John B. Robert Dam

It's going to be a short driving day today. We're heading just about a hundred miles down the road to Grants, New Mexico. Before we reach our final destination, we'll travel just a few more miles beyond the campground to the Western New Mexico Aviation Heritage Museum. We have a special reason for visiting this place, since it contains an item at the tippy-top of my bucket list. You'll learn that I'm a cheap date when you see what it is. I'll save that little surprise for later.

When we left off, Mike and I were headed out the door to explore the Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument. This involved unhooking and unhitching, closing up all the slides, and generally acting as if we're moving on to a brand new venue. It's the downside of a truck camper...or a motorhome, for that matter. Some people tow a vehicle behind. As for us, we're towing ATV's, and so transportation is limited to the truck that sits under the camper. If we stay in a place long enough, we take the camper off the truck, but we didn't do that here. We're here such a short time, it wasn't really worth it. 

So, off we went, prepared to do some hiking. We drove about 20 miles to the turn-off and saw this:

Well, first of all...reservations for what? It's a primitive national monument under the purview of the Bureau of Land Management. There are some hiking trails, and little else. And so I ask again, reservations for what? Anyway, I was less worried about the reservations than I was about the closed sign. For as many times as I've looked at their website, I failed to notice that it is closed to the public temporarily. I'd say I wish they'd displayed the closure more prominently, but it's right there up front and at the top. Duh.

Okay, so that was disappointing. Oh well...we know how to make lemonade from lemons. We had another venue in mind, and we'd crossed it off our list, deciding it was too much trouble to take a day for this. We were already unhooked and unhitched, so why not? I'm speaking about the John B. Robert Dam. 

If you were a Breaking Bad fan, then this will probably make more sense to you. Mike and I never actually watched the show when it was airing originally. When it was all over, we binge-watched it. We were hooked from the first episode. That was just a few years ago, and recently, we binge-watched it all over again. If you watched the show, you might remember that toward the end of the series, when law enforcement was closing in, Walt and Jesse (at separate times) decided to change their identities and make a run for it. Saul Goodman arranged for them to be picked up by someone who could make this happen. In both cases, the characters waited in front of the most interesting concrete structure.

This picture from the internet shows the name of the place, but that wasn't seen in the series. All we saw were the concrete pillars behind the character.

We (and apparently a lot of other people) inquired of The Google where this place might be, and we found it. The series was set and filmed in Albuquerque, and so it isn't surprising that the John B. Robert Dam is right here, in the part of the city that bumps up against the Sandia mountains.

It was an easy drive finding it, and an interesting place.

To the right of the structure, there was an obvious place where people had climbed to the top, and so we did too. When we reached the top, we found some roadrunners there to greet us.

These are the "greater" roadrunners, almost as big as a chicken.

And the place is HUGE! Mike kept talking about what a great place it would be for skate-boarding. We were surprised at the lack of graffiti, but the city is apparently very quick to cover up any tagging that occurs. There were spots that had obviously been scrubbed clean or painted over.

To the right of the image above is a deep dry lake, and the whole area is covered in residential housing.

Looking over to the left, we could see our camper below.

There was a rounded "lip" before it headed down the hill on the other side.

We walked the full length and then headed back down to the parking lot from the other side.

There was a gated dirt road there, and we also found a patch of prickly pear cactus in full fruit.

Here's some more in a different color.

There were some wildflowers too. I don't know what these are, but they were on stalks about 3 feet high.

Moving down the other side, we surmised these concrete pillars are designed to slow the flow of water in a flooding situation.

My friend from high school who lives nearby confirmed this.

Okay, so it wasn't the same as visiting the national monument, but it was a good substitute, and I'm glad we went.

One of the latches on a cupboard door broke as we were leaving yesterday, and so we headed to a hardware store for a replacement. While I waited in the truck for Mike, I scoped out the quilt shops in the area. I found a good one close by, and I'll cover that in a separate post. 

So we'll move on today. It was a short stop in New Mexico. Our next stop will be for three nights. In addition to visiting the aviation museum, we're going to visit El Malpais National Conservation Area. Believe me, I've read over the website to make sure it is open. It's another park under the purview of the Bureau of Land Management. I note the ranger station is closed for renovations at the moment, but the rest of the park appears open. Fingers crossed I haven't overlooked the obvious again.