Have school will travel: The Ancient Ones Frowned Upon Us

The Ancient Ones Frowned Upon Us

On a long and lonely drive from Alamogordo to Santa Fe, we decided to make a quick pit stop at Three Rivers Petroglyph National Recreation Area. Some 20,000 individual rock images are there, carved by Jornada Mogollon peoples who lived in the area centuries ago.

The Mogollon peoples obviously had never heard of 'location, location, location', as their artwork is out in the middle of absolutely nowhere.

To our surprise we found a nice picnic area provided by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) at the trailhead to the petroglyphs. Life was good, and legs were being stretched..... right up to the point where the source of a loud hissing noise was pinpointed. Unfortunately, we traced it to a rapidly deflating tire on the camper ;-(

Like a good boy scout, I was prepared with a patch kit, but the Ancient Ones didn't want to be bothered today - a nail had punched 2 holes in the tire, making it impossible to fix without taking the tire off. By the time I went to that much effort, it was far easier to just put on the spare.

Meanwhile the Ancient Ones weren't done with us yet. Big, black, ugly clouds were rolling down the nearby mountainsides, and strong gusts of wind blew stuff out of the truck whenever we opened the doors to get something. We were getting the feeling that the Ancient Ones were looking upon us with great disfavor this afternoon. Once the tire was safely back on, we gave a passing thought to go ahead and walk out to the petroglyphs, but about that time, the first raindrops appeared. Not wanting to have golf ball sized hailstones dropped on us, we got the hint!

Quickly we packed up our stuff, helped ourselves to the brand new (BLM) restrooms, left a humorous little note on the guest register and got out of there!

Just to make sure we didn't decide to turn around and come back, the Ancient Ones dropped some hailstones and more than a few buckets full of rain on us a few miles up on the main highway. We kept on truckin' all the way to Santa Fe.

Apparently because we behaved, we were later rewarded with a glorious sunset, and our first glimpses of some Pronghorn Antelope.