martinzoo

My bil sent me the link for this cool eagle cam by Hancock’s Wildlife Foundation. It is in British Columbia, Canada. The nest is literally right on a road, with the tree only a few feet from the road’s edge. And you can hear the cars go whizzing by. It’s really cool because they’ve had cameras set up to observe this nest for two years with no eagle action, and now they’ve finally got two baby chicks. GB and I have sat enthralled today. I hope you enjoy it, too.

Today our homeschooling group went to a gem mine near our area. We spent about 5 hours there having a great time digging around in the dirt and rocks. You won’t see GB in the group shot….. he was hiding in the back……. Isn’t it awful to have a mom who loves to document everything, and be a kid who is camera shy? I had to bribe him to get the following picture. I like the danger sign in the background…….. Cool, huh?

It’s kind of funny, because everytime we found something good, it was when we were rinsing the rocks in the sluice. When you are digging, it all looks like regular rocks. But then you rinse it and it turns out special.

GB really liked the green amozonite a lot. Of course, green is his favorite color. And this was a HUGE mine for amozonite.

This is mica……… we found tons of this. The little flakes were everywhere…..all sparkley and shiny.

This pretty little garnet shows up best in the light, but my shot doesn’t do it justice. You get the gist of it, though.

And these gorgeous amethysts were a big surprise when we started rinsing them off. We had no idea we had something so cool.

***Note: I thought these were butterflies hatching, but Jennifer is way more astute than I, and figured out that they were ladybug larva.  It’s too late to edit the film, but I did edit my title for this post. So cool! Thank you Jennifer. Actually it makes more sense because I even caught one of these guys eating a stray aphid already.  Here is the link she gave me. LINK

Saturday morning I checked on the caterpillars that we had hatched from eggs last week, before I left for Santa Fe. I don’t know if GB had ignored them, or if the habitat wasn’t right for them, but they were all dead. So I went out to the same tree and found some more. Isn’t that amazing?

I brought them back to the deck so that I could look at them under the microscope. While I was watching, the egg casings got really dark, and I could see the casings starting to split. So I went inside and got my camera so I could film them hatching. It was really cool, and I hope you enjoy the film. Be warned, it is four minutes long. The whole process took about an hour, though.

On our 5th day in New Mexico, my dh finished his seminar at 10:30. So we checked out of the hotel and headed to Albuquerque. That’s where the airport is, and it would save us an hour’s driving time in the morning when we got ready to leave.

Since we had most of the day to spend in Albuquerque, we decided to go to the Petroglyph National Monument. Here they have an estimated 20,000 carved images in the faces of volcanic rock (basalt). Many of the images are recognizable as animals, people, brands and crosses; others are more complicated. I liked the spiral ones. To me they kind of looked like the sun.

These were pueblo ovens. Many people thought they were created by the Native Pueblo people, but they were actually brought over by the Spaniards. The Ancestral Pueblo Natives just perfected the use of them.

Just minutes after this photo was taken, the sky opened up in torrential rain downpours. It was even hailing. We barely made it to the car before it all started. And while we sat in our nice, dry, warm car, a family of four tried to rush down the side of the hill, on a very rocky path. The dad was holding his little girl, trying to protect her from the hail. And their teenage boy was hightailing it down that path like a mountain goat. Luckily we only had to sit in the car for about 20-30 minutes.

Monday, when we were at the Bandolier National Park, it was 92 degrees, and I was so hot I thought I was going to pass out. Today, it was in the 50’s and I had only brought two sweaters, so I’m wearing both of them in this photo. The wind was rough, and I was freezing. I really hate being cold. But it was a cool adventure that I wouldn’t have wanted to miss.

This rock shows the different colorations the deeper into the rock you go. That’s why the petroglyphs show up so well.

Being a mother probably influenced my interpretation of this petroglyph, because my hubby couldn’t see what I saw. To me, it looks like a dad on the left (remember men wore more ornamentation than women), a mom on the right with her child below her, reaching up. Both mom and baby seem to be reaching out for each other to me. What do you all think?

Vandalism showed up on many rocks, but this one made me ill. The photo is actually upside down. Because that’s the way the rock lay. But it was easier to read once I turned the photo. Isn’t that sick?

This rock shows several colorations. It was a grinding spot . These rocks were used for grinding wild grass seeds, pigments and medicines. What shocked me was that you could still see the different colors.

Some of the petroglyphs were over 3000 years old, and some were made only 300 years ago by the Spaniards. It’s kind of hard to tell who made which ones.

After the petroglyphs, we traveled 12 miles down the road to the Three Sisters Volcanoes. You can climb to the top of each of them by various paths. But by the time we finally made it to the top of one of them, I convinced my hubby that they probably all looked the same. In other words, I was pooped out.

This was the ‘freezing me’ at the beginning of the path that led us to the ’smallest’ of the volcanoes.

Here is my hubby at the tippy top of the volcano. Once again, I’m disappointed that the photo doesn’t represent the true depth perception of how high up we were. But trust me, it was high. My legs can verify.

This is me with my big sweater removed. I had significantly warmed up during the climb, but it was still chilly.

When we came down from the volcano there was a group of park rangers getting the ‘new park ranger’ speech. And they watched us all the way down. Isn’t that sunshine amazing? One hour before it was pouring, and it started raining again soon after we left. Oh, and did I mention that it had snowed that morning? Well, it did. What a temperature spectrum.

The next morning we got up at 5:00 and headed out to return the rental car and leave for home. I was pretty sad. I loved New Mexico. I swear I could live here if my family were here too. It’s just SO pretty. I really didn’t want to leave. But after 4 airports, we finally arrived in Richmond at 4:30 in the afternoon. We spent the next hour and a half looking for our luggage, which the airline had lost. It was returned to our house sometime after midnight.

So that was our trip to New Mexico. If anybody is looking for a fun, scenic, adventurous trip within our own country, I can HIGHLY recommend Santa Fe. It felt like we had left our country without all the hassles. The food was awesome! The culture was awesome! And I learned so much. What a great week!