Traveling & Caching Through New Mexico

Since we are one day from arriving back home, I best get caught up with the trip. Tonight is the first night I feel like I have the time and energy to deal with the blog. Travel has been good without incidents like weather or accidents. This trip home was to include some new roads (this IS the 10th trip to & from) and some interesting and different geocaches, basically virtual geocaches. "A Virtual Cache is about discovering a location rather than a container. -you may be required to answer a question about the location, take a picture, complete a task, etc." Usually Virtual Caches are located at a location of some historical significance. Such was the case on this trip.

We spent our first night in Albuquerque. Originally, we had planned to stay in Grants, but because we got started earlier than we thought, we made the change. That was good and bad: good because we ended the day 100 miles closer to our second day destination, bad because we did not plan for any geocaching in Albuquerque. We missed an event that evening a half mile from the hotel. (Bummer, as we are trying to reach 100 events. We are close...)

I was able to use the geocaching app on my iPhone to find a nearby Virtual Cache, "Our Lady of the Tree".

as required, we had our pictures taken with 

Our Lady in the Tree

in Old Town Albuquerque

San Felipe De Neri

oldest church in Albuquerque

providing services for 309 years

Easter display in the front courtyard

archway between church and church residence

a beautiful, well-preserved structure

(This is why we LOVE Virtual Caches)

Our next stop was Moriarty, NM to collect a traditional cache titled "Welcome to Moriarty." I am also collecting 100 Welcome to... caches. The cache was at the intersection of two highways.

I am unsure of the significance of the surveyor statue

History of Moriarty

cowboys and ranching area

We took a good road with very little traffic that passed by Los Montoyas, a spot on the road, not even a dot on the map. 

some fresh graves

notice the bench to the right

a headstone

 well cared for graves

very desolate country in northeast NM

The higher we climbed in elevation, the more cloudy the sky became, and the cooler the temperatures. Our last stop was the Visitor's Center in Raton NM before crossing the Raton Pass into Colorado where we spent the next two nights.