Socorro, New Mexico

Monday, October 6

We left Los Alamos and arrived in Socorro about 12:30pm.  

This was a Passport America place.  We had full hookups for only $13.50 after tax.  Not bad. We had lunch at a local mexican food restaurant. We NEEDED green chili something for lunch.  We want to make sure we got all the green chili fixins we can while we are in New Mexico.

The above 3 pictures are of the mountains to the west of Socorro.  After lunch we headed out to see several sights we wanted to see.

This is the road headed west  from Socorrow through Magdalena to the VLA (Very Large Array).

Here are we arriving in Magdalena.

The tower was on the hill above town and the gallery was just in town.  There was not much in town.

This was the view facing the other side of the road.  We have another 14 miles before we get to the VLA.

As we turned onto the road to the VLA this was the view.  You can sort of tell they are arranged in a Y shape.

  As we got closer this was the view.  The white building is the visitors center.

This sign was at the gate/entrance to the area.

Even though this sign is a little blurry you can still read some interesting facts.  If you saw our post about Jemez Mountains, we saw one of these near Los Alamos.

Next we headed for the San Lorenzo Canyon.  After we got close to the canyon, it was a several mile drive on a rough wash-board gravel road.  We were greeted by the following 3 signs.

The "road" to and through the canyon was more like a dry riverbed with very thick gravel.

Part way in we saw this sign.  Behind the sign was the formation pictured.

In geology, a slickenside is a smoothly polished surface caused by frictional movement between rocks along the two sides of a fault. This surface is normally striated in the direction of movement.  Interesting.

As we drove further in there began to be more formations closer to the "road".

Now the rock formations at right along side the "road".

We stopped and walked through this pathway through the canyon walls.

The path dead ended but this was what it looked like.  Neat exploring but no water anywhere.
A little ways back we passed an open area where several horse trailers were parked.  We could tell horses had been around.

This was the very end of the path we walked on.  Headed back to the Jeep then we kept on driving further into the canyon.

The following pictures are all sights in the San Lorenzo Canyon that we thought were special.

By 4pm the road seemed to keep going without end so we decided to turn around because we did not want to be back in the canyon when the sun went down.  Some of the above pictures are on the way out.  It was interesting how the formations looked different from the opposite direction.

Next we hurried to Box Canyon.

Here we are before sunset.  

This was what we saw as we drove into the Box.

As we rounded a curve we began to see the "Box"

This was the Box from the parking lot.  Apparently people rock climb here. We did not see anyone climbing.  We followed a road on past the Box Canyon that was going over a hill.  We were interested in what we might see.

When we got to the top of the hill this was the view looking back.  Such beauty!

As we turned out of Box Canyon heading back to Socorro the moon was already up.  Tic got a great picture.  We had a very full afternoon.  It was 7pm by the time we got back so we ate another green chili meal out.