ranch (where O'Keefe did her paintings), Lake Abiquiu is an artificial lake formed by the damming of an old quarry. As such, Lake Abiquiu is ideal for mid-desert cliff diving (for the truly brave) or just for having a swim and lying out in the sun, as my beautiful friend Koo Im demonstrates.



Also, not too far from Santa Fe, lies the bizarre terrain of Tent Rocks National Park. These strange, house-likes steeples were carved by the wind and elements in a manner similar to the hoodoos in Bisti.



But, the fun part is, once there, you get to meander for a good hour through this twisting chasm...



Until you get to the top, where this fantastic view awaits you!



So, you see, New Mexico is awesome. And I haven't even mentioned the Native American pueblos, green chile, or ski slopes! If you go to the USA, forget the hype of New York city or the revolting glam of LA. Head to the desert!

Final New Mexico Rock Pictures


One may safely say I spent the bulk of my trip to New Mexico, and the most exciting part of my journey to the USA, looking at rocks. This is true. But lets not forget, these are not ordinary rocks.

The rocks of the New Mexico badlands are testaments to the slow, inescapable power of time itself. Once, where now there is but rock and dust, there were huge swampy lakes patrolled by duck-billed dinosaurs and mammoth trees. Now, all that is gone. What remains are the fossilized trunks of long extinct flora and the sun-baked deposits of minerals once buried beneath leagues of water and mud. The towering steeples of the hoodoos were once sandstone shelves laying at the bottom of sunken pools, their bases a softer rock that has been weathered by the elements and the omnipotent hands of time. These aren't merely rocks. These are mementos to how absolutely time will change everything.



The last zone of New Mexico badlands we stopped at was, according to the guidebook at hand, also one of the oldest, or at least boasted the oldest layers of sediment in the region. Oddly, compared to Bisti, this area was surprisingly more green, almost lush - for the desert. What was most intriguing were the colors. The rocks were hewn in soft, pastel and sherbet hues.



There are many more places worth exploring in New Mexcio. I suppose, someday when I am done with al this world hopping, I'll settle back down there and try to experience them all.

New Mexico, too, is a great place for artists. the quality of the light there not only brings the colors of your own pallet out more, but inspire you to render them yourself in your own art in the first place. My traveling companion on this adventure, for example (and a truly awesome awesome friend!), Laura Brink, is an AMAZING artist. I aspire to be half the artist she is someday. You must must must! go check out her work online. www.laurabrink.com Laura rocks!!!

Chaco Culture


One of the best stops I made in New Mexico was at Chaco Culture National Park. This is the site of many ancient and fabulously preserved pueblos that date from between AD 850 and 1250. It's really a remarkable place, perhaps - from an archaeological point of view - one of the most significant sites in the USA. It is also one of the most beautiful, as the canyon itself is a gorgeous expanse of colored mesas and desert scrub, throughout which rise the crumbling citadels of a culture lost to time. One of the most fascinating walks takes you under the ridge of the mesa that most of the sites are built around, a ridge that is decorated with fascinating pictographs depicting people and animals (and, unfortunately, a few more modern gnashes of graffiti as well.) Being in Chaco is like folding back the curtains of prehistory.

Take a trip to New Mexico and check it out!


One of the larger pueblos


Pueblo with one of its great kivas




Details of some of the walls


Pectographs!


Pueblo with rabbit


My first glimpse of a collared lizard in the wild! A herpetologist's perk in Chaco.

Bisti Wilderness

When I wasn't jumping around playing spaceman, I took time to appreciate the awesome beauty of the Bisti Wilderness. Bisti comprises one of several badlands located in the heart of Navajo land in New Mexico. It's a geologist's paradise, with fossil remnants, sandstone hoodoos, and colorful shale deposits rising all about. One truly feels like a visitor on an alien world, ambling about the bizarre and fantastic terrain. Anyone going to New Mexico, visit Bisti!

I'm Captain Kirk!



In my last blog I wrote about how visiting Star Trek: the Experience was the highlight of my visit to Las Vegas. Well, for a die-hard Trekkie like myself, making a pilgrimage to this epicenter of Trekkana was made even more exciting because it enabled me to live out one of my lifelong dreams.

I got to be Captain Kirk.

Not in Vegas, mind you, but at my next destination on my tour across the USA: the Bisti Wilderness, a national park in New Mexico. During my previous visits to the park, I had always thought how bizarrely otherworldly the landscape there appears. Surrounded by hoodoos and crumbling rocks of every hue, one feels indeed like an explorer on a strange alien world. It was fortunate for me, then, that I had purchased a Captain Kirk uniform shirt while at Star Trek: the Experience! I donned my spaceman fatigues, copped the attitude of the bravado captain, and spent the next hour or so cavorting amongst the hoodoos (either to the delight or disturbance of my awesome photo-snapping friend Laura.)

The result is the following series I am only too happy (and equally embarrassed) to share with you.

I'm Captain Kirk! Enjoy! :)


The captain surveys the strange alien planet


Is there any intelligent life here?


Dilithium crystals!


What's that?


A Gorn!


Pursuing the enemy.


Fire phasers!


Explaining humanity to the Rock Creature.


New friends!


Beam me up, Scottie!

Star Trek: The Experience



Las Vegas was indeed a squalid pit of consumerism, greed, and inauthenticity. It is a testament to all that is amiss with our modern humanity. It wasn't even sinful, at least that would be redeeming; sin for all its faults is still exciting, still driving, still very much human and alive. No, it's not that las Vegas is anything like sinful that faults it. rather, it is the monumental waste of human potential Las Vegas represents that really chills me. How can there be so much architectural splendor, energy, and human activity in a place that is so devoid of anything like human culture? Is this what we have devolved to in our modern age, that one of the greatest achievements in human creativity serves merely to enframe the experience of injecting coins into pinging slot machines? Is this our legacy?

It is incongruous then, and at the same time inspiring, that las Vegas also serves as home to one of the greatest amusement rides on Earth: Star Trek the Experience.





Star Trek, in contrast to all that Las Vegas stands for, is a fantasy epic centered around a single message: that if we embrace all the goodness, compassion, and righteousness inherent in our humanity, then we can bring our world together in peace and as a unified human culture begin to explore the stars. That once we acknowledge and heed all that is good within us, the sky is the limit.







Star Trek: The Experience, while still a commercial venture, helps to remind us of this fact. Aside from serving as a museum of artifacts from each of the various Star Trek series and movies, there is a Star Trek themed restaurant and bar (Quark's) and two "rides" that you can go on. These are fun, as you get to walk in recreated starship sets (including the Enterprise bridge!, interact with Starfleet crew, ride in a flight simulator as you evade Klingon attackers in a shuttlecraft, and experience a 3D movie. Altogether, it a fun escape from the inane money-chasing idiocy of the rest of Vegas.






Of course, for me, being a Trekkie and all, going to Star Trek: the Experience was something like a voyage to mecca. Something all Trekkies must do once in their life. Indeed, truth be told, it was the primary reason I decided to go to Vegas in the first place. I was not disappointed. Trekkie or not, I recommend a visit to Star Trek: the Experience. Forget the rest of Vegas.