Hoo’s On The Fence, San Felipe Pueblo

I awoke early this morning having considered last night taking a drive up to the Valle Caldera to check on the trees, but at 6AM, that particular urge left me. I went back to bed and enjoyed another hour and a half of needed sleep.

The morning passed in gross misappropriation.

By 1, I was tired of my laziness and I still wanted to possibly discover a small copse of aspens somewhere semi-locally- a hideout of hold-outs, still ablaze in their fall pageantry.

I texted about Bonnie my desire to see something like that, perhaps in the Santa Fe area. “Oh- Aspen Vista Trail. It’s my favorite!” She sent me a link to where it was, and I was off.

I never get straight to where I wanted to go, though.

My first detour happened at the exit for Algodones. I took the overpass bridge west once I got off of I-25 north, and I ended up taking a rural road I had taken before, accessed in the past from a Bernalillo escape months back. Small world.

I took a few photos and got back on the freeway, and my next detour led me off driving through the pueblo of San Felipe. My exit was again fueled by a desire to get over and among the vibrantly colored trees that grew against the Rio Grande. And my detour led me down private dirt roads, past barren or latent fields, bringing me close to the river hedgerow, but impeded by wire fences and elevated train tracks.

“And I still haven’t found what I’m looking for…”

My third detour was a jaunt through Santa Domingo pueblo- also a first- which took me away, and then around, the elevated pass and promontory I usually struggle to surmount each time I head to Santa Fe. The road that delivered me from Santa Domingo to the access ramp to I-25 and to Santa Domingo Casino idles beside a long wash valley which provides me one of my favorite views of the state when I am passing through on the freeway and there look west.

I finally made it to Santa Fe, and in my usual indirect fashion, missed a turnoff to get straightaway to Hyde Memorial State Park, now understood by me as housing the Santa Fe Ski Area and the Aspen Basin I sought.

Winding around on the park’s rising and descending hillside roads, it was soon pretty clear that at most altitudes there, the aspen had already turned, and had already molted. This was confirmed when, after a few stops to take in scenery and stretch my legs, only periodically did a ball of yellow leaves erupt among a stand of tall thin white trunks, or within the shadowy green jags of surrounding fir.

The Apsen show is closed.

And when I arrived at Aspen Basin, realizing that it was indeed an elevated bowl carpeted with the drab filament of a sea of aspen trunks, I was a little disappointed. Still, I pulled off at the Aspen Vista Trail parking area and set out to walk a little up the gated access road that appeared to wind up an edge of the bowl.

In a short time I found a semi-trail that headed up into a tall rolling hillside of aspen trunks. I figured I was there to look at the trees, so I took it, and soon, the sun burst into the incandescence of day’s end. The tree trunks around me began to glow in the orange light, and I tried to snap some photos of the magical moment.

As the sunlight faded, I descended the trail and returned to my truck. I finished driving the park road away from it’s entrance, stopping at the scenic pullout below the ski area where, as the sun disappeared beyond the mountains to the west, the lights of Santa Fe were visible under the red-orange glow of the sunset, which burned under the strong presence of a crescent moon. It was a picturesque way to end the day.

After I descended from te mountain and out of the park, I was hungry, and Bonnie had suggested that I go eat at Tomasita’s before I went home, one of her favorite restaurants in Santa Fe.

Who was I to argue. The Super Combination plate, which featured a green chile-smothered chile relleno, a beef enchialda Christmas style, a pork tamale, and a hard shelled beef taco with beans and rice, joined by a Coke, really hit the spot.

It was a good trip. I got home and surveyed my photos from the adventure, and was less then thrilled with most of them though. Just a lot of the same thing over and over. I can work on that.

Now that I know about Aspen Vista Trail, I look forward to visiting it early in October next year, anticipating it throws a pretty good show greeting winter into the area.