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| Kelia's sister's house in Taos - a wonderful staging site! |
The Santa Barbara campground, where we left civilization behind |
Elizabeth with clean clothes |
Ditto Troxel and Kelia |
A Sunday evening stroll in the woods |
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| Pack trail along the Rio Santa Barbara |
Sunday evening camp in a level meadow |
With plenty of quiet time for napping |
... or just talking |
Elizabeth does the bear thing to get the bear rope unstuck from a limb |
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| First glimpse of the mountains |
Wonderful aspen stands |
The landscape opens up as we get higher |
Kelia collects water from a stream |
Apply a saturated iodine solution and wait 30 minutes, and you have tasty drinking water |
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| We were worried about there not being enough water, but there was, all over the trails, even! |
Tired puppy dogs on Monday evening (all three of us!) |
We took all one-pot meals |
As I said, plenty of water! |
Apparently, it gets wet enough that these log trails have been built at low places |
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| Our intrepid travellers early on Tuesday morning |
Shades of Ireland - mud and rocks! |
Elizabeth in the wildflowers |
A panoramic view looking south toward the ridge |
The view from on top the ridge |
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| Trails converge on the ridge |
Wonderful vistas |
And more vistas |
But where is the trail we want? |
We worry about that AFTER lunch and a rest break |
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| A view of what we called 'Serendipity Valley' - we just stumbled onto it |
Coming down from 12600 feet - the highest we got on this trip |
Over the ridge and back into trees |
Tuesday night's camp, near Pecos Falls |
And we're into an evening routine now |
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| There was a lot less water on this side of the ridge - Kelia had to dig a trench to fit the Nalgene bottle into |
A view of the rain from under our dining fly - we decided to wait for the lightning to stop before crossing back over the ridge! |
But we were reasonably dry and comfortable |
And in fact, we just decided to take a nap, never mind the rain and hail |
Elizabeth, ready to go as the rain dies down |
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| The rain made the track pretty muddy |
Just like Ireland all over again! |
Away from the ridge, it was drier |
And we found a cushy place to camp and eat our black bean soup and chocolate pudding |
...even though there were a lot of (dry) cow pies everywhere |
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| Hiking out on Thursday, the weather was glorious |
And everything was so green |
Troxel and Kelia (several views) |
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You may be seeing this image again on our holiday greeting card! |
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| Rio Santa Barbara |
Back into the aspens |
Elizabeth's most excellent suggestion: soak our feet in the river before walking the last hour out of the wilderness |
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One last relaxing lunch before we exit |
And on the way out, we are surrounded by wildflowers in profusion |
Several views of the last hour's walk |
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Elizabeth and Kelia entering the parking lot - dirty, but contented and relaxed! |
| Some of the wildflowers we saw |
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