Heather and Greg

On May 17th and 18th I had my graduation ceremonies from GWU. I finally completed my Masters Degree in Human Resources Development.

Here's me almost smiling for the camera as we wait to line up. I was much happier on the inside, but the outside wasn't quite awake yet.

Here we all are marching in. Hard to spot your loved ones in that crowd.

Wait, there I am!

Now I'm scanning the crowd looking for my family. I don't think a single graduate was actually looking where they were walking.

Found my family. You should've seen them waving, I thought they might take flight.

I love that this graduate dressed his seeing eye dog.

An official print of the crowd. Good luck finding me, even I couldn't do it.

Yay!!

And there I go!

The dean and I. You can buy this photograph if you'd like from Panoramic Visions for like $60.

My official graduation portrait, also purchasable.

Here we are on the Mall for the big ceremony.

Julian Bond was the guest speaker.

And me after the ceremony, complete with rain gear, and officially graduated!

So after we left Jemez Springs and did all the sight seeing along Route 4 we headed up to Bandalier.

Bandelier is where the Indians built their homes into the cliff faces. They are made of soft volcanic rock, so their homes were carved into the side (called cavetes), and then structures were built outside of them--often multi-leveled. Little of the outside structure remains. The ancestral pueblo folks lived here from about 1100 to 1500 AD.

Greg thought it would be sooooo funny to get a picture of my butt as I climbed up into one of the dwellings.

Me looking out from the cavate.

And the view I saw. Gorgeous!!

Greg moves into a cavete. The ceilings in these were often blackened to make it less crumbly. Now they are blackened to get rid of the graffiti that is added by visitors.

Some of them still have paint inside. The habitants painted both the inside and the outside.

Petroglyphs abound when you look for them. This is the closest they have to a written language.

This is a petroglyph of a macaw. Personally, I thought it was a donkey, but a park ranger set me straight. They believe that this was a major trading area, with the locals using obsidian as their currency, and that they either saw, or bought, a macaw with it since they aren't a native bird. I wonder if they ate it, or kept it as a pet :).

After Bandelier we went to Santa Fe. Here I am giddy with excitment at finding their lilacs are in bloom! I missed the season here in DC and I just LOVE the smell.

This is the staircase at the Loretto Chapel. It is believe a miracle took place here. In a nutshell it is believed St. Joseph built this after the Loretto nuns prayers (they ran out of money when building the chapel and had no way to reach the choir stands). It is built without any supports, or any nails, from wood not known to exist previously. And it was built 130 years ago with only a hammer, a saw and a square. It's construction is impeccable and mystifies modern architects and engineers.

This is the San Miguel Mission, the oldest church in the US, built in 1610, and still holding mass on Sundays.

Me with the worlds largest turquoise nugget. I was told it was good luck to touch it, but I'm not so sure. Still, I'm powerless to resist a good tourist moment.

The last thing we did was drive up to Abiquiu to hike in Ghost Ranch. This is where Georgia O'Keefe lived and did much of her painting. Again, Greg thought it would be sooo funny to get a picture of my butt.

A shot of Chimney Rock from afar. We decided to hike to the top of this mesa, even though it was gusty winds. What I won't do for a good view!

Greg takes a short break along the way. Truthfully he probably wouldn't have stopped if it weren't for me. But at 6,000 feet, and with a chest cold, I was taking things very slowly. Not to mention the climb went up an additional 600 feet.

A view along the way. The body of water is the Abiquiu dam.

Me at the top resting on a very cool tree. One I investigaged for rattle snacks, once again.

Self-portrait at the top, and a nice shot to end our vacation!

Every year I go to New Mexico for my annual Radiant Recovery retreat. This year Greg joined me to see some of the southwest. It was a very full, very relaxing event. I was sick for most of it, so we just took things slowly which suited us just fine. We took almost 200 pictures, so I pulled the best to put up in our blog.



A view of the desert landscape driving from Albuquerque up towards Jemez Springs.

The closer we got to Jemez Springs, the more red rock we saw. The name "Jemez" is from the Native American Tanoan dialect in which it has the form hay mish, or "people." They got the name because the Spanish asked them what they were and they confusedly responded in their language "people". Duh!

I hear you can go fossil collecting in these hills--next time, perhaps!

Here is the literal Jemez Springs. It follows route 4 for most of the drive, giving ample opportunities to pull over and go walking or fishing. The springs errupted from a gyser in 1860 and have been visited by folks wishing to soak in their therapuetic waters ever since.

We, of course, are no exception. Here is Greg at the Jemez Springs Bath House. It was the only bathing place that offered private tubs, the others were more Roman with group baths. Some were even outside. Don't worry, most folks wear swim suits in the public baths. At least, that's what I'm told.

Me relaxing in the bath! They had two faucets for the stone baths. One with hot water directly from the springs. The temperature could run up to 150 degrees. Which is why they also offered a cold water faucet.

This cool looking structure is called Soda Dam. We stumbled on it by accident while trying to find a place with cell phone covereage (we were blissfully unsuccessful). The "dam" is formed by mineral deposits. We hear you can actually go inside it.

We stayed at the most fabulous B&B called Canon Del Rio. It had a view of one mesa at sunset and another at sunrise. Complete with walking paths along the springs, a hot tub, a pool, and a very sweet house dog with the ironic name "Pain". Truthfully he was a darling thing.

We ate dinner at this cowboy bar. Food was excellent, and almost everything in the structure was original dating back to its conception in 1947.

The view from our room. Not too shabby!




The next day we took a visit to some local sites. I don't think I've ever seen a more effective way to keep people on the trails.

Our first stop was Jemez State Monument. Here Spanish settlers built a large mission atop local indian ruins. The church was built in 1610, but other ruins on the site date back 500 years. Here Greg stands on what would've been the altar steps.

A view of the church from afar. The whole thing has a sorted past consistent with a lot of the missions of the area. Indians rebelled at the attempts to convert them, burnt the place down, and drove the Spaniards out. They decided not to retake this particular piece of land, however, and built their Pueblo down the road. Thus, the ruins.

A photo of the gorgeous Jemez Falls. It took us a while to find it, the paths weren't exactly blazed like the Appalachian Trail... But well worth the effort!

Me posing on a very cool rock. Which I inspected carefully for rattlesnacks before sitting on.

A bit of the view of Valles Caldera. Really, this photo doesn't to it justice. It was one of the most gorgeous places I've ever seen. It's a 14 mile wide crater from a volcano that errupted a million years ago. It was such a change of view. First we drove through brown desert, then red desert, then the Jemez mountains, which looked like Colorado, then this giant meadow.

While I was in New Mexico it was brought to my attention that there was a 10K race on Sunday that I would be able to run. So run it I did! It was harder then I expected, probably due to the fact I was 5,000 feet above sea level and I'm used to running at sea level. And I'm sure it didn't help that I was getting sick (though I didn't realize that until the next day, up until then I thought it was allergies). Still it was really fun, with nice people, and gorgeous weather.

Me, Mel from the UK, Tom from Indiana, and Laurie from California all pose before the race.

During the race. I tried to get pictures of the hot air baloons, which are nothing but blurs in the sky in this shot.

Me!!

Tom, Laurie, Me and Mel after the race, all rosey cheeked and happy!