I Love New Mexico

About the Episode

Bunny and Johanna talk about their top five (for now) places they’ve never been in New Mexico. You may be surprised what places two native New Mexicans have never been before! Have you been to any of these places? Do you have a “New Mexico bucket list” you’d like to share? Reach out at ilovenewmexicoblog@gmail.com

Links:
I Love New Mexico blog page
Bunny’s website
I Love New Mexico Instagram
I Love New Mexico Facebook
White Sands National Park
El Morro
Ojo Caliente Spa and Resort
Johnson Mesa
Four Corners Monument
Capulin Volcano
Gila Catwalk
Zuni Pueblo (New Mexico Magazine)
Cumbres and Toltec Railroad
Dripping Springs

Episode Transcript

Bunny: (00:11)
Hi there and welcome to the I love New Mexico podcast. I’m Bunny Terry, and I’m joined by my co-host and my assistant and my producer, who also happens to be my daughter, Johanna Medina. And we are talking today, um, about places that are on our bucket list that we haven’t been. And so I think it’s gonna be a fun conversation where we can talk about, I mean, obviously places we haven’t been, but why we wanna go there and then we wanna hear from you what’s on your bucket list, or what do you know about the places that we’ve put on our list and what can you offer as advice for getting there immediately? I think this is my bucket list for the next 12 months. I don’t know about you Johanna, but it was fun to think about this, wasn’t it?

Johanna : (01:04)
Yeah. Some of these places have been on my bucket list for a long time, and I think some people might be surprised that there’s so many things we haven’t done, even though we lived in New Mexico, our whole lives pretty much, you know, give or take a couple years here and there. But, um, there’s still so many things. We only came up with five each because we didn’t want this to be, you know, a two hour podcast. But, I think we could do, you know, the next five and the next five every couple months. So there’s just so many things to do in New Mexico. And I’m a little bit like ashamed that some of these things I haven’t done, but hopefully I will get to do them. Like you said, in the next, maybe the next 12 months, but at least some time in my life

Bunny: (01:54)
Well, I was just thinking, people will be surprised, um, at our list and yet, um, I’d like to hear, you know, I know a lot of people, especially from our hometown who have not been to probably 80% of the state, I think that’s what happens when you live somewhere. So that’s sort of what we’re trying to accomplish here is some awareness and some intention in getting to know your home state better. What do you think?

Johanna : (02:23)
Yeah, I agree. I think, when I was thinking about this list, I could have said honestly, like the whole Southern half of the state, right. Anything south of maybe Albuquerque or Elephant Butte. I mean, I’ve been to Las Cruces, but just barely and some things I haven’t done since I was little, I don’t remember. So, um, but there are a lot of things I still wanna do. I mean, and there’s some stuff, even in north, more the Northwest side. I haven’t really explored that much. I mean, there’s, the things you sent me on your list. I only, I think I only knew like one thing I, other ones I, hadn’t even heard of before. So, yeah, this will be an ongoing list. And I think the more our listeners kind of respond to, we might discover new things. We didn’t even know existed in New Mexico.

Bunny: (03:14)
Oh absolutely. And, um, and while we’re, you know, I’ve, I’ve tried to, um, come up with a little bit of information about a few of the places, um, may even be doing searching while we’re talking. But, I think what’s interesting is the first thing that’s on your list. So I think you ought to go first.

Johanna : (03:37)
Okay. Um, I kind of mentioned it in, uh, our episode with Patrick, but I’ve never been to white sands and that’s the one I think I’m the most ashamed of because it’s like, why that’s, that’s one of the most famous things. I think almost like second to Balloon Fiesta, white new Mexico’s really famous for white sands, national monument national park. It is a national park now, but, it’s just like one of those things I think sh should be on everybody’s list. And I don’t, I mean, the only reason I have never done it is because sometimes it seems like it’s tricky the time of year. Like you can either go when it’s too hot or too cold because the sand is gonna be hot. So I’m always worried about what what’s the best time of year to go. And then it’s kind of, uh, it’s been like a planning issue too, because it’s far enough away. It’s about three hours from us, probably three, maybe four hours from Santa Fe.

Bunny: (04:35)
I think it’s almost four. Yeah.

Johanna : (04:37)
Yeah. So it’s, it’s not really the, like you could do it in a day, but it would be a lot of driving. And so you kind of have to plan, uh, maybe an overnight and then I’ve always wondered, well, where do I stay overnight? You know? Yeah. You could stay the night in Alamogordo, uh, or, you know, you could make a bigger trip of it and stay somewhere else. But for me, I mean, those are just excuses. Why I haven’t done it, I just need to make it happen. But, uh, I think it’s worth it.

Bunny: (05:08)
Well. And so I’ll tell you that. I think the first time I ever saw white sands is, um, when I was in high school and we drove to Los crus through Alamogordo from Alamogordo. So the road from Alamogordo to Las Cruces goes, um, right by white sands. You’re just driving along the road. And suddenly, suddenly there is this huge expanse of really white sands. And, um, I’m gonna read a little bit about what it says here on, um, their website. It says white sands, national park is an American national park located in the state of New Mexico and completely surrounded by white sand’s missile range. It covers 145, almost 146,000 acres in the Tula basin. So it’s in Southern thou, it’s in Southern New Mexico. That it includes, a, it’s like 275 square mile field of white sand dunes, composed of gypsum crystals.

Bunny: (06:10)
So the cool thing about, well, or the interesting thing, let me say that the interesting thing about going from Alamogordo to Las Cruces is that at least, I don’t know if this still happens, but when I was in college, which was like, right before the crust cooled, um, they, you could sometimes get stopped. Like there’s like, there’s a, a roadblock place where you can get stopped because they’re doing missile testing. So you could, on the very first trip we got stopped in our little school, um, station wagon. We were going down for a Future Farmers of America trip.

Johanna : (06:49)
And that’s, that’s what I remember all in high school, all the FFA kids, every time they went to state, um, their state competition, they always got to go to white sands. And so I always tell like the coolest pictures and you can surf on the dunes and, you know, there’s just some really beautiful pictures that can be taken there at white sands. It’s very highly photographed area, but yeah. So you got, you would have a traffic stop there.

Bunny: (07:15)
Yeah. And what I’d say just to let our listeners know if they’ve never been, if they wanna go back, is that it seems to be open year round. There are one of the cool things and, um, your brother Zachary did it is, um, you can go down and do a full moon. You can like camp out at white sands during a full of, I think the reservations are in really high demand. So you’ll wanna go to their website and check it out. But that’s something I’ve never done that I think would be way fun.

Johanna : (07:46)
Mm. Yeah. I didn’t realize you could camp there

Bunny: (07:51)
Only at specific times is my understanding. See, we, we don’t even know. We, I haven’t been in, probably haven’t been in 30 years, 40 years and you’ve never been, so that should be high on everybody’s bucket list.

Johanna : (08:06)
So what’s your number one?

Bunny: (08:07)
Well, I don’t know if it’s my number one, but I mean, it’s number one in the list I gave you and, um, being a history buff and having a degree in, um, American history, I really want to go to El Morro and I have never been. And El Morro is also called inscription rock. And, it is a, in the Western part of the state near the Zuni Pueblo. And it is, um, it’s a sandstone bluff and El Morro, the word El Morro means the Headland, but it was this because there is a spring, a watering hold of some sort there it’s been a popular camp campsite for hundreds and hundreds of years and ancestral, Pueblo people, Spanish American travels carved over 2000 signatures. And so that’s why it’s called inscription rock is that even people who came through New Mexico, um, Spanish explorers who came through, um, in the six, 15 and 16 hundreds carved their names in this rock and they’re still there.

Johanna : (09:27)
Is that the one you were telling Tania about at that time?

Bunny: (09:31)
Yes. And plus

Johanna : (09:32)
It could be on the way to Phoenix.

Bunny: (09:34)
Yeah. Well, and that’s, we passed it on the way to Phoenix one time, but we didn’t pull off the road so that, um, I could take a look and see all those signatures of people that I’ve been reading about for years and years and years. But it’s also beautiful. I mean, it’s, you can look it up. There’s a, a beautiful… it’s a large sandstone bluff out in the middle of some pine forest and you, we can go camping there. And, and when Toby and I have had these funny conversations about getting a camper trailer, the first thing I think of is going to Elmore. So that’s number one on my list.

Johanna : (10:18)
Cool, cool. I like that. Well, I wanna go on that camping trip with you.

Bunny: (10:21)
Okay. Okay, cool. Cool. What’s your number two?

Johanna : (10:25)
Uh, my number two is something probably, I mean, a lot of people have heard of or done. Um, but I have never been to Ojo Caliente the spa resort. It’s pretty popular. It’s kind of, I mean, how would you describe the area it’s north it’s in the north Eastern part of the state in between here and Taos?

Bunny: (10:50)
Really the easiest way to get there is to go straight north through Espanola and act like you’re going to Abique and then at the sign for El Rito you turn. Right. And it seems to me that it’s about 16 miles off of, off on that road. And, um, the cool thing about Ojo is that it’s been there. Well, it’s the home of some… it’s the oldest hot Springs resort in the country. Did you know that?

Johanna : (11:24)
No, I didn’t read that. I didn’t know that, but I was reading on their website, but it says for thousands of years, travelers and locals have been drawn to the wild unspoiled Oasis springing with ancient wisdom and pure natural spring waters. Um, so it’s a yeah, natural spring, uh, hot Springs and it’s, you know, supposed to be rejuvenating. It has all kinds of minerals and stuff in the water. Cuz we have other, we have a lot of hot Springs in New Mexico, but I think those are supposed to be the best ones. And they’re really, you know, it’s a very nice spa and resort and you can stay there. And so that’s definitely on my list to go. And I know they do have a special where you can, you can get to, you can go to the spa and soak in a hot spring for free on your birthday. Like if you have to be your exact birthday, but my birthday’s in November. Right. So it’s always like…

Bunny: (12:17)
No, that would be the perfect time to go. So we went for Fe’s birthday, um, because she got to go free. This place has been there since 1868. So, it’s like they opened up right after the civil war. So there, um, , they they’ve been there forever and they have beautiful facilities and I agree with you, it should be on everybody’s list. And um, I think we’re gonna have to explore, I think we’ll have to go up there and, and maybe do a remote from there. It’s so cool.

Johanna : (12:48)
yeah.

Bunny: (12:49)
And you can get a massage while you’re there, so we’ll do that too. Nice. Nice. Well, the next thing on my list, and this is primarily from my husband talking about it all the time, but also because it’s kind of up in my neck of the woods, um, is Johnson, Mesa and Johnson. Mesa is just to the east of redone and just south of the Colorado border. And, there’s a little, there’s a little farming community up at the top of Johnson Mesa called bell New Mexico. And I can’t tell you if it’s still actually an incorporated community, but there is a church there. Um, it is just this broad expanse of New Mexico that isn’t isn’t heavily inhabited. It’s almost it, you know, it’s sort of, it would be like going back in time, but it’s also in a beautiful corner of the state. So I’d really like to go to Johnson, Mesa, um, go,

Johanna : (14:01)
Yeah, that’s one I had never heard of before when I read it on your list either, but it’s not too far away.

Bunny: (14:08)
No. And what people may not know is that that corner of the state, especially around Raton was heavy. It was a real heavy coal, um, C O A L um, mining region. And so, so up at the top of Johnson Mesa, there was a, it says around 1887 Marion bell who was a railroad construction worker led a group of fellow workers and minors to the Mesa top. And they all filed for homesteads and began to farm. And so they created a community up there hoping that they could find a little safer place to live than down in the valley and near Maxwell where they were working in the coal mines at Dawson all the time. So, I just wanna go take a look. It seems sort of like untouched as, as close to untouched, New Mexico, as you can get, it’s about 14 miles long, um, running east to west and two to six miles north to south. And it’s just a high grassy plateau with this old church that I feel like I gotta see it. It’s on my list.

Johanna : (15:12)
Yeah. Yeah. That’s really cool. Definitely definitely worth having on the list. My third one is another very famous place to go is the go to four corners. I’ve never done that. Another thing that just, just living here, you know, you just don’t like maybe venture out to do things like that. I mean, I’ve been through, so for the four corners area is where four states are touching. It’s the only place you could do that in the country. So you have New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, and Arizona are all touching corners. You could see on the map. But you can actually go there and there’s a little, uh, what’s there there’s like a monument or a little something I know you could stand on. You could be in all four states at the same time, right?

Bunny: (16:01)
So there’s this cool, concrete platform. And it has a marker that shows exactly where the corners of the four states are. So you can put, you know, the heels of your feet in, you know, New Mexico and Colorado and the toes of your feet in Arizona and Utah. It’s very cool. I did it on a field, on a school science trip when I was in the seventh grade. I haven’t been back. So it’s it. You’re right. It’s a great, and, and when you go to the four corners, you will pass Shiprock, which is an amazing monument. I mean an amazing rock, a formation geological formation that we all recognize from photos, but, uh, that’s where it is. That’s where the four corners is.

Johanna : (16:46)
Yeah. Maybe it’d be cool to take all, all your grandkids there too sometime go.

Bunny: (16:51)
That will be fun.

Johanna : (16:52)
Yeah. There’s a very famous scene. If people watch breaking bad, of course, if you know anything about New Mexico and where, Walter, Walter White’s wife Skylar goes there and she takes the baby and she just flips a coin to see like, where’s she gonna go? You could, you know, to pick cuz she wants, she wants to get away, but she ends up her coin lands in New Mexico anyway. So she goes back home, but you could flip a coin and decide, well, which date am I gonna go to? But

Bunny: (17:18)
That is cool. I had no idea.

Johanna : (17:21)
Yeah. Yeah. That’s the only reason I knew what it looked like. That little metal thing that you could stand on, but right. Someday we’ll get up there.

Bunny: (17:32)
Nice. Nice. So, so the next thing on my list is all, is again in the Northeastern corner of the state, kind of like Johnson Mesa. So I think I could make this a, uh, you know, a, a day trip, uh, maybe on our way to Logan, but I wanna go to Capulin, which is actually Capulin volcano. And it is an extinct, um, volcano in the Northeastern part of the state between Raton and Clayton. And, you can drive to the top of the volcano and you can, um, I’m, I, I can’t, honestly, I should have, I should know this off the top of my head, but, um, there was an entire volcano field up around, they call it the Raton Clayton volcano fields. And so there are all these, in fact, I just sold a ranch not long ago called the, Chavez mountain ranch. And Chavez mountain is one of those little volcanoes, but, um, it’s, you can drive to the top. And from the top of that, from the rim, you can see Colorado, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Texas, um, it’s it’s, the views are stunning. And, it’s especially one of the things that I’ve heard people say is that you should drive up there at night because it’s the it’s really spectacular. And you can see all of those states, you can see lights. I had a friend who said, you can see all the way to Mexico. I don’t know if that’s true. Wow. they also have, it has one of the darkest night skies in the country because there is no light pollution out there. I gotta tell you there’s nobody lives out there except ranchers and, um, people who have figured out how amazing New Mexico is. So I wanna go to Capulin sometimes soon. I’m gonna do it this year.

Johanna : (19:29)
Absolutely. That’s that’s funny because whenever you sent me that, I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know it was a mountain or a volcano, but I thought you were talking about Capulin cherries , which is what everyone, more where Lisa’s family’s from makes like jam and jelly and uh, out of the cherries there. So that’s like in the more area, but that’s how they say it up there in Northern New Mexico. They say Capulin but , I dunno if that’s how you say the volcano.

Bunny: (20:00)
Got It. And I wonder what that word means. I’m gonna look it up. While You’re telling us what your next one is.

Johanna : (20:05)
Uh, yeah, that’s a good question. My next one, what are we on? Oh, I’m on number four for me the Gila catwalk, which is in Southern New Mexico. I know a lot about it, but I haven’t been. So in the Gila national forest, which is, like I said, Southern New Mexico kind of, I mean,

Bunny: (20:31)
That’s on my list. Absolutely.

Johanna : (20:33)
You could do it on your trip to white sands and make a big circle, like a big yes. Trip about like with it. But, there’s not too much else around there. It’s not far from Las Cruces, but it is a, like a hiking trail. That’s a built up. I mean, they call it catwalk because it’s a wooden and metal catwalk. I dunno how else to describe it. Built into the walls of it’s yeah. It’s built into the walls of the cliffs and rock there. Um, so let me read a little bit about it. The, this, it was an old gold and silver mining area, uh, above whitewater canyon and in 1893, the town grew around the mill and the mill only lasted about 10 years, but now this catwalk is basically just a really cool place to go and do a hike. It is, you know, it’s a day use area. I think you can camp around there, but you can’t really camp in there. Um, takes about one to two hours to do the hike, but it’s just really pretty, there’s lots of running water there and you can do it pretty much all year round. You know, it just depends on the weather, what you wanna put up with. But,

Bunny: (21:54)
Well, I would bet it gets cold, you know, the Gila wilderness which I I’m gonna say this. We may have to look it up before we, before we run this. But the Gila Wilder wilderness is one of the first designated wilderness areas in the country. And it’s down, you know, silver city is probably the major city. I think that’s, you know, where you, it’s not a city. I mean, it’s a town, but, one of the things that’s close there, um, somebody else may wanna add to their, um, bucket list is the Gila cliff dwellings are not far away from that. And that’s a national monument where, you know, people, you know, lived in caves right above the Gila river and they, then they created these dwellings of stone masonry, um, the muon, um, cliff dwelling to what they call him.

Johanna : (22:52)
, mm-hmm

Bunny: (22:53)
Well, first I wanna tell you that I looked up what Capulin or Capulin (cap-oo-lean) means, and it is when you translate it to English, it is a ground cherry. And, um, and that sounds like what, what they’re harvesting in Mora.

Johanna : (23:13)
So yeah. Or choke cherry they call it like choke cherries. Yeah, I hear that a lot up there. it’s really good. Makes good wine makes good jam jelly, whatever.

Bunny: (23:25)
Wow.

Johanna : (23:25)
Yeah, but the Gila catwalk that’s that’s on my list and you have a, you have a blog post about that on your page. And I can add that link in here too.

Bunny: (23:36)
Oh, that’d be perfect. Yeah. So the next place I put on my list was Zuni Pueblo. I first wanna say that if you’re, if you’re from, whether you’re from New Mexico or not, if you are not a member of any Pueblo that you wanna visit, you ought to do some research and be sure you don’t just show up. Because there are a lot of pueblos right now. I think Santa Domingo is one where you still, because of COVID can’t enter the Pueblo, but, um, I’m, I’m really interested in Zuni because that is what I understand the first place in this country where, um, Pueblo people came in contact with Spanish explorers. And if you ever read one of my favorite books called cities of gold, which is written by Doug Preston, where he follows the route of Coronado from Mexico, all the way up through Arizona, into New Mexico and, and finally ends up the same way that Coronado did, he ended up at Pecos, but the first place that he encounters native peoples is in Zuni.

Bunny: (24:54)
And, we always, talk about Toby and I talk all the time about what was that moment like when, the Zuni people looked at the horizon and saw these people coming on, these huge hoofed, you know, they, they hadn’t seen horses before. So I just, I think it’s so interesting. And it was such a seminal moment in American history and, and I’ve always wanted to go down and, and if it’s allowed, go through the Pueblo, um, this month in New Mexico magazine, which by the way, I would recommend to anybody who is interested in New Mexico, it’s beautifully produced. And, um, there’s a ton of information every month in New Mexico magazine. But in this month’s New Mexico magazine, there’s an article about, a gentleman who is Zuni and he is also an archeologist and he’s now leading tours at the Pueblo. And, we’ll get a little more, I’m gonna do a little more research on him because I wanna give you accurate information, but that’s one of the places that I’ve always, you know, people are curious a lot about what goes on in pueblos and they like going to feast days. And, I just wanna know more of the story. I wanna go down there and look at it and see what I mean, he’s gotta be an authority he’s from there. And he, um, he’s also an archeologist, so I’m really dying to know what he has to say.

Johanna : (26:28)
Yeah, that would be cool. What, where is this, like, what part of the state is that?

Bunny: (26:34)
So if you go to grants, which is west, if you get on I 40 and go west to grants, like you’re going to Arizona, um, and you turn south at the Laguna Acoma uh, and, and of course there’s something else. I really wanna go to sky city to Acoma Pueblo as well. But if you turn, if you turn left, which go takes you south, you go down through, uh, you first get to El Morro and then maybe another 10 miles. And this is none of this is accurate because I’m only, it’s only from memory when we’ve driven through there on our way to Phoenix taking the long way. Zuni Pueblo is in that area. And when you turn off the road, you have no idea that you’re going to enter this kind of rolling hill pine forest it’s with these sets gloves. It’s very pretty I love Zuni jewelry. It’s a completely different looking sort of it’s a different design than you know, Navajo pieces are big chunks of turquoise. Zuni is little tiny, intricate inlaid, and what they call petty point and needle point, um, pieces that have tiny pieces of turquoise that they have beveled and put into designs. I’m really crazy about Zuni jewelry. So, that’s where it is.

Johanna : (28:12)
You might have to, to do a blog post with this podcast, like mapping all the places and maybe put some pictures with the jewelry. Cause I was just looking too, the Zuni reservations is about three hours from Santa Fe. You’re right. It’s just south of Gallup looks. Yeah. It looks very green around there on the map. It is. So that’s pretty cool. It’s really green.

Bunny: (28:33)
Yeah.

Johanna : (28:35)

Bunny: (28:35)
Yes.

Johanna : (28:36)
So the last one I have, well just last for this list, this episode today, because I just, I had a hard time, like, I don’t know, I just had a hard time narrowing it down to five, but I really want to ride on the Cumbres and Toltec railroad, which I’ve never done. I thought it would be so cool. So you get on that train in trauma, which is Northern New Mexico, close kind of close to Colorado. Have the map up here too, and you go, have you ridden on that before.

Bunny: (29:14)
I have

Johanna : (29:15)
Do you go to Colorado or…?

Bunny: (29:18)
So you can, you can leave, Chama. Um, and you can either go to the top of the pass. And I can’t believe, I can’t remember the name of that pass. You go to the top of the pass or, and you catch another train that takes you back to Chama. So you, so you write the train up. This is what I did. You write the train to the top of the pass. You have, you can have lunch, they have this great lunch, you’re at the top of this mountain and they have these picnic tables laid out with, you know, barbecue and all this great food. And then you can catch a train that goes back. I did that in the fall one time and it was stunning.

Johanna : (29:58)
I definitely think that, yeah, that would be something Milo would like too, but it says that, on their website, which I’ll link of course it’s a 64 miles in length, the longest and highest and most authentic steam railroad in Northern America or north America, um, traverse through some of the most spectacular scenery in the Rocky mountain west. And this says that the train crosses state borders 11 times and zigzags along canyon walls. Um, so, and you, of course you could see lots of wildlife deer, antelope, elk, Fox Eagles. Um, so, and it, you can depart from an Antonito, Colorado or trauma. And so it’s open now until October 23rd. So if I don’t catch it this year, I have to wait until July, but, it just looks so cool. It’ll be so pretty to do that.

Bunny: (31:01)
It is so cool. And, what you can alsodo, you can ride the train all the way to Antonito, and then there’s a bus that will take you back to your car, but I I’m just gonna say not to cast any aspersions on Colorado, but that side of the train ride is not as gorgeous as the Chama side. I mean, if you’ve never been to Chama, I’m just gonna tell our listeners, put it on your bucket list because Chama is beautiful and there are places to stay. Mm-hmm um, it’s, it’s just south of the Colorado border and, um, you know, great places to eat. Great fun little bars. So mm-hmm, , there’s a really cool brewery there. Remember, did you guys go there?

Johanna : (31:45)
Yeah, I mean, I’ve been to Chama and I walked past the train and I saw where it was sitting, but I’ve never been on it, so yeah. But, but Chama is very cute.

Bunny: (31:56)
It is, it is really fun. So I’d recommend that. And, let me tell you, if you haven’t made a reservation yet and there’s anything available in October, that’s a pretty spectacular time. I know that new England feels like they’ve got a corner on, fall color, but if you haven’t seen the aspens in the fall, it’s pretty spectacular. So yeah,

Johanna : (32:16)
Yeah, yeah. It might have to get on that right now.

Bunny: (32:19)
Yeah. Do it, do it sometime. And so the last thing on my list, I’m gonna give a shout out to my friend Scott Hutton, who runs, um, um, these screens all over Santa Fe and Albuquerque and Las Cruces where he, he not only advertises business, um, but also he’s part of Scott Hutton owns Hutton broadcasting, but I think it’s brilliant that he does has these advertising rules for businesses, but then in the middle, he puts up these pictures of places, these videos of places in New Mexico, and, and this keeps coming up. And I said to Toby, I went to school in Las Cruces, and I never went to dripping Springs. So dripping Springs is just a natural area down in the Oregon mountains. O R G A N. And it’s, it’s just hiking trails, but you end up at a waterfall, um, of sorts.

Bunny: (33:24)
And so, it’s on the backside, as I understand it of the Organ mountains. So I went to school in Las Cruces. I looked at those mountains every day. I thought they were stunning, but they’re very austere. You know, it just looks like sheer rock cliffs coming up out of the ground. And, and I believe when you get around to the other side, you get up to the top, like you’re going to Alamogordo, so you could do this on a White Sands trip. As you leave white sands, before you get to the top of the pass, there is a turnoff that says dripping Springs recreation area. And when I look it up online and I see pictures that people have posted of their hikes there, it’s really unexpected. It’s really beautiful. And I guess that’s kind of the point of talking about this bucket list to me is that there’s so much to see here. And there’s so much that’s unexpected. And I would remind people, we have every temperate zone in New Mexico except for tropical. So, you know, we have Sonora desert and then we have Alpine forest. And, you could visit every part of New Mexico for a decade and never see the same thing. It’s so interesting in so many different ways. So that’s I’d really like now you, you put something right at the end of yours, alternate that I thought was fun, cuz you haven’t done it yet. Seems like somebody listening to this podcast could make, could offer this to you, but we’ll see

Johanna : (35:01)
Well, I did put ride in a hot air balloon on my list because of course it’s hot air balloon times about to be a balloon Fiesta season. But I wanna do it, but I’m also scared to do it. because I am a little bit scared of Heights, but I feel like it’s worth it. Cuz one of those things like once in a lifetime, even though I know lots of people do it all the time I just feel like I would wanna do it and just, just try it. But I might be a little bit scared you have done it before you were telling Patrick.

Bunny: (35:32)
I have Done it. I have done it. It’s one of the quietest rides, of course we didn’t do it during Fiesta. I did it when I was crewing for a team. So, I put it out there. I’d say get in one. I do think it’s a little less scary when it’s not during Fiesta because there aren’t, you know, a thousand balloons in the sky, not so much. I don’t how many balloons there are balloon Fiesta. We’re gonna have to talk about that, but it’s so much fun for us to talk about what we’ve done before, but it’s really fun to talk about the possibilities. So I think that’s, that’s the cool thing about talk make your own New Mexico bucket list. We wanna hear, we wanna hear about it. We wanna see it. Yeah.

Johanna : (36:12)
I’m ready to go plan a trip now .

Bunny: (36:17)
Me too.

Johanna : (36:19)
Yeah, definitely comment or reach out to us on social media, on New Mexico blog. And I love New Mexico blog.com. You can email bunny. I love NewMexicoblog@gmail.com. Send us your bucket list. Let us know what you thought of our bucket list. Um, and if you’d like to be a guest, if you love New Mexico, if you have a unique New Mexico story, definitely reach out. We, we love to find some unique and different guests.

Bunny: (36:48)
Yeah. And I just think, you know, thanks for being here and thanks for listening to us ramble on about something that we love so much, which is our home state, the Land of Enchantment. And we’d ask you to follow us wherever you download your favorite podcast and um, every review and every subscription and every like is helpful to us to build an audience. So refers to your friends. Thanks for checking in.