Lost in the fallen leaves

I recently went letterboxing with my neighbor, Lisa, in Santa Fe. You can read her narration here. I liked these photos.

And these portraits of Lisa and myself.

Then, just a few days ago, we went letterboxing again. We went to the 4th of July picnic grounds which is famous for it's fall colors. Howcver, surprisingly, it's actually named for a spring there and not the brilliant colors of the leaves.

Before we saw the pretty leaves, we saw acres of burned forests from the recent Trigo fire.

Here's Jenna with a backseat view.

We began our walk on the nature trail. In this picture, if you look closely, you can see a bushy tailed squirrel.

Apparently, this tree was hit by lightning. See the burnt out bottom?

Fallen leaves were everywhere! I know we don't have the magnificent range of colors that they have in New England, but it's still quite beautiful.

Time out for some Mother-Daughter play! See the pretty red leaf Lisa is holding up?

Some of the trees are characters! Look at these two!

We found the letterbox and had some fun making rubbings of leaves with crayons. In the letterbox was a "hitchhiker" box. This meant that we needed to take it with us and rehide it at the next letterbox we visited.

Everywhere in New Mexico are little villages, each with their central church. This is one we drove past. Notice the pretty tin cuppola. I found the turquoise accent color both pretty and different.


Quarai indian ruins weren't too far away from here so we decided to go and get some sunset photos (and another letterbox that I didn't have, although Lisa did .)

The sky looked ominous. I thought the alien spaceships were coming in for a landing.

Since Quarai is an historic momument, it closes at 5PM. We got there about 4:55. However, the ranger was kind enough to allow us a few minutes for a sunset photo shoot.

Isn't this gorgeous?

I was surprised to see the strange yellow flowers this cactus had.

And one final parting shot of an old barn in the village of Manzano on the way home.

Lost in the fallen leaves - song: No control, artist: David Bowie, album: Outside