Canyon Road

Another really nice day in Northern New Mexico, with warm sun and clear skies. We went into Santa Fe and took a nice walk up and down Canyon Road, which is where all the art galleries are. The place was packed with people -- Mom said most of them were from Texas.

The story is that New Mexico is the only place in the country that has any skiing ... and it has a lot of it.

Our idea was that I would pose for some photos with outdoor sculpture, but the first one was kind of mortifying: a miniature moose? You'd think these people would study what size a moose actually is. The funny part is, we were originally going to spend this weekend in northern New Hampshire, with full-scale moose. Really!

The next sculpture was three dancing lambs. Much better! If you're not going to be realistic, might as well have some fun with it.

This afternoon Mom, Dad and I took a trail-less walk out from our property to the neighboring property. We would have walked longer, but the sun was going down and the wind was fierce. I couldn't stop running after rabbit and coyote tracks. On the other hand, once I finally got home, I have been spending a lot of time snoozing on the bed and on the couch.

Mountain Climbing

Today was a BEAUTIFUL day to be up in the mountains. We took a long walk up in the Cerillos Hills. Dad and I posed for a wide view out to the west. It was warm, and I was getting a little hot until we hit some snow, which felt really good on my paws when I walked. Then it occurred to me that it might feel even better if I rolled in it.

Then we went into Santa Fe where Mom and Dad had lunch (I wasn't invited), plus we had a nice walk around the plaza and downtown, which was filled to bursting with people enjoying the beautiful day.

Mom and Dad have bought an "El Cheapo" (as they put it) TV set to go with the El Cheapo DVD player they already had, so from now on, in our long winter evenings out here in Madrid, we'll be able to watch DVDs, in addition to reading newspapers and listening to the local mariachi radio stations.

New Mexico??

I thought the plan was for us to spend New Years weekend in frozen Northern New Hampshire.

Next thing I knew, we were up at 3 a.m. and then on a plane to New Mexico.

Don't ask me how this happened. We can thank my crazy Mom.

It was a long flight -- we went to Albuquerque by way of Orlando, Florida. (Don't ask me to make sense out of that, either!)

Anyway, we're here, and my Dad got the solar electricity going, and the well going, and the propane stove and heater going -- and he even got the hot water heater going without too much of a thrash. (He gets anxious about that ...) We're really happy to be in our casita and looking forward tomorrow to a hike and some time in Santa Fe.

Going Home

Well, we have had a wonderful 2 weeks here in hot New Mexico with its overnight thunderstorms, but now it is time to go home. Today we had a great start to the day with one of my favorite hikes, up the Cerillos Hills. Mom and Dad hiked before breakfast, if you can imagine that! (I didn't, of course.) They made up for it with a big blue-corn pinon pancake breakfast at Tecolote. (That's "owl," folks.)

They had to pack suitcases and stuff and clean up and put things away; also Mom did some vacuuming, during which Dad and I escaped the house for a walk down around the land, where I chased a lizard and Dad cleaned up the mystery grave which we have down there. (A pile of stones, a stick, a bean can and a cross.)

Now it's night-night from New Mexico and look forward to barking with you all back in New England.

Love, Sundance

Hiking at 11,000 feet

I never like it when Mom makes me pose for these "hot dog" photos. Personally, I find it insulting. This one is in Old Town Albuquerque. (It would be another story if I ever got to eat one of these "dogs".)

Today we drove up to the top of the Sandia Mountains, 11,000 feet tall, and walked the crest trail through a beautiful forest. There were several squirrels to chase, but Mom kept me on a tight leash.

At the top, we were 6000 feet above downtown Albuquerque. It was quite a view. Not long after we left, a storm swept over the whole mountain, and we would have been quite wet. Instead, we got home dry and tired, and I had a good sleep while Mom and Dad went out to eat at Harry's Road House. (Mom saved me a good bite of Harry's Hamburger, much better than any so-called "dogs".)

On the Road Again!

We have just got back from a very nice two-day road-trip. Friday morning we headed out westward first thing and drove to Gallup, where Mom and Dad bought some jewelry for the shop ... and then southward to Zuni, where they bought some more. Then we headed eastward to El Morro, "Inscription Rock" (which I have blogged about before) and had a nice evening at the beautiful campsite there.

(We had a few nervous moments when a pack of about 12 motorcycles showed up and proceeded to camp across the road ... but they were nice men, my Dad's age, who had just ridden 7 hours and wasted no time getting to 'Lights Out'.)

The next day we had an adventure, riding southward through VERY back roads to Hatch, NM, world capital of chili peppers. The road for 85 miles was all gravel and had features such as the free-range cow pack shown here. My Dad thought about getting out to talk to them, but the big cow on the right didn't encourage that idea, and anyway we found a path through them.

When we got to Hatch it was 100 degrees and we weren't too excited about buying "hot" chilis. Mom and Dad had a quick hot-chili lunch, bought a few chili items and we all piled back into the air conditioned car. Back home, Mom made peach pie and ice cream for their dinner ... and we are all now all settled in for a well-earned snooze.

Catching Up

We are a couple of days behind in my blog, thanks to some things about Verizon which Mom doesn't want to say in this post.

Tuesday, Mom, Dad, our friend Pat and I went camping on the Rio Grande up next to Taos. We had a great time, other than that it was REALLY hot at the campsite, which is down in the Rio Grande Gorge. I took care of that by wading in the Rio.

Not only that, but my leather collar finally dissolved in the water. So we all got in the air- conditioned car, drove up out of the Gorge and -- strange! -- found a pet supply shop up at the top, where we got me a new, waterproof collar. It was cooler once we got finished our drive and back down into the Gorge, and the sun went down behind the cliffs.

The next day, we went for a nice drive up over the big Rocky Mountains and back down home.

I hadn't noticed before, but there is a bunch of lizards living under our shed. What fun! (Well ... until one of them nipped me on the nose. Since then, I've been more smelling them than snuffing my nose in after them ...)

Tomorrow we are going for another big drive down to buy some Indian jewelry, camp out and go find Hatch chili. I'll keep you posted, now that we finally have our Internet connection back.

Hiking for Turquoise

We have been in New Mexico for a few days and the internet service has been pretty spotty. So I am making a post without a picture today. We are at the Casita with Marilyn my godmother , (dog mother), from Massachusetts and our friend Pat from Tucson. Today we went with Todd Brown from Cerrillos on a Turquoise Mine Tour. He drove us up through these crazy roads and through many gates that Dad would hop out and unlock.
Once we got to a flat spot we got out and hiked through all these paths and searched for Turquoise. For a little guy like me it was fun scooting up the rocks. The highlight of the trip was hiking down into a cave that the Indians use to mine.
After we were done Dad pulled over and I took a swim in the Galisteo River. What a great time for me! These are truly the Dog Days of Summer.

No Whales

Today we left Quebec City and drove up the coast to Tadoussac, Quebec, which is a really cool little town about 2 1/2 hours north. At the very end, we got to take a ferry across the fjord and they didn't even charge us anything.

First thing, I insisted on walking on the beach with Mom and Dad.

Then we all went down on the nature trail which ended us up at the head of the fjord where the Saguenay River meets the St. Lawrence. Dad was reading from the signs about how the native people and the first Europeans met up and traded there. This is supposed to be one of the best places for staying on land and seeing whales, but we didn't see any, although we saw plenty of whale tour boats heading in and out. Anyway, the fjord was a pretty beautiful place and we stayed there and loved it for some hours.

Unfortunately, when we got back to town we found a Provincial policewoman who pointed out that our parked car had just been in a wreck, when an AAA tow truck driver dropped a towed car on ours and another one. Mom and Dad tell me that the tow truck drivers are supposed to do something like exactly the opposite. Anyway, we were still able to drive our car, and I'm proud to say that neither Mom nor Dad freaked out about this episode, and we were able to complete our journey happily with a long detour over and down through the Laurentian Mountains back to Quebec, just in time for the concert crowd.

A side benefit is that Mom and Dad were able to gather a great collection of beach glass in Tadoussac.

Tonight we are being serenaded to sleep by Elton John down in the park, as part of the music festival.

Sore Feet!

We walked our little feet off all day long. They told us Quebec was a walking city and so we set out to prove it. The first challenge was walking about 2 miles to find a place known for good pastry, which we didn't know where it was, and when we found it it wasn't open till 11 a.m. anyway.

Mom and Dad still got a decent crepes breakfast not far away, and I got some decent potato scraps under their table.

Then we did all sorts of store walking up and down hilly Quebec, with Mom going into dozens of stores and buying only one scarf. This was followed by some park, fort and battlefield walking. I guess a lot of Quebec was about French and British armies shooting at each other and building forts. As you can see, the cannons are big enough to put me in as a cannonball!! (Thankfully, the cannons are all plugged.)

More walking through the beautiful park on the high ground overlooking the big river. As you can see from the (fashionably out of focus) picture of me and Mom, with our hotel in the background, we are staying in the ugliest building on the Quebec skyline. Everybody's legs are tired tonight!

They Had Me at Wouf-Wouf

We have traveled to Quebec City and are in this very nice hotel with an excellent view (see photo) of the Old City and the St. Lawrence River. The charming French staff had me at Wouf-Wouf by fawning over me and then showing up at the door with doggy room service, a full selection of dog biscuits and my own bowls.

We didn't know it until we got here, but we showed up on the first night of a huge music festival that has tens of thousands of fans gathering outside our window for the first of four nights of concerts. We had fun mingling in the street with them. The sidewalk cafes are also pretty cool here as many of them let dogs, such as me, curl up at their owners' feet under the table.

Up on the Rio Grande

Today we had our regular trip up to the Rio Grande gorge, just south of Taos, so Mom could pick her sage to roll into smudge sticks (which she sells at the fairs at a very good profit, i.e. 500% if you count the gas).

In my Sundance posts from years past, I've attached shots of Mom picking sage, and these are always pretty much the same, so I'll skip that. However, you will want to look at a very nice shot of me up to my belly in the Rio, which I enjoyed very much. (There was also a fly fisherman and a couple of Canada Geese hanging around as I bathed.)

After that, I had a number of good rolls in the Rio grass and mud, of which this is a picture of one.

We couldn't drive through Madrid for the last time this visit without taking a picture of me in front of Maggie's Cafe, where scenes from the movie Wild Hogs (starring John Travolta) were shot. Some of you may not even remember Wild Hogs, or might never have seen it, and our guess is that the days of Maggie's Cafe -- which is not now a 'cafe' but a Wild Hogs souvenir shop -- are numbered.

We're up tomorrow at 4:00 in the morning to fly back to New Hampshire, so this will be the end of my Sundance blog for April, 2011. Hasta luego! Blog ya the next time.

Sundance

Crazy Place!

Today we had a nice day, meeting up with our friends Rosie and Michael and their dog Otto, my friend from a few days ago. We drove down the Turquoise Trail to a hardware store, where Dad bought statue-mounting hardware and Mom bought planting soil. There was a flea market across the street and everybody bought something: Mike, a pair of cowboy boots; Mom, needle nose pliers and a ring sizer; Dad, a pick mattock; and Rosie, too many things to be listed.

Then we went up the Sandia Highway to the Tinker Town Museum, which is too crazy to be described. Apparently inside there are hundreds upon hundreds of wood carvings by this guy. They don't allow dogs. But even outside, it was quite wild.

We continued up toward Sandia Peak. The humans had lunch at a picnic area, and us dogs had some snacks too, and we also met some other friendly dogs. The cold winds were all overhead, but our picnic table was in the sun and warm.

Up at the top, it was cold and windy, and Dad said we were at 11,000 feet, with Albuquerque 6000 feet below us.

We were glad to get home and hang out at the Casita. We're starting to get ready to go home, but that's OK. I miss the cats.

Crazy Place!

Projects

Today was a stay at home and do projects day. This isn't my favorite kind of day because as you know I am Heroic Action Dog. However, when Mom was putting polyurethane on the picnic table I did get to run across the top, which left some good sticky pawprints.

Dad and our friend Thomas the excavator spent the morning creating a concrete base for the new sculpture, so I got to bark at the backhoe quite a bit. The base doesn't look like much now, but they put about 700 pounds of concrete into the hole, and at that they would not have had enough concrete if a friend of Thomas who lives nearby hadn't been available to drive up here with an additional four bags. I could say something about planning ahead, but I won't.

I pulled out Dad's shoes, and played with the recyclables container, while Mom worked on jewelry and Dad finished putting up the windmill. A big afternoon wind had come up by then and the windmill spun like crazy and whipped from side to side. It was instantly very cool!

Mom has this idea to smash all these overweight dishes that she and Dad for some reason bought at a yard sale and later hated (I hated them from the beginning) and then use all the broken pieces to decorate the base of the windmill. We'll see what comes of that project.

At the end of the afternoon we drove to Lamy, a little village where Amtrak stops, and walked around the railroad tracks. It was very pretty and there were lots of good smells. I snoozed in the car while Mom and Dad had supper at Harry's Roadhouse Cafe. Fortunately, they didn't bring any leftovers home in the car (I always find that very hard).

High Mountains

We had a very nice road-trip today, going over to the other side of the Rio Grande and up into the Jemez Mountains (which, when we're back home in our casita, we can look out at every day from our front window).

One great thing we saw was the Soda Dam. This happens on the Jemez River. Dad read the sign which says that this dam is a build-up of calcium carbonate (whatever that is) from a spring behind it.

I also got a chance to get my feet and nose wet in the Jemez River itself. It's a pretty nice big river. We also visited a hot springs just up the ridge from the river; people were bathing in it, so we didn't take pictures. (Dad says that back in the 1960's, people bathed naked in these pools ... but that's before I was born ...)

Mom and I also had a good run through the Ponderosa Pine forest (we spent a lot of the day above 8500 feet, during which Mom and I were a little dizzy and silly from the altitude).

Then this afternoon we came back home, and Mom made jewelry, and Dad fought with the winds and rocks to get the windmill set in place for tomorrow's concrete pouring. They went out to dinner. I was happy to sleep in the car.

A Day in Santa Fe

No strenuous hikes today, thank goodness! We spent a lot of the day in Santa Fe. Mom and Dad went to a desert garden store; Mom bought sunflower seeds and Dad bought grass seed for the big dirt patch out front where Thomas dug the septic system.

I got to visit the prairie dog village at the Jackalope store and just about flipped out to see the little guys. They ignored me and everybody else and just went on eating.

We also visited the Santa Fe plaza where I posed for animal crackers. I also met this young girl short-haired dachshund. She was pretty neat, although she wasn't as interested in me as I would have liked.

The big happening today has been the wind. It is absolutely howling, and it's cold! You can barely see the mountains across the Rio Grande valley because of the dust.

Yesterday we bought a lawn&garden windmill and this afternoon Dad put it together, but he couldn't put it together because of the wind. Go figure!

A High Point

We left the El Rancho Hotel this morning and reversed our route back down south in order to hike El Morro (also known as "Inscription Rock"). 150 years ago people traveling across the country came to this oasis and wrote their names on the rock. (Actually Indians inscribed on the rock centuries before that.)

We had a nice hike up to the top of El Morro. Mom and I rested in the shade for a bit.

Then we were up at the top for a spectacular view. We also had a very nice look back at Inscription Rock from the top. Then we walked down and drove home for a mellow afternoon in the sunlight and breeze.

This Is What I Call Camping!

Well, as you can see, we're not really camping. This morning, Mom and Dad checked the weather in Zuni and saw that it was going to be 25 degrees tonight. Not wanting to spend the night shivering in our tent, we decided instead to stay at the El Rancho Hotel in Gallup.

This morning was mainly sleeping for me. I slept on the trip from our casita to Zuni, and then while Mom and Dad bought jewelry, and then on the trip to Gallup, and then when they shopped again. I woke up for lunch in a really nice little Gallup park with actual grass.

Then things got adventurous. We decided to go for a hike in Red Rocks State Park, just east of Gallup. We went up the Church Rock trail (shown). Then we lost the trail (I believe that makes us 0 for 2), then found it again. It involved climbing up steps cut into a cliff over a big deep canyon. I was fine with that -- the steps were spaced about right for a long miniature dachshund -- but Mom and Dad were not feeling too good about trying to get back down the steps again, and so decided to keep going forward, hoping to find a safer way down.

This took us over miles of sketchy trails along the edges of larger, deeper canyons. Then the trail started going UP again. Just when Mom and Dad were ready to give up (not sure what that would have meant at that point), the trail started going DOWN, and from then on it was soft dirt trails and a gentle trip down to the parking lot.

We did about 6 miles and were very dusty and thirsty. Now we're just stiff and probably going to sleep soon, missing probably the only opportunity this trip to watch TV.

Hanging Out

This was a day of hanging out. We drove up to Santa Fe and Mom and Dad did a lot of trivial shopping and I slept in the car a lot, which was fine after yesterday.

This afternoon we mainly hung around the house. Our buddy Thom came over to try to fix the kitchen sink, which hasn't worked well since we got here. He did his best but wasn't able to because the thing was so badly installed to begin with. Meantime I really enjoyed having the doors open and running in and out.

Mom and Dad had stopped at a gallery and fell in love with a sculpture and then this afternoon Dad decided to buy the thing and drove down again and brought it home. We're really excited to have it here.

We're heading down to Gallup tomorrow to buy some jewelry, then headed out to El Morro for camping. Unfortunately, we won't have any Internet access at El Morro, so you guys will have to skip a blog for a day.

I look forward to blogging with you soon.

Sundance

Hard Climbing

Well, we had quite an adventure today. We hiked Apache Canyon, which is about 15 miles southwest of Santa Fe. Of course, when you hike a canyon, you go DOWN first and then in the second half you go UP.

Apache Canyon was very very beautiful with a thick forest of pine trees (Mom says Pinon and Ponderosa and Blue Spruce). Down at the bottom was a beautiful little stream where we had lunch.

Then Dad, who had been reading the guidebook, mentioned that, regarding the trail back up (this was supposed to be a loop), the words in the book said one thing and the map in the book said a totally different thing. We didn't have any idea what to do.

Since it looked like a trail along the beautiful little stream, we followed that for quite a while, until all agreed that we had probably gone too far. So then we ended up bushwacking it up the steep ridge, having no idea where we were going but relying on Mom's and Dad's sense of direction.

We made it, found the road at the top. It was basically fine with me, standing only 4 inches off the ground, but Mom and Dad are quite a bit taller and were more nervous about falling over. It was a VERY steep ridge.

Mom and Dad stopped for chocolate cream pie on the way back and I spent a lot of the afternoon sleeping. After all, I covered six miles on legs that are only two inches long.

High Winds!!!

Man was it windy today! Dad said our roof was rattling. My fur was ruffing. Dust was everywhere.

We went into Santa Fe and walked to the Farmer's Market and the Flea Market, both indoors (thank goodness). Mom and Dad did a lot of boring shopping stops going down Cerillos Road while I got to stay in the car listening to the wind howl.

In the afternoon, Mom built rock walls and Dad put up a sun face on our shed. Then (thanks!) we went indoors and got to warm up and rest.

The best part of the day was visiting our friend Rosie and her dog Otto, down in Lone Butte. Otto is a great friendly dog and I look forward to spending more time with him.

Rosie has a really cool house full of windows which I spent a lot of time looking out of, other than the time I spent chewing on the cuffs of Rosie's slacks, which earned me a time out until we drove away.

Now we're back cosey in our casita and looking forward to a hiking day tomorrow.