Day 9, Another Great High Elevation Day and a Super Dust Devil Encounter

Table of Contents

	Video
	Abo Ruins Salinas National Monument
	Just a Neat Church and Cemetery
	Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument (Quarai unit)
	Tin Sheet Tombstones
	Elevation Changes During the Day
	Google Map Track Log
	Comments
	Other Blogs About This Trip

I put an extra day in my plans in case of mechanical or weather trouble. But I have been lucky and not needed it. So I took that extra day and did an unplanned ride today. That was a great idea. I said a couple of days ago that these trips recharge me. Today I did a lot of recharging and am nearing 100% (grin).

I visited a couple of national monuments with less than 10 people each. Most of the day was spent between 5,000 and 8,000 feet elevation with temps in the low 60's. As you see above, my total miles were low. At every fork in the road, I took the road that kept me at the higher elevations.

Tonight I am staying in the Super 8 where the 40 to Phoenix group stays every year. Laurie and I were here in March 2019 and woke up to several inches of snow. In the morning the temperature will be 32 degrees. A couple of days from now the low will be 17. Brrrr. That is a little cold even for me. That would have to be a sleep in day for sure.

This evening I decided to go out to grab some pizza. As I stepped outside the wind and dust was beginning to pick up. This wind was stronger than usual, but I thought it was no big deal. I pulled out my iPhone and started taking some video. Then it got worse.

I got a little confused and the rest of the video just shows dust blowing around my feet and me saying "Sh*t", so I left that part out of the video today.

Then the desk clerk comes out yelling for me to get inside. About that time it dawns on me that if a local is concerned, maybe I should be also. We finally agreed it was not a tornado, but one heck of a dust devil.

Video

Abo Ruins Salinas National Monument

The Abó Unit of Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument sits west of the town of Mountainair, New Mexico, and contains approximately 370 acres. The number and size of unexcavated pueblo mounds suggest that when the Spanish arrived in 1581 they would have found a thriving community. In 1622, Fray Francisco Fonte was assigned to the Abó Mission. Working with the Puebloans, Fonte established the use of rooms in one of the pueblos for an early convento. An early smaller Abó Church and Convento were built starting in 1623. Similar to Quarai, the convento for this church curiously contained a Circular Kiva. This Puebloan religious structure probably aided in early conversions. Construction on this earlier church and convento was completed by 1628. In 1629, a second missionary, Fray Francisco Acevedo, was assigned to Abó. In 1640, Acevedo began to renovate the Abó church and convento. This renovation increased the size of the church and included many improvements. This new, larger church was built around the smaller church, allowing services to continue until the smaller church needed to be dismantled and removed. Renovations to the church and convento were complete by 1658. Like Gran Quivira, a combination of disease, drought, famine, and Apache raiding led to the abandonment of Abó in 1673.

For over 100 years Abó was quiet. In 1815 Spanish sheep herders attempted to return to the area, but were pushed out by Apaches in 1830. Settlers would permanently return in 1865.

Just a Neat Church and Cemetery

Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument (Quarai unit)

The Quarai Mission and Convento were established at Quarai in 1626 overseen by Fray Juan Gutierrez de la Chica. Construction began on La Purisma Concepcion de Quarai in 1627 and continued to 1632. Curiously, within the newly built convento, a Square Kiva was built. Like the other Missions of Salinas Pueblo Missions, a combination of disease, drought, famine, and Apache raiding led to the abandonment of Quarai in 1678. Settlers would return to Quarai in the early 1800s constructing the Lucero Structures which included a defensive Torreon and the later Manzano Church.

Tin Sheet Tombstones

In the tiny town of Chilili, New Mexico, about an hour southwest of Albuquerque (west on I-40 to Tijeras, and then south on Highway 14), there is a cemetery in which the dozens of tombstones and memorial plaques have been created entirely of large sheets of tin, mounted on marble. This work was all accomplished by one man, Horace McAfee, who has since passed on but is still venerated by the locals as a great artist.

What makes this cemetery so remarkable is that all the wording on the tin was punched out laboriously with a nail, so that the holes form the letters. Some of the memorials are quite extensive, and there are one or two huge sheets that contain McAfee's poetic musings on the nature of the afterlife -- twenty or thirty lines in length. McAfee also erected some large tin cutouts of angels watching over the cemetery.

Elevation Changes During the Day

Google Map Track Log