Tuesday, March 4, 2008

Tent Rocks

The Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument is nifty place, we just had to shed an Abe Lincoln to see it and it was well worth it. According to the tourist pamphlet the national monument is located on the Pajarito Plateau in north-central New Mexico.

The cone-shaped tent rock formations (as seen in the picture) are the products of volcanic eruptions that occurred 6 to 7 million years ago and left pumice, ash and tuff deposits over 1,000 feet thick. Explosions from the Jemez volcanic field spewed pyroclasts while hot gases blasted down slopes in a fiery avalanche called a pyroclastic flow. Small, rounded, translucent obsidian (volcanic glass) fragments created by rapid cooling. New Mexicans call these things Indian Tears from the trail of tears.




Doesn't She look so small?

Good view.



A very bad self portrait that Emilie wanted to share with everyone.





Emilie, wondering about all the geological processes that have taken place.


That night we decided to treat ourselves and stay at a campground with running water and even showers. Our smiles quickly vanished as we arrived. Pulling into the site my foot was pressed to the floor but luckily the van came to a stop. Good thing we had an oil change appointment the next morning at a VW shop. The next adventure would be getting there.


We took full advantage of the site, forgetting about the brakes until morning. We plugged in the van and immediatly started charging all our gadgets. Then we did laundry in the bucket(a multiuseful object that every van should have. We mainly use it as a trashcan and a laundry machine) and settled in for a night of watching movies on the laptop.



Success! The bucket produced clean clothes!

We took off to Albuquerque after some nice showers and made it to the shop. Another 1300 dollars later we had new brakes again, an oil change, and an air/gas mixture meter. We are now getting around 19-20 mpg fully loaded, not to bad.

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