Bucket List: Cooke's Peak. Check.

Cooke's Peak

Cooke's Peak is hard to miss.  It peers over the mountains that line Interstate 25, 50 miles away.  When you're driving north on Columbus Highway in Deming it appears much closer than it really is.. as if it's squatting right on the road in front of you.  At 8408 feet, it's the highest point in Luna County.. more than a thousand feet higher than the Florida Mountains.  Part of the attraction is the peak itself, which appears (and mostly is) a solid mass of exposed rock.

I've wanted to stand on Cooke's Peak before we even lived here.  We began hunting in it's massive shadow when we were just February visitors in an RV.  The more I read about the hike up, the more I knew I wasn't going to attempt it alone.  It took years to meet the right "guide".

Enter Dave Shephard.  Originally from somewhere in New England, and a fellow former full time RVer, he now lives in Deming, and is an avid hiker, climber, and explorer.  He's also a fellow member of the Deming Photography Club.  We shared a beer after a reception at the Deming Arts Council where the club had an exhibit in January.  We hatched the plan at Mimbres Brew.   At first we were going in February, then early March.  Finally, Thursday, March 22 was firm.

We met up outside of town, drove to the parking area, and did it.  I should mention that, unlike other recent years, I hadn't done any kind of climbing this Winter.  Most of my exercise involved walking the flats while hunting with the dogs.  Make no mistake, this 9 hour adventure hurt me.  I lagged behind going up and coming down, but by golly, I did it.  the proof's in the slide show..

Bring on the next mountain!

Art Is Where You Find It.

A couple of weeks ago, I got an email notification about a new geocache in the area. It was out beyond the interstate in a forgotten "subdivision" called Sunshine Valley Ranchettes.* The name of the cache was "Dry Well Cache", and sure enough.. there was a dry well there. The cache was pretty easy to find, but I was more interested in this cryptic note at the end of the cache description: "Be sure to check out the "Library" 1/3 mile to the East". Trust me.. there is nothing out there but dust and mesquite, so I had no idea what this was referring to. Being only a third mile away, I was about to find out. I assumed it was some joke, and was probably a pile of old "mens' magazines" someone had dumped out there.

I was totally unprepared for what I found:

A library!

These are the kind of things that make you go "WTF?"

Looking about, I found that someone... or probably several "someones" had put a lot of work into the landscaping and design of this... installation. Because that's what this is- an art installation. I found the clue in the bottom drawer of the file cabinet.

(Below the drawer with every issue of Cabinet Magazine.. the top drawer contained the card catalog).

Not only is there the Library, but a horse shoe pit, (with horse shoes), a cemetary, and even a "Biodegradable Toilet"!

But who put it here? And when? Being the desert, things remain pretty much unchanged from season to season. I would have to wait till I got home to get the story.

Which is what I did. Googling "rebargroup.org", I came face to face (after navigating a few pages), with the very installation I had just been exploring! You'll have to admit, that's quite a story!

So, who is REBAR Group?

"REBAR is an interdisciplinary studio operating at the intersection of art, design and activism."

Be sure to check out their website to see some of the many installations they've done all over the country. Very clever. Very entertaining. The story of the building of the Cabinetlandia National Library (with pictures!) can be found here. I wonder how many people, other than me, and a handful of geocachers, have seen this place? Somehow, I think that's not important to the artists.

*This part of New Mexico was peopled by schemers and dreamers who, decades ago, laid out dozens of subdivisions in anticipation of the housing boom that never happened. If you look at a detailed Google map of Luna County, NM, you'll see the roads, hundreds, maybe thousands, of them. In reality, they don't exist, which is why, if you're going to visit us: don't trust your GPS for directions!

Wildflower Season

Wildflower season in the Desert Southwest is ramping up.  On Easter Sunday, we took a long drive into the hills, first to do some Geocaching Northeast of Deming.  The purpose of this was to work up an appetite for the huge buffet Albert Campos was laying out at his restaurant.  (It did not disappoint.. especially the Chicken Cordon Bleu with the surprise inside: Green Chiles).  The entire hillsides of the Goodsight mountains were yellow.. somewhat from the Mexican Poppies, but mostly the huge carpets of smaller yellow-green flowers which may or may not be mustardseed.

Following our huge dinner and desert, we needed more exercise, and drove the Mitsubishi up the power line "road" to a point about 3/4 mile from the big blankets of poppies.  Far from showing signs of fading away, new bunches of this beautiful flower are showing up every day.  Our yard is overrun!

In addition, we spotted many other flowers which are just beginning to pop up.  Most of them we've been unable to identify.  Some of them we think we've identified.  We're leaving it up to you, our loyal readers to look at the pictures in the slide show (below) and help us identify what we're seeing.  (It may be easier to click through to the album at Picasa Albums, and look at the larger versions).

A Day In Nature Pictures.

Why?  Because, that's just the kind of day it was.  It began right out the gate this morning, (literally), with this young fellow posing for a portrait.

After an uneventful trip to the bank, I decided to find a couple 

Geocaches out in the flats; a drive of about 10 miles.  Not long after turning off the main highway, I interrupted this immature

Harlan's Red Tail Hawk, who was opportunistically gobbling up a road-killed jackrabbit.  Sorry dude.

At the second cache, I felt I was being serenaded, looked up on the wire and saw this non-raptor meat eater.. a Loggerhead Shrike. 

 I enjoyed the song for a while, then headed back north for another hide.  That's when I whizzed past a Coopers Hawk relaxing on a fence post.  I made a quick U-turn, and stuck the camera out of the window and snapped off a shot just as it was tensing to make it's escape from my intrusive scrutiny..

At that point, I gave up on the caching, because I needed to get up close to something very spectacular that was going on on the west foothills of the Florida Mountains.  I had to get here:

Yes, the Mexican Poppies are blooming great guns.  It looks impressive from here.  Up close it looks completely insane!

And if that impresses us as humans, imagine the effect it has on these guys:

Changes.

Fighting blog burnout, I decided to play with the appearance of the blog; (Margaret said the sidebar was looking "cluttered".) Moved some links down to what is now known as the "Blogroll/Links" area, and repositioned the counter and tipjar.. Yes! the TipJar is still here! For what it's worth. Also removed the Backwards Bush clock until we get closer to a more optimistic count... later in the year. It will be back!

I'll be deactivating the current poll, so if you know folks who haven't voted, send them on over. The next one will be in the sidebar, and might be more frivolous.

Look for a couple brief restaurant reviews coming up, and a report on the little GCA AKC trial yesterday. Also, maybe a picture of what we do when we're not shooting sighthounds, mountains, or birds.

Plinked a couple of geocaches earlier today in the cemetary down the hill from the ranch. That was fun, and took all of about 20 minutes.

More coming!

60 Year Old Solos Navajo Bill Hill Summit.

Waiting for the rescue chopper. (See the speck... waaay up there)
Self Portrait, at 4800'.
That's the spot. No, not the big one on the left, that little "pimple" on the right. The northernmost point of the Florida Mountains. Yes, they put caches in out-of-the-way places.

Image of the Day

The view from Nick's Dome Cache. Had to do some climbing to find this one. If you look on the righthand side, on the "road", you'll see the Escape, where Margaret and Rally were waiting. They served a valuable service waiting by the car, however. When we arrived, the GPSr was connected to the car- when I disconnected it, it went blank. The batteries were dead! Here I was, within a 10th of a mile from the cache, and in the middle of freakin' nowhere, with no tool to get to the goodies! Why I crashed out of the Boy Scouts. I decided to go looking anyway.

While I was scouting around a rockpile that looked promising, Margaret waited by the car. About a half hour later, a guy came up the hill in a jeep. He was looking for a way around the mountain. Not here, dude. So when he turned around, Margaret blocked his path and forced him to sell us two used AA batteries, which he took out of his flashlight. She gave him 2 bucks.

Freshly armed, I climbed the mountain, and found that sucker! This was a big one.

I decided to be greedy, and take one of the Border Patrol luggage tags. There were lots of fun things in there, including a Fuji single use camera with a couple of shots left. So I took a self portrait. This is a lot of fun, and today- a lot of work!