New Mexico Local Color (aka Slot, Hatch, Mano)

Weekend of February 24, 2019

Saturday, 2/24: “I would like to take my D3s camera with my wide-angle lens back to Slot Canyon,” said Lou, and away we went on another road trip toward the town of Hatch. You would think that we had a pretty good idea of navigating the trail, but as we age, both our senses of direction are beginning to diminish.. How we ended up back in Slot Canyon going down (which was much more challenging than going up) is anyone's guess, but we managed to find our way back to the truck.

Our next stop was a return to Hatch, NM, Chile Capital of the World. Supposedly the best chile peppers in the world are grown around this area. On this trip Sparky's, a notorious restaurant for the best chile cheeseburger, was open. This restaurant has a reputation. It has accumulated many discarded statues from defunct establishments with the statues mounted atop its roof and abreast the sidewalk across the street. A walk along the sidewalks of Hatch feature a plethora of small shops displaying ristras of chile peppers and Mexican knickknacks.

Sunday, 2/25: So, after an earlier off-hand conversation about arrowheads with Tom, one of our hiking buddies who is an avid collector and sells memorabilia at card shows in CA and Vegas, we found ourselves visiting David, a long-time resident of Las Cruces who has a number of found arrowhead collections. Needless to say, after the visit we all loaded into the SUV and tooled over to the west mesa sand dunes outside Las Cruces looking for arrowheads. Spending about 2 hours and having gathered pocketfuls of anticipated rock treasures, we presented them to David. He let us know, ”They are just rocks”. However, the one treasure which was truly a treasure was found by Tom, our collector. He found an ancient mano but only half of it. If you look at the link below and pinpoint the round mano, it is exactly what Tom found cut in half--a wonderful afternoon in the desert.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mano_(stone)

Hatch-102 Hatch-103 Hatch-104 Hatch-101 Hatch-105 Hatch-106