Chile Rules Everything Around Me
feat. 1 dog, several aliens
We continued our journey though the American Southwest from Phoenix to Albuquerque, stopping at the Petrified Forest National Park and the Painted Desert along the way.
When a tree falls in a forest…
…over 200 million years ago, gets buried by sediment in a river bed, and has its organic matter slowly replaced by minerals such as silica, iron, and manganese which slowly crystallize and replace all tree’s original cells, is it still a tree?
The crystalized form of the wood rarely remains intact over hundreds of millions of years, eventually breaking apart like a piece of chalk. We can only imagine the Hulk-like strength required for a human to break it in the same way.
The Painted Desert was an unexpected sight as we approached the north side of the park. Here, the diverse mineral content contributes to the pink, lavender, and orange colors while erosion has exposed these layers to appear as part of the landscape. While other landscapes are dominated by the features of the present, the southwest is dominated by the layers of the past.
Home of the green
Having been to Albuquerque once already, we already knew exactly what to expect: lots of green chile. There was chile on burritos, chile on chocolate chip cookies, and even chile on ice cream (would not recommend).
Our housesit in Albuquerque was in the farms with a husky mix who had an underbite and welcomed us on our first day by leaving us a nervous pee puddle on our bed. Her demands for belly rubs and silly antics quickly won us back over.
Just one of many meals featuring New Mexican cuisine smothered in green chiles and red salsa at the illustrious Vic’s Daily Cafe.
New Mexican cuisine from our outsider perspective seems to be about innovative ways of consuming massive amounts of chile. The food itself is merely the vessel by which the chile enters your body. Somehow as we write this, we’re craving the chile again.
One afternoon we put on our tiny hats (figuratively) and had tea at the St. James Tearoom, British-style afternoon tea in the desert.
A tale of two parks
We made a weekend trip to visit two drastically different but equally astonishing landscapes. Our first stop was White Sands National Park where we entered an otherworldly, dream-like expanse of shimmering white gypsum sand. We practiced our Dune sand-walking and running down the sides of massive dunes. As the park ranger warned, we are still finding grains of white sand on our clothes and shoes to this day.
If you close your eyes, you may just feel like the protagonist of a novel, trudging across the barren dunes, overcoming obstacles in order to find the lost civilization on the other side.
While the reflection of the sun on the white sand nearly blinded us in the dunes, our next stop at Carlsbad Caverns had our eyes adjusting to the darkness in another alien landscape. We also learned that bat guano used to be mined here by the ton for use in fertilizers.
On the way, we stopped by the World’s Largest Pistachio and were genuinely impressed with this place’s sheer commitment to all things pistachio.
Out of this world
On the way back to Albuquerque, we stopped by Roswell, the home of an alleged UFO sighting in 1947. Billy enjoyed going around visiting his alien friends, perhaps asking if his banishment from their home planet was still in effect.
What’s next?
We visit Texas for the first time and see the shadow of the moon.
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