Adler's Midwest Meandering Spring 2021

 This was our first day of exploring without the motor home, so it gave us the flexibility to get up close and personal with some pretty neat things.  We crossed the Continental Divide several times, and we found 3 caches at 3 lakes that were dried up and had no water in them, and the most awesome of all was the Bisti/De-Na-Zin (Deh-nah-zin) Wilderness.  It is a large area of 45,000 acres of shale hills and is managed by the Navajo People.  It means 'cranes'.  We drove about 200 miles today for 10 geo-caches and lots of beautiful scenery.  We do think the oil and gas companies must have started Geo-caching as we eat up a lot of gas by finding that log sheet to put our handle on it.  By the way, our handle for geo-caching is Eagles _Landing.  So, every time we find this object, big or small, there is a sheet of paper in it some place and we have to sign it to signify that we have been there.  Then we register it online on the Geo-caching site. In this case, tangible items are not allowed to be hidden in national parks or private areas, such as the Bisti Wilderness.  Earthcaches are allowed and they take you to some interesting spot in the park.  I will post our pictures from today and explain the day that way.  

Our first stop on Hwy. 371 was in the little town of Thoreau, NM.  There was a geo-cache on the perimeter of the cemetery.  We love caches that are in or near a cemetery, as it is interesting to see how they vary in different regions of the country.  There is never a cache planted on a gravesite, but instead it can be in a tree or along the fence line of the cemetery.  This cemetery had 2 types of graves.  There was an older section and this was the newer section.  All the graves here were mounded.  We wondered if they were 'green burials'.  The older section was like most other cemeteries we have seen in the southwest.  

This geo-cache took us to the Continental Divide on Hwy. 371 and you can see the elevation here is 7,530 feet.  When it rains, the water runs west to the Pacific and east to the Atlantic.  I wanted to include the mesa in the far distance, as the color has changed in this area to the sandy colored limestone.  And yes, those are bullet holes/dents in the sign.  

This is a butte!  I'd say it's a real beaut!  What is the difference between a butte and a mesa?  A butte is like a barstool and the mesa is like a table, having the large top and short sides.  We saw more mesas today but we thought this was worthy of a picture.  

This very unusual place did not disappoint!  We had never heard of it until I started searching for interesting caches to find on our way back to Wisconsin.  We knew we wanted to stay in Grants, NM to get us close to the Continental Divide, and when I searched farther, I found this area.  It was well worth the drive and the day.   

Once we got off the paved highway of 371, we drove on a nice gravel road for about 2.5 miles to a large parking lot.  This surprised us, as we thought it was going to be more primitive than that.  There were several cars there, and again, we thought we were going to be out here by ourselves.  We met these two gals on our hike and they are Jillian and Jiselaine.  We found them very interesting to talk to, and we chatted for quite some time.  They lived and worked a real job in NYC and decided to travel and work, and it seems to be fitting their lifestyle, for now.  

We had Jiselaine take our picture, and then we parted ways.  Now our adventure starts.  We hiked in to where we thought we needed to go to reach the coordinates on our GPS, but it turned into two dead ends and we were on top of the area we were searching and it didn't get us any closer.  So, we retreated twice and found our way to the G-zone.  (Geo-cache area)  It was pretty neat to be top, as it allowed us to look down on some really neat hoodoos and we could see so far.  

This is the 'feature' that we had to find and now we have to tell the cache owner what we think it looks like.  Jim thought it looked like a king on a throne and I thought it looked like an angel pointing upward.  Notice the mushroom capped rocks below it.  

This is another mushroom rock and other formations.  The wind and rain change the landscape here as most of the rock is sandstone and it's quite porous.  We hiked 3.5 miles today and it was a very unique experience.  It was 73 degrees on our truck gauge, when we set out to hike and it was very hot.  We were thankful that it clouded up a bit.  The best time to come would be when the temperature is in the 50's.  

We ended our caching back on I-40 at an interchange where the Continental Divide is once again, and another earthcache.  This historical marker is placed here for the very highest point on the divide at this spot. It was a good day.  Tomorrow is a travel day and I won't have this many pictures.  We have a couple of interesting caches at our next destination and we'll post them when we find them and get the blog written for the day.  We will also be on Central Daylight Savings Time tomorrow! Yay! Tomorrow is also Max's birthday, so 'Happy Birthday' a day early, Max!  Celebrate!