I Like #319

Sadly I've missed a few weeks of I like posts.  Last week I was out of town, but the weeks before that were just absolutely crazy.  It's been a tough work month here, but I'm coming out of the fog here.  And there have been things to like in the interim even though I didn't have time to post about them.  

Most recently, I made a whirlwind trip to Houston for the International Quilt Festival.  I was only there for one day, during which I volunteered at the SAQA booth, gave a gallery walk about the SAQA exhibit Color in context: Red, gave a lecture on Quilting and Science, and had some meetings and a SAQA reception and dinner.  It was a very full day, but I found time to run through the quilts and booths.  I wasn't particularly in the market for anything, but this yummy yarn did find it's way into my sstash.

There were of course wonderful quilts.  My favorite special exhibit was a solo show by wonderful, new-to-me artist Galla Grotto, whos series of abstracted quilts of women's faces really resonated with me.  Here are just a few I really loved.

There were also wonderful quilts in all the other exhibits. Just a few I took pictures of:

I found this mouse treehouse quilt to be very charming.  It's called Boscodirovo by Italian quilter Laura Gamaleri.  It reminds me of the Berenstain bears tree house.  I've always loved the idea of tree houses.

I loved this Art Deco-inspired quilt by Claudia Myers (called Going Up because the design reminded her of the doors of an ornate elevator).

And I loved the bright neon colors of this more traditional pieced quilt called Tropical Stars by Laura Hirotsu Gates. 

One last silly picture from Houston- a friend took this of me talking excitedly about Paola Machetta's wonderful quilt "Heat Map"

Of course there were many more and I didn't have a chance to do more than whiz through them once, but it was still lovely.

On the way down to Houston, I stopped for a few brief hikes at Big Thicket National Preserve.  They are known for carnivorous plants and boggy terrain.  It was fairly dry, but it was still fun to see the "knees" in the bog, and a field of carnivorous pitcher plants.  And definitely so good to get out and walk a few miles after many hours in the car.

On the way back from Houston, I stopped in Dallas and spent the weekend with my sister and her family.  It was so wonderful to see them.  We hung out and rennovated furniture and roasted marshmallows and played games.

Unfortunately before Houston, we had several days of deep freeze/cold front.  Right before that happened, I went out and cut all the remaining flowers in the garden and harvested all the remaining ripe tomatoes and jalapenos.  It was a good haul, but I was sad because there were still tons of unopened buds, unripe peppers, and green tomatos.  And then after the cold front killed everything, we've been back up in the mid 80s for the last week.  Today at least has normal fall weather. 

Anyway, that's the end of this year's garden because now it looks like this!  I'm going to go out and clean it up this weekend.  I know sometimes they recommend letting the stuff stand over the winter, but the dahlias get slimy and gross and most of the tall flowers had a weird leaf mold by the end of the season which I really don't want to sit in the garden over the winter.

The pups are doing well, very snuggly and wonderful.

I hope there have been good things to like for you all!  Click over to LeeAnna's for more!

NPS Sites in 2023

 I mentioned back at the beginning of the year that one of my goals for this year was to visit at least 12 NPS sites this year.  I decided I'd start a running post tracking them, and then update as I go.  In the first part of the year I traveled a bunch so I got a chance to visit several.  Sadly I think the rate will be slowing down as I'm back home more.

1. Alibates Flint Quarries National Monument, January 1, 2023

2. Petrified Forest National Park, March 4, 2023

3. Cesar Chavez National Monument, March 5, 2023

4. Walnut Canyon National Monument, March 11, 2023

5. Cabrillo National Monument, March 29, 2023

6. Oklahoma City National Memorial Museum, May 2023

7. Big Thicket National Preserve (Near Houston TX), October 2023

Alibates Flint Quarry National Monument

 I wanted to put this in my I Like post from last week, but it was already getting a little long so I decided to do a separate post.  

I love visiting National Park Service sites, and of course the big name ones are the National Parks.  But there are lots of other NPS sites, National Monuments and National Historic Parks etc., and I've never visited a bad one.  There aren't a ton of NPS sites between my place here in OK and my parents place in NM, but there are a few.  One of them is Alibates Flint Quarry National Monument which is about 25 miles north of Amarillo.  The country is hilly and bit ordinary looking from far out, but get up close and there are treasures to find!

I decided to stop on my way back, and so I called them up to see if they were open (it was January 1) and they were, and I was able to sign up for the ranger led tour of the flint quarries.  I got an early start on the drive back and the weather was mild enough that I knew I could take the pups for a walk and then leave them in the car (with water and a breeze) while I did the ranger tour.

You guys, it was so very very cool.  I had absolutely no idea what it even was, I just figured that there had to be something interesting or it wouldn't be an NPS site.  It turns out that native people have been quarrying flint there to make tools (spear points, arrowheads, etc.) since the last ice age!  Weapon points quarried there have been found in mammoth remains that date to the Clovis people in New Mexico, around 9500-9000 BC.  More recently, the Antelope Creek People, part of the Plains Village cultures, lived and quarried the Alibates flint, which is limited to this very small area.  Around 1,000 small quarries dug by the Antelope Creek People have been discovered in the area of the monument as well as archeological sites of their homes/villages.

The most unexpected thing for me though is that the flint is rainbow colored!  It's the most beautiful array of rocks I've ever seen, every color from pink to red orange, purple, blue, white, black, brown, cream, with stripes and curtain formations, and speckles and every pattern imaginable.   

The hills are topped with a layer of dolomite, a carbonaceous mineral that forms sedimentary rock, in this case deposited when it was at the bottom of a shallow, warm, sea, rich with little sea creatures.  Underneath the dolomite caps is the permian layer, with red iron-rich dirt and minerals, and underneath that a silica-rich ashen layer deposited by the eons ago eruption of a supervolcano.  Apparently, these mineral formations, coupled with fossilization/petrification of sea creatures and lichen and the resulting presence of silica led to agatization of the dolomite (which is boring grey and blobby) to form the most gorgeous array of rainbow flint.  

This rock below had partially agatized-- you can see the sort of boring rough looking dolomite on the outer edges.  The black is a layer of petrified lichen, and then there in the middle you can see the red and white agatized flint (it looks kind of like marbled steak or bacon).  In person the difference is much more pronounced, the agatized sections are shiny and smooth and just catch the light in a beautiful way.

Anyway, the native peoples discovered this area and dug quarries to extract the flint.  They traded it throughout what's now the central United States over a very wide area.  At the top of each quarry (most of which are visible now only as indentations that have slowly eroded and filled back in with scrub, are areas of lithic scatter.  Basically the ground is covered with beautiful rainbow flint pieces that were castoffs, not suitable to make the trade blanks that were traded to other people to make into arrowheads or other tools.  Many of the pieces weren't suitable because they had crystal inclusions, which makes them not strong enough for weapons (the Alibates flint is harder than many other flints, about 7.5), but so pretty to see while walking around.  It was so hard not to take three million pictures, but here are a few of the pieces that caught my eye.  The most amazing thing to me is that they all come from the same rocks! Within inches of each other this variety of color.  So crazy!

Red and Black!

Freckles and stripes!

Blue and pink together!

And then there were ones with crystals in them!

This one had little mini-geode type inclusions, beatiful reddish crystals inside the grey-white flint.

This one was a partially agatized coral fossil covered in crystals.

This one had these funny roundish crystal things growing inside the flint.

And really, they're all over the ground, just everywhere you look are new colors and patterns.

I was the only visitor there at the time, and I got a one-on-one ranger tour of the flint quarries.  The trail through the quarries is only accessible with a ranger, apparently before that people were stealing the flint.  But the tours are twice a day and free, so just call up and get on one.  It's the only way to see this beautiful place.  I had a wonderful tour with Ranger Elaine who was full of wonderful information.  What a great way to spend some time on New Years.   Definitely a hidden gem (almost literally) buried in the heart of the Texas panhandle.   Definitely worth the detour if you find your way crossing along I-40.

I Like #267

 Well I missed a week again last week, but I'm here now so I guess that's going to have to be good enough!  Luckily this was a week with many things to like.  I had to go to Santa Fe and pick up all my quilts that had been exhibiting at the New Mexico State Capitol all summer.  The pickup was Monday morning at 8, so I decided to drive out Friday afternoon and meet my parents for a weekend of camping and hiking in northern New Mexico.  

I grew up in southern New Mexico, but in the mountains and this weekend felt like a return to "home" for me.  LeeAnna's prompt for this week was a place you always go in the summer.  Though I don't always go to the Santa Fe area, I do try to get home to the New Mexico mountains every summer so this seemed to fit in perfectly.  

We camped in my parents' truck camper with their two pups at Cochiti Lake campground.  It was lovely with great views.  

My parents' pups didn't hike with us (they weren't allowed at either of the National Monuments we visited) but they're great campers and were excited to go for a walk around the campground when we got back from our excursions.

Saturday was overcast and drizzly, so it was a perfect day to do a nice walk through Petroglyph National Monument, the trail is really exposed so it was nice not to be in the baking sun.  The petroglyphs were fantastic.

On Saturday afternoon Mom and I went to MeowWolf in Santa Fe.  It was this crazy creative psychedelic immersive art experience.  I don't really know how to explain it but it was very fun and very colorful.  There were over 70 rooms to explore, but I only wound up getting pictures of a few. 

Then on Sunday we went up to visit Bandelier National Monument.  I'd never been there before and it was just gorgeous.  The whole canyon was exquisite. The rock is all volcanic tuff, and filled with eroded holes.  In some places the Ancestral Puebloans who built their cliff dwellings there enlarged the natural holes in the rocks into room sized openings.  It was beautiful and sunny and fascinating to see the ruins.  I hope to go back when we have more time to explore.  You don't get anymore New Mexico than this.

Finally on the way home on Monday, I made one more outdoors stop at Pecos National Historic Park and took a walk around the ruins of the Pecos Pueblo.  It was another interesting site, and a critical one for the archeological dating system that is used for the development of Native American pottery.

I was very sorry to have to leave, but the wonderful outside weekend with my parents was so wonderful and restorative.  Definitely the break I needed.

Of course I missed my pups so I was also happy to get home to them and I think they were excited to have me back too.

I hope you had things to like this week! Click over to LeeAnna's for more positivity!