David wanted to drive down to the 'Rio Grande del Norte National Monument'.....
Rio Grande del Norte National Monument is a United States National Monument in North Central New Mexico, situated west of the town of Taos. The monument covers a long and spectacular stretch of gorge, sometimes 800 feet deep, carved by the Rio Grande through the Taos Plateau that is popular with hikers, whitewater rafters, and sightseers.
The monument is located in the midst of an area of fairly recent (in geologic terms) volcanic activity. The area sits within the Rio Grande Rift, a place where the tectonic plates move away from each other; this created an opening in the Earth's crust where volcanoes formed, with the subsequent lava flows cooling and filling in the rift. Today's Taos Plateau, a vast expanse of basalt flows punctuated by the occasional dormant volcano, is the result of this activity. This also accounts for the existence of the gorge, as the Rio Grande was able to cut through the accumulated layers of basalt, carving the deep gorge that exists today.
Ecosystems range from willow and cottonwood stands along the banks of the Rio Grande at the monument's lowest elevations in the Orilla Verde area, to sagebrush plains atop the plateau, to pinyon pine growing on the nearby hills and the slopes of the gorge. Within the gorge in the Wild Rivers area, there is also the occasional ponderosa pine or Douglas fir, trees which normally grow at the higher elevations of the nearby mountains. A variety of resident and migrant birds make their home along the river, while the plateau provides a winter range for many large grazing mammals such as elk, mule deer, pronghorn and bighorn sheep, as well as the occasional predator such as cougars, bobcats, black bears, and coyotes.
Standing on the bridge, view north?
Standing on bridge - view south? A thunderstorm was brewing - it was cold and windy!
David thinks they might be mule deer - does and fawns...?
And! David was so lucky to be able to get one photograph of a cheeky chipmunk at the barbecue table are.... They are so quick and hard to get a glimpse of!
To finish off our excursion, we still had time to drop into a winery on the way home......
A fairly new winery in the area. We tried both reds and whites.
Met a new friend at the bar, a cat named 'Solo'....... he wasn't too interested in us, though!
Love the way the bottles are labelled!
Again, David had some luck with his camera!! These are hummingbirds at a feeder. We are a week too late to see them in large numbers, they've already started flying south for the winter. But these cheeky little ones were feeding. They are so tiny and so quick, very hard to photograph, but just beautiful!
Time for us to go home!!!
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