Letterboxing~Albuquerque WestSide and Corrales

I'm very behind and trying to catch up with some older photos and adventures.

In late August Jackson, Jenna and I traveled West from our beautiful mountains, through the unique city of Albuquerque and across the chocolate-colored Rio Grande River.
We were wanting to do some letterboxing and explore some old 'haunts' of ours.

Our first stop was to check on one of the letterboxes we placed last year. It's way out on the mesa in Rio Rancho, NM. Our Mariposa box was just fine, but we'd had a lot of visitors, so we pulled the full log book and replaced it with a new one. The statue there is just so striking, don't you think?While there we noticed that many of the yuccas were producing fruit. Jackson wanted to pick some to have a closer look. Did you know that Native peoples of New Mexico used the tough leaves for fiber, the central stem for a strong soap/detergent, and the flowers for eating and the fruit for baking or roasting? The Native Peoples that utilized the yucca fruit included the Havasupai, Hopi, Navajo, Pima, Yavapai, Zuni, the Mescalero and the Chiricahua Apache. Many groups still harvest the yucca.The Native People harvested the fruits, then roasted or baked them. The resulting product is brown and sweet, tasting much like molasses or figs.
After baking, most Native People continued the process by stripping the seeds and pounding the remaining flesh of the baked fruit into a pulp. They shaped the pulp into flatcakes, and sun-dried them. The sun dried cakes could be stored or ground into a powder for mixing with other foods. Some groups, like the Gila Pima, boiled the fruit, dried it, and pounded it into a sweet meal.
Yucca fruit are not only sweet, they are, like agaves, a very strong laxative. A large plate of this tasty treat will keep you running like the EverReady bunny.
Yucca is also an excellent source of soap or detergent. When the central stems or rhizomes of some yuccas are pounded and soaked in water, the resultant mix will foam due to the saponins they contain. Many Native People used yucca as soap for bathing, and for washing clothing and hair.
In addition, the leaves have a long straight fiber that provided material for baskets, cordage, weaving mats, making sandals and snares, tieing basket coils and attaching material to house frames.
We tasted the fruit, but it was quite bland, more like a cucumber than a fruit. I can imagine if it were baked or roasted that the sugars would become available and the fruit would be much sweeter. We thought the seeds would make a beautiful necklace if threaded with string, either painted or left black. The seeds would have also been useful to place inside rattles for ceremonies or to entertain a baby.After leaving Mariposa, we decided to go hunt for a letterbox called Coronado's Campsite. We are studying the Spanish Conquistadors and the Pueblo people right now using our Sonlight Curriculum, so we were excited to search for this letterbox.
Unfortunately we weren't able to find it, but we did enjoy the beautiful hike in the Rio Grande Bosque, with the awe-inspiring Sandia Mountains as a backdrop.Jackson discovered these fragile and delicate leaves. Doesn't this one remind you of beautiful lace? Jackson commented that it also reminds him of suburban sprawl. See the crowded-in roads, houses, yards?We left the Bosque Nature area and drove south out of Rio Rancho and into the quaint village of Corrales. When we lived in Rio Rancho, we spent many days in Corrales, visiting the park, pool, library, hiking the trails, or attending many of the fun events that the village hosts. There is always something to see and appreciate in Corrales. Like this unique artwork. Don't you just love that bunny riding with abandon on his spirited horse?And just look at the detail on this strikingly lovely glass tiled fox.And who said art can't be fun? And healthy, too?Jenna was just wishing that they were real cookies!Watch out Jackson! Those aren't crumbs falling from those animals.We left Corrales and headed for the West Mesa to do some hiking and letterboxing in Piedras Marcadas Open Space area. It's amazing how many hundreds of houses have went up around this area. I remember hiking with my dogs over 14 years ago and the closest house was at least a mile away. Now they back right up to this Open Space area. We had to walk past backyards and all the household smells, like fabric softeners, bbq and cooking smells, dog poop, before we could reach the more wild spaces.If you click on the picture, you can see the remnants of three of the five cinder cone volcanoes in the distance. They were formed over 150,000 years ago, and were the dynamic finale to a series of fissure eruptions that coated the surrounding landscape in a basalt caprock. You can see the volcanic rock covering the hills.The trail has several places to stop and admire petroglyphs.Jackson discovered some little shells while we were out hiking. How they got there, I'm not sure. At one time New Mexico was a swampy sea, but is now an arid desert. But these shells don't look old enough to be from that time. Nor could they have survived all of the urban sprawl and thousands of trodding feet. Maybe someone had some escargot while hiking on the trail? For now the shells remain a mystery.In the end, we weren't able to find any of the letterboxes: Coronado's Campsite or the Christmas Cactus, but we had a great day exploring, hiking and being surrounded by nature and many learning opportunities.