Wide-open spaces at Valles Caldera, New Mexico
Posted January 15th, 2009 by Sheila
During a road trip through the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico, my good friend Nori Ann Reed and I rounded a curve and stumbled on the Valles Caldera National Preserve, a collapsed volcano crater.
I was trying valiantly NOT to play “travel writer” on this trip, so I didn’t take very good photos or notes, but the place keeps coming back to me as somewhere I want to return.
Doesn’t look like much, does it? Lotsa grass. Big deal.
What’s amazing is that the background you see beyond Nori Ann (we were at a roadside pulloff on Highway 4, part of the Jemez Mountain Trail Scenic Byway) is much larger than it appears.
We rounded a corner on a twisty mountain road to see this massive open area, and when we looked down into it, we realized that the few tiny, ant-like beings we saw were cars and people down there. It is MUCH bigger than it initially appears.
Have any of our readers been way down into the Caldera? What’s it like down there?
Even on a “no travel writing trip” I couldn’t stand it; great discoveries have to be documented. 
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January 22nd, 2009 at 1:12 pm
ooh, I have that same problem! I am not able to go anywhere anymore without my camera, hoping that I will find some fun shots that I can write about down the road.
. So far, my husband has been pretty tolerant!
January 23rd, 2009 at 3:14 pm
Hi Gudrun,
I made through most of that day in the Jemez, remaining “unplugged,” but once I started scribbling notes again it was hard to stop.
Fortunately, I can’t seem to find where I put them once I got home….at least I found the pictures.