2002 02 Colorado, Wyoming

Today I did not do a whole lot of photographing, although I did get out early onto the dunes again.  I think the low just before sunrise was in the 30s again but it was not as windy as yesterday so the photography was better and so were my fingers.  It was also nice and clear - very nice light.  Here are a couple of snaps of the dunes at that time.

After being out on the dunes for about two hours again I decided to just drive some of the roads in and near the valley and just look at stuff.  I wound up going south into New Mexico towards Taos, and actually did go into Taos.  It's about two hours south of here and a very nice drive.  I did a lot of meandering around, staying off the larger roads.  Once back on New Mexico 64 though, you run into this:

which is the Rio Grande Gorge, about 7-8 miles northwest of Taos.  The landscape all around is fairly flat high desert sage.  And then you just come across this..  I think the bridge is about 650 feet above the water.  There is not a lot of water in the river now since the whole region is in a 4 year long drought.  Normally you would see the occasional raft go down the river full of people yelling.  I have been here and you can just hear the yelling as they go down the rapids..  The above shot looks south.  Taos is to the left.  The next one looks north:

It's rather amazing that this gorge is only about 100 miles from Alamosa.  The Rio Grande runs through Alamosa and is not very impressive at that point.  Very slow moving and placid.  It's also interesting that Alamosa is upstream and about 1000 feet lower in elevation than the rim of this gorge.  So as the river runs south it has to cut its way through all this to get to the Gulf.

(You can also see that it was a nice clear day, unlike Monday, which was sort of murky.)

I went into Taos, wandered a bit, and drove back.  One of the things I was looking for was auto junkyards, since paint and metal do cool things when left out in the sun for a long time.  I found a couple of great big ones, but the owners of both turned me down when asked if I could photograph in them.  Dunno why.  Maybe they thought I had Mike Wallace hidden in the car ready to spring something on them once I had the lights and cameras set up.  Oh well.  I will keep looking.

I did some more photography around but not actually in the dunes this evening.  There had been a fire here a few years ago and the burned area is starting to get green again:

Tomorrow I may be off for southwest Wyoming.  Not sure - I have to see how I feel about a very full day of driving when tomorrow is here.  If I don't do that I will do some more wandering in this general area.

One more thing.  The grain which is grown here is indeed wheat.  A lot is being harvested now.