Here's a bunch of sealions chowing down on the herring and then sunning themselves off on log booms:

Lori and Doug put up a mini tree, as they are not going to be home for Christmas this year. This might be their last year without kids, and they decided to come here, and then go to Doug's parents as well.

The canyon where this was taken is about 60 or 70 miles as the crow flies from the Gila Cliff Dwelling National Monument. That area was dated at about 1300 or 1400 using dendrochronology from the wooden beams in the ceiling. It is also about the same distance from the Mimbres River Valley that produced a lot of pottery in that same time period. The petroglyphs are in a VERY remote area and I think only a handful of people know that they exist. I stumbled upon them by accident one day and could barely believe what I had found. Ron

A double today from New Mexico. There is this fantastic canyon called simply the Lower Box. It's where the Gila River cuts through the mesa just before entering Arizona. It's an extremely remote area and was one of our favorite places to go when we lived there. We rarely saw anyone else there.The first picture is looking downstream. The second is from the same vantage point looking upstream. From this point down to the river is 600 to 700 feet. The trees in the bottom od the canyon are huge sycamores and cottonwoods. When there was absolutely zero chance of precipitation (So no danger of flooding) we'd carry our gear down to the canyon floor (no vehicle access) and camp on the sand bars. In the evening we'd sit quietly and watch bats feeding on insects hovering above the water and fall asleep to the coyotes howling up in the hills. In summer we'd carry inner tubes down and drift down the river then get out and walk back upstream so we could do it over again. Ron