I had breakfast at the motel room and then headed up to Corrales -- a little artsy village that lies just west of the Rio Grande. I went into a couple shops and ended up buying some small pastel and watercolor prints that can be framed.They are colorful and show what the local landscape is like.
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| San Ysidro Church |
I headed over to take some pictures of the Casa San Ysidro and the village church of San Ysidro. The Casa San Ysidro looks like a very old native Hispanic rancho residence - smaller than an hacienda but still pretty big. They give tours a couple times a day and I've tried to catch a tour but I never make it at the right time....so today was my day. The church exterior is in tact as it was years ago but it is now a community and events center. Since I was early I decided to go for lunch at the local Coralles Flying Star restaurant (think Panera) and has a sesame bagel with cream cheese and a cup of tomato bisque soup - yum.
I got back to the Casa San Ysidro in time for the 1:30 tour...just me and a young couple. They apparently had been waiting in the parking lot since noon and when the docent opened the front door to go get something they went in with me following....seemed like the natural thing to do. The docent returned and told us that we needed to step outside because the tour had not started and they were not ready. The other couple became irate and left to the utter befuddlement of the docent who failed to realize that he had pissed them off after they waited an hour and a half. The docent is a slave to petty rules (don't touch the walls...don't touch the door or door frames...etc.) So it was just me and I got the full $3.00 tour. The guy was in his seventies and had his tour memorized so when I asked a question he went off track and it took a while to get back. Of course, photography was not allowed. Turns out that the core of the house is just a few rooms from around 1875 and the west of the colonial-style building was built in the 1950s as sort of a replica. It was essentially a place for a collector to house the old New Mexico things that he collected. It was still interesting and it appeared to be authentic. I had already been to the old hacienda up in Taos a couple years ago that is actually the real thing and this was pretty close.
I went back to Bernalillo and walked around a while and finally stopped in at the visitor's center and talked to the guy on duty. He gave me a bunch of stuff and also directions to go see Sandia Man Cave up on the far side of the village of Placitas. Sandia Man...not to be confused with the Sandman...is the name given to a group of people who lived in this area maybe 23,000 years ago. Archaologists have conducted extensive studies of the cave and artifacts that were found there. Much of this happened in the 1940s and is pretty well outside the current discussions of paleo-Indian issues but the discoveries did push the horizon back several thousand years. Why anyone would want to live in this cave is beyond me since it is almost totally inaccessible and way up on the side of a limestone cliff. The forest service has erected fences and elevated walkways and a long spiral stairway just so visitors could reach the cave. If you have fear of heights you will not want to make this trip. Also...anyone living in the cave would have had to climb down several hundred feet to get a drink of water. I guess that whatever the Sandia Man was afraid of was so bad that he took refuge in this cave. The area is very pretty and very remote but there were several people there when I finally got to the parking area.
By the time I finished my visit it was after 5 PM so I decided to head back to the motel. I decided to stop at a new brewery -- La Cumbre Brewery -- that had recently opened and see what the place was like. It was full of people (a Friday evening at happy hour) and they seemed to have a real businesslike approach They had a large blackboard with the beer varieties listed along with the brewing date, gravity levels, bittering units, alcohol level and fermentation dates. The clientele seemed to be beer geeks and were knowledgeable about the brewing process and varieties. I think New Mexico versions of the IPA style is way too citrussy in flavoring....almost like drinking grapefruit juice. They had two IPA versions and one was just like grapefruit juice but the other was very flowery but was over 11% alcohol and $7.00 a glass.
I sat at the bar and started talking to Jason...a federal chemist working on secret homeland security stuff. He was reading a book about George Armstrong Custer so we winded up talking about various books we had read recently....we had several in common.
After the brewery I headed back to the motel and actually cooked myself a supper.
Here is a web link regarding Sandia Cave : http://www.ele.net/sandia_cave/elephant.htm
Here is a web link regarding Sandia Cave : http://www.ele.net/sandia_cave/elephant.htm
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