ABQ Biopark

We had a low-key weekend, but we did have a fun outing to the Albuquerque Biopark. We arrived right as the annual Children's Seed Festival at the Botanic Garden. The kids had fun learning about plants (I, for one, learned that an onion is not a root, but a part of the plant stem). The flowers are in full bloom, and the day itself felt more like early summer than spring. By the way, for those of you visiting us next month, the butterfly pavilion at the Biopark opens Memorial Day weekend, so a trip to the Biopark may be fun. Anyhow, enjoy these shots of the kids:

Here, the kids sit atop a three-foot ant.

Allyson on a tile bench in the shaded Spanish Moorish garden.

Ryan in the hollow log in the Children's Fantasy Garden.

Isaac at the entrance to the Children's Fantasy Garden, near the 10-foot sunflower.

Jog-a-Thon & Reading Test

Today was a big day for Allyson and Ryan. The former had her jog-a-thon. Before getting to the results, I would like to thank everyone who pledged. She felt very good about getting pledges from grandparents and aunts & uncles, so thanks again. Anyhow, she ran 7 laps, which works out to 1400 yards, in 20 minutes. Not any sort of record, but probably better than anyone else in our house could do. She's quite physically adept when it comes to jogging and hiking. Please send us your pledge money as soon as you can. We will remit payment to the school, so your contribution will simply reimburse us. But, as promised, any deadbeats will be referred to our collection agency...Isaac.

Additionally, Ryan's reading level was tested today. We have known for some time that he's reading above grade level, but today we got a better sense of how far above. According to his teacher, he struggled with 2 words at the 5th grade level, but she couldn't get a definitive grade level for him because that's as high as her materials went. So he's reading at least at a 5th grade level. Summer has read to him practically every day of his life (as she has the other children), and it clearly is paying dividends. We need to help both him and Allyson get as excited about math, but literacy is certainly a strength for them.

The Car--NOT A VAN

In response to Carolyn's comment, as well as something Dad insisted on a while back, I believe it is time to discuss the new car. With Turner child #4 due this summer, we have finally outgrown the Elantra. We researched a number of options, and finally decided we liked the Kia Rondo, a crossover vehicle. Essentially, a crossover blends a sedan and an SUV, getting interior space similar to midsized SUVs with the handling and fuel efficiency of a sedan. The vehicle is built on a car chassis, not a truck chassis, like an SUV is. In essence, a crossover is simply a station wagon, but less boxy and a bit higher up off the ground.

The Rondo seats 7 with a 2-seat 3rd row option. From the front, it looks a lot like a mid-sized car, and from the back it looks like a minivan. But, for emphasis, IT IS NOT A VAN. It's a good two feet shorter than most vans, and much less wide. One Sunday, I looked at the church parking lot and felt like I was surrounded by rhinoceroses, and I have always felt that a minivan drives like a tank. The Rondo drives a lot like the Elantra. And on road trips we get 30-40 miles/gallon.

It's been a month since we bought the car. We've used it for two camping trips, a 300-mile day trip, grocery shopping, and carrying up to 7 children at a time (Summer babysat 4 kids under the age of 8 one day during the kids' Spring Break, and she carted them all around in the Rondo), and it's been amazingly versatile. Not to sound like a Kia promo, but it's the perfect car for us. It's big inside but small out, it gets great mileage, and it's horribly cute.

Anyhow, check out the photo below and tell me--I dare you--that this is a van. Notice, if you will, the real van in the background; this is a good 2 feet longer than the Rondo.

Valley of Fires

This weekend we were able to squeeze in another camping trip, this time to Valley of Fires in southern New Mexico. Valley of Fires is located in the midst of a 5000 year old lava flow in south-central New Mexico. The flow is several miles wide and runs for more than 40 miles southeast from Little Black Peak. Among the lava, the desert blooms in a stunningly diverse array of cacti, shrubs, trees, and, after our wet winter, a profusion of wildflowers. Here the kids stand at the edge of the lava flow.

We arrived around dinnertime and set up camp. After eating, we strolled through the lava flow and got a glimpse of the amazing landscape. The next morning, after the kids woke up much too early, we broke camp.

As a brief aside, let it be known that New Mexico tends to be windy in the spring. This is true of Valley of Fires. The tent campsites are in a secluded depression, so the wind was less severe here, but taking the tent down is still a challenge. Once the tent pegs are up, a tent becomes more of a kite. The lesson here is that we enjoy camping with a degree of difficulty...

After packing up, we headed to the Malpais (Spanish for badlands, a term used for lava flows in the Southwest) nature trail, a one-mile loop through the lava flow. In spots, we were able to get off the simple trail and explore among the lava. Ryan for one is very nimble in scaling the rocks. All of the children enjoyed the chance to wander off the trail and explore a bit, and Summer, despite her protestations, did not have a heart attack at the sight of her children scrambling up and down lava crags among cactus. Here the kids stopped to observe a strange desert bug.

And here is a photo of the kids on the hike, with a 20 foot high piece of lava behind them.

We left the campground and headed east through the Sacramento mountains to the town of Capitan, home of the Smokey Bear Historical Park. The real-life Smokey was rescued from a wildfire near Capitan in 1950, and this small park celebrates the bear--both the real creature and the image--and the role of wildfire and wildfire suppression. The kids enjoyed finding Smokey's grave.

Tent Rocks

On 11 April, the older kids had a field trip to Tent Rocks National Monument, and since Ryan and I had done this trip before, I volunteered to go along. Besides realizing how much I like teaching adults for my vocation, we had a great time, and the hike alone is legendary.

Tent Rocks is a BLM-administeed site on Cochiti Pueblo land, mid-way between Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Volcanic ash from the Valles Caldera northeast of Albuquerque deposited hundreds of feet deep and compacted into a light, airy (and easily eroded) basalt. This was later covered by a layer of more resilent rock. Over time, water has eroded steep canyons into the plateaus of the region, and in this spot, slot canyons have developed. The harder rock atop the basalt erodes more slowly, leaving large caps on top of narrower pillars. These caps lend the name to the monument.
The hike meanders for 3 miles (round trip), into a slot canyon and then up to the mesa top, with stunning panoramic views of the Sandia, Jemez, and Sangre de Cristo mountain ranges. The last portion of the hike in (and thus the firt part of the hike back) is a steep and gravely ascent, with one spot where small children have to be boasted up and lifted down. It's a strenuous hike for children.

At one point in the slot canyon, a 20-foot boulder has fallen and lodged a few feet from the canyon floor; we had to duck under it to get by. In another spot, a 100 foot pine stands with its roots exposed 6 feet high, as the soil has been washed away from periodic flooding. The kids were able to walk through the roots.
I had a group of 5 kids, including Allyson and Ryan, one of Ryan's classmates, and two of Allyson's peers. Since we had two kindergarteners, we went a bit slower than the 2nd-grade classes, but we made good time, getting there and back in about 2 hours.

Isaac's secret identity

Isaac is in a funny phase right now where he is intrigued by super heroes. Mainly Buzz Light Year, after a much regretted decision by Summer to let the kids watch Toy Story. Not only does he fight in order to maintain his right of ownership over the Buzz Light Year doll, he goes so far as to pretend he has a laser button on his arm. He pushes it to use his laser to kill bugs around the house while yelling "Go home to yours mommy!"

But what is unknown to the rest of the world is that Isaac also has a secret identity. He is otherwise known as Super-boy. He has claimed this identity recently much to Summer's amusement. He dons his favorite blankie/cape ready to race around the house and use his super powers.

His powers include the ability to help Summer tackle piles of laundry; the ability to fly, of course, what would a super hero be without flight, which is really just him jumping from one piece of furniture to another; the desire/need to run around the house at top speed endangering himself and others; and the unalterable ability to fall asleep after being in the car for two minutes (I think he is going through a growth spurt).

It is fun to watch him take on a new identity so full of mischief and independence while still desperately holding on to his role of "mommy's little boy." Is this what I can expect of teenage-hood?

El Morro

This past week has been a busy one in terms of outdoors stuff. I went on a field trip with Allyson and Ryan to Tent Rocks National Monument on Thursday, and I will post an entry about this trip later in the week. We had planned on a camping trip for the weekend, but Friday was a horribly rainy day here, so we scrapped that and waited for Saturday, a bright, warm New Mexico day. Since we were looking at a day trip, we went to El Morro National Monument, about two hours west of Albuquerque.

El Morro is a sheer sandstone bluff rising from the Ponderosa forest along the Continental Divide southwest of Grants. On the northeast side of the bluff, a secluded basin fills with rainwater and snowmelt to create a perpetual pool 10-12 feet deep. For centuries, this has been an oasis along the route between population centers such as the Acoma and Zuni pueblos, as well as Chaco Canyon to the north. Atop the bluff are ruins from an Ancestral Puebloan site, and along the wall near the pool are petroglyphs and inscriptions by indigenous peoples, Spanish conquistadors, and Anglo travelers, making El Morro a bit of a microcosm of the intersection of cultures in the Southwest. Here is a view of the bluff looking up from the edge of the pool.
We hiked to the pool edge and along the inscriptions, some of which are incredibly intricate. We then climbed to the top of the bluff. It is a good ascent (~250 feet vertically), and the elevation at the base is 7200', making for a good hike. Once at the top, we followed a trail carved into the sandstone by the CCC as it meanders along the top. From here there are excellent views of the surrounding landscape, marked by the Zuni Mountains and pine forests, as well as a few other sandstone outcroppings. Here are Allyson and Ryan at the top of the bluff looking north; the edge of the bluff behind them is above the pool.
The top of the bluff is a contoured field of both sandstone and a harder layer of rock that has protected the underlying stone, which is why El Morro is here today, while the sandstone around it has eroded away. The rain from Friday had left puddles and pools in the depressions, some of which were an eerie milky white from the sediments and the white rock. Isaac said several times during the hike, "I like milk." Some of these pools blocked the trail, forcing us to do some trailblazing to the side of the marked path, including some impressive scaling by young children and a pregnant woman. Ryan, for one, did an excellent job of tackling some of the tough spots, and I am convinced that Nathan would love this hike, fraught as it is with peril.

We stopped at a few spots to eat and take pictures of both the kids and the landscape. The sheer walls of the bluff, which drop hundreds of feet in places, make for a surreal experience, almost like staring down into the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. The juniper and pinon at the top of the bluff made it feel more like Utah or Wyoming than New Mexico, but the intense blue of the sky was distinctly New Mexican, a deep blue I haven't seen anywhere else.

After hiking down on the shady north side of the bluff, with pockets of snow on the ground in places, we worked our way back to the visitor center. There is a campground near the visitor center, but we'll wait until the nighttime lows are above freezing at El Morro to go tent camping. And next spring, when I'm carrying the baby in the front carrier, and Summer is in her post-pregnancy shape, we'll do it again. Here is an after picture of the kids; they look pretty good for having hiked three miles at nearly 8000 feet.

Welcome

I've created this blog as a way for the NM Turners to communicate with family spread throughout the country. I'll look into adding relatives as group members, and Summer and I can post entries about family news and vacations, along with pictures we take of our adventures. Enjoy!