Landmark Hike

The La Luz Trail is the landmark hike of the Sandia Mountains taking you to its highest point. The trail from its start to its end is 7.3 miles and climbs 4000 feet. While I hike the lower section fairly often, I only rarely have gone all the way. On the other hand it is big favorite of Gaius Derf so we decided to do it this weekend.

Our original plan was to climb out and take the convenient tram down. Unfortunately for us they don't open the parking lot to the tram until 9 AM and we were there at 6:30 AM. So we opted to leave the car at the trail head knowing there is a trail from the bottom of the tram back to the trail head parking lot. More on this later.

A view of our destination Sandia Crest from the parking lotYes there are bears here but I'm faster than Derf now so it shouldn't be a problem.
(Heck, I let him off the hook for the Aztec sacrifice)

Our destination at about the 2.5 mile mark

Views from the around 5 Mile mark

Derf enjoying the scenery

Looking down the valley toward the City of Albuquerque

Looking Northwest across 40 miles to the Jemez Mountains

At the Five Mile mark

The notion that you only have 2.8 miles left is very deceiving. Over the first 5 miles you climb a total of 21o0 feet. That means you climb the remaining 1900 feet over that last 2.8 miles...meaning double the rate of climb. In addition the majority of this is done over massive,long rock slide.

Gaius Derf making his way up the rock slide

A couple of shots of the mountain

Uhh, an accidental shot of a rock

We were pretty beat by the time we got to the 'saddle' marking the end of the big climb.

Our destination (almost) the top of the tram

Looking north and south from the tram

Our nice end, the tram down...not

Gaius Derf failed to mention that the hike back to our parking lot was another 3 miles with another climb of over 700 feet. Since we are back down at our original altitude it is substantially hotter...not fun. But we made it.

Sacrelige...and Revenge

You will remember the miraculous events of last weekend when an errant wine drop spilled to form the shape of a heart...the beating heart...a holy symbol to those of us who are ardent born again Aztecs.
We had of course turned this area into a shrine in honor of Huitzilopochtli and Quetzalcoatl .

You can imagine my shock, my dismay, my horror when I came back from business meetings to find the site desecrated, obliterated from the face of the earth.

This was of course intolerable. Vengeance would have to be wreaked. There is only one way to do this in the Aztec faith. And that is to go to war and obtain captives for sacrifice.

And if one is going to do a proper Aztec sacrifice one has to have a proper temple. Now I'm sure you can imagine that there is a fair amount of intolerance here to Aztec practices. It's not like you can just drag people up in a public place, extract their hearts and throw there bodies down the steps and not have your neighbors poo pooing what you're doing and complaining to the authorities about the public litter from the bodies, or that you're endangering various birds to create your ritual dress.

So to avoid unnecessary complications, we have a sort of dual purpose pyramid/alter in our back yard.

Our Family Pyramid

Old Outdoor Table Converted into Sacrificial Alter

Please don't pass this post on to any of our neighbors as we wouldn't want to get anybody's guard up just yet.

Impromptu and Planned

Agent W was off on some secret mission to the Pacific Northwest so Wife and I decided that he needed some home cooking (not to mention that I still feel guilty over the shed incident)

I cooked too dishes - one that I improvised and one that is a classic dish.

Improv - Fresh Salmon Cakes.

Start with some fresh salmon. Chop it into pieces then put in a chopping bowl. I sauteed some onions with garlic, New Mexico red chile powder, and Mexican oregano and added it to the salmon then chopped further with a chopping blade

I added eggs then used the mixture to fry some patties



I served it over some leaf lettuce with a little red chile spiked vinaigrette.


Next I served a classic from Italian cuisine, Spaghetti Carbonara

Now for all you who way you can't cook, this is an incredible dish with fantastic flavor that is simplicity itself to make.

Ingredients:

• 1 pound spaghetti
• 1/2 cup of bacon (or pancetta - Italian salted bacon) cut into small batons about a half inch long
• 3 tablespoons of olive oil
• 3/4 of a cup Parmesan cheese - finely grated (use fresh not pre-grated if you can)
• 3 eggs at room temperature

Directions:

1. Boil a lot of water for spaghetti
2. Saute the bacon in the olive oil. When they are crisp take the pan off the heat.
3. Get a large bowl and put some boiling water in it to get it warm
4. Cook the spaghetti per instructions on package
5. While pasta is cooking, pour water out of the bowl and dry it
6. Break eggs into the bowl, put in the cheese and mix well
7. When pasta is done, dump into strainer and quickly put into bowl with egg cheese mixture
8. Add bacon oil mixture
9. Salt and pepper to tast and mix thoroughly

The heat from the spaghetti cooks the eggs, melts the cheese and creates this wonderful sauce with the great bacon bits.

Pasta cooking and Bacon frying

Eggs mixed with Cheese

Finished Pasta

Oh ya...We had some wine too

Miracle at the Towers

We know that we have been blessed to have the opportunity to fulfill a dream of ours by having completed our recent home remodel. This was brought home to us by a miraculous event which took place while having Gaius Derf over for dinner. The eagle eyed Derf noticed something on the counter after we were done eating.

On closer inspection we saw that a drop of wine that had formed the shape of heart.

As a born again Aztec, I was immediately taken. This was a symbol. An omen. Action was required. Clearly a sacrifice was called for. Clearly Derf was the only candidate. However, since he had a vague idea of Aztec ritual, he made an escape using the excuse of taking out the trash.

As a result we settled for a simple devotional offering

Tidbits

I can't say that there has been tons of eventful stuff going around to write about so here is a some miscellaneous odds and ends

The New Roll

This week marks the end of the roll of Costco, Kirkland brand plastic wrap. Neither Wife nor I can remember when we bought. It seemed that it lasted over two years. So this time I decided to actually put the date when we started the new roll so we can actually calculate its lifespan.
Garden Blooming

I say many, many, many thank yous that I have a wife who 1) likes to garden and 2) is from Minnesota farm stock and will work like a maniac. Therefore, it is my duty to publicize ad nauseum her accomplishments. Hence the the pictures of blooming flowers galore taken from the soaring heights of the tower. Please especially note the hollyhocks and the brand new roses.




Hike Till You Drop

Wild Bill was my hiking buddy of choice today. We had arranged to take a long but leisurely hike with us dropping off one car at our destination so we could do a transverse rather than an up and back. WB arrives at 7:15 and tells me that he has to be back by Noon because he has a function that he forgot about. He was going to call me last night to tell me but decided not to. So we have to adjust. I still want to do a longer hike and I opt for an up and back on part of what we were going to do, the Three Gun Spring trail. I've written about this in the past. It can be very demanding. Especially if you are hearing WB's wife in your head threatening you if you don't get him back on time. So we haul assed and did the 4 mile 2100 foot climb in an hour and 45 minutes...an hour and half on the way back. I was totally wiped out. But at least I know I'm ready to do some of the more ambitious hikes we've talked about for this summer.

Sierra Nevada Eating

One never visits Lady Di without eating extremely well. We were wined and dined the whole time we were there. On our last night, they recommended going to a restaurant, Moody's Bistro, that is noted for its own made cured meat products (charcutrie). They also had a really good wine list.

While there were tons of California wines as one would expect, that's not where my knowledge lies. I know that Steve and Diana love champagne so I started with a bottle of that.Then my eye fell on a real find, a 1993 Chateauneuf du Pape at what I thought was a very reasonable price. It's hard to find wines with that kind of age in restaurants at a price that I would even think of paying. It was really nice with the fruit still there even after 16 years.
One of the dishes up front was a very nice beet salad.
And of course there was the fabulous selection of house made cured sausage, pates and rilletes.
Steve had a pork scallopine and I had short ribs and we were both very happy with our dishes. The ladies had a halibut dish that bluntly was way over cooked. I asked that they bring out another and it was still too well done. So we were a bit frustrated. But our waiter, who was very well schooled, brought out for us a free dessert (rasberry tart) and gave everyone a nice glass of house made limoncello (awesomely good) which smoothed over any bad feelings. Very classily done.

Sierra Nevada Idle - Part 2

There are all kinds of hiking opportunities in the area where we are staying. I've been on two the last two days. On Sunday, Wife, Lady Di, daughter Anne, and I took a 5 mile, picture taking hike for the the two photographers Wife and Anne. Today, Lady Di and I took a 10 mile, working hard, hike. Lady Di and I are both of the - hiking should be a challenge - persuasion. So today we said not dilly dallying for taking pictures even though the scenery was fantastic. However, I did catch plenty shots of the photographers.

The goal of the hike was to searching for wild flowers.

On our way through the forest

Photographers getting out their gear and getting ready for action

Field of yellow wild flowers

Beware the ferocious Sierra Nevada Pink Snake

Mountain meadow

At least one photo from moi of wild flowers

Wife, Anne, and Lady Di

Even a picture of de-I!