Art Decade

There was a special event Sunday morning that my son wanted me to come into town for, actually beyond town, to Rio Rancho, where I used to live. At 10:00 AM a ski shop was selling passes to Angelfire Ski Resort for $40 which included two free passes a month during ski season with no restrictions. The only catch is to put their advertising on your car. What a great marketing idea, eh? My son has been doing this for the past several years and thought it would be great if he could get more passes. Last year he got a sweatshirt too. They give away 100 of these passes each year. This year, because it was a weekend and not a weekday for the sign-up, there were 400-500 people in line. As a result, we didn't get passes. However, they planned on doing another one of these events with another ski resort so I got put on the texting list that my son was already on. What fun- another day, another time, to look forward to! ;)

Anyway, since I was on the far side of town, about 60 miles from home, and the weather

 was especially nice, I decided to take a hike in one of our Open Space parks.

 This area would have been our backyard if we had bought the house we were having built, years ago. However, fate has a way of changing one's destiny. Only because of building restrictions did we not buy it. We were building a massive two story house with ten foot ceilings in a new neighborhood. However, after the building started, the builder told us that building codes required a maximum of 19 feet tall because of the view of the escarpment from the city.  Do the math. We couldn't build the house the way we wanted it so we mutually voided the contract. Then we looked around in the East Mountains and found our current house with acreage for horses. I've never regretted it.  

I decided to drive past the "old" house and noticed a parking area for the Open Space. I was curious about the escarpment. I'd heard there were lots of petroglyphs in the rocks. So I grabbed my MC'Dee coke and my camera and headed out to the Piedras Marcadas Canyon. For lots more information, check here.

  True enough, there were petroglyphs (drawings) everywhere.

 Hmmmm, my hand is the same size as theirs, sort of!

 Notice the arrow pointing at me?

 I think this rock would be a great place for a letterbox. Check out the arrow pointing the way.

 It always makes me wonder who did these drawings and what were they drawing pictures of?? Such a scary face! No, not mine, well, maybe!!

 I think this rock is my favorite. I love all the ripples on it. I wonder how it was made?

 Is this a hunter or a devil or what?

Here's a view of the city and the Sandia Mountains in the background. My would-have-been house is that gray roofed house almost center. My current house is around the mountains at the far right, a long ways away.

Is this a friendly caterpillar maybe? What do you think it is?

I took this photo so you can see how big and jumbled the rocks are. Do you see the people at the right hand side? These rocks are all volcanic in nature

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Climbing around on the rocks, you discover little troves of petroglyphs. Once, I set my coke down to do some climbing and then I lost it. I had to walk around several minutes to recover it. 

 I really dig the feet. Is this a story board, I wonder?

I also saw real lizards 

 and tiny little bird tracks.

  I wonder if there was a snake here once. Scary!

These tiny flowers are so delicate and beautiful.

 

Art Decade - song: Art Decade, artist: David Bowie, album: Low