Tsankawi and the Act of Burglary

    The adventures I've had in Santa Fe have been so memorable. From my first day arriving in Santa Fe to the infamous llama treks. Everything has been so remarkable. As I start my last day in Santa Fe, I look back at all the memories. The first night staying in the house, Chad and I couldn't sleep because there were no shades on the windows and there was an evil looking zebra head mounted on the wall. There was the time Eliah and I fought as the Native Americans and Indians on one of our hikes. There also was the constant Words With Friends battles Chad and I had. There are many more memories, but I don't ave time to say the whole innumerable amount of them. For our last hike in Santa Fe, we chose to go to the Tsankawi section of Bandelier. Instead of being 2 hours away, it was actually 45 minutes away. As we edged closer and closer to Tsankawi, I started to see petroglyphs and ladders. I thought maybe Tsankawi could have an ancient civilization within it's area. 

The infamous Words With Friends
game when I had an amazing
 comeback to beat Chad

    When we got to Tsankawi, I immediately saw what seemed like the Scooby-Doo mystery van parked outside. When I got closer, I saw a man sleeping in the passenger seat so I quickly ran back to keep my distance. After we loaded our water bottles and laced up our shoes, we embarked on our journey through Tsankawi. We walked about half a mile until we got to a 10 foot ladder. We climbed up that and walked  a little more than a mile until we came to another ladder. This one was crammed in a small passage and very skinny and long. We climbed to the top of that and continued forward. On our way, we came across some really cool pottery. Apparently, there had been some sort of house up there and it burnt down but little shards of pottery were left. I personally think that the government got some old looking pottery and sent someone to go to the top and smash it with a hammer. There were just crushed pieces everywhere. We also saw many petroglyphs. There were some weird shaped ones that had smiling faces but Mrs. Kamen kept on saying they were a special kind of petroglyph after we said that they were fake. On our way up, we saw many small caves. They must have been shelters because they couldn't of fit more then three small people inside. There seemed to be no houses that had been left until we got to the very top and saw the remains of what had been a castle.

    At the very top, Avi (my little brother), spotted a house. They were actually remains of a castle. It definitely did not look like a castle. So we journeyed on until we reached the bottom of Tsankawi and walked to our car. We drove about 25 minutes to the Treehouse Cafe. What do you know, the Treehouse Cafe is completely organic and there is one more problem. They served no meat. So I ate a cheese and bean quesadilla and slurped it down with my organic root beer. I was thrilled that I had finally finished my last organic meal in Santa Fe. Although my hikes were done, there was still the trip home. The trip started off on a very bad deed. This was done by Chad Kamen. I am well aware of the false statement Chad has blogged about his predicament that he didn't have any movies. This is the real story. Chad's plane took off from Albuquerque before mine did. This meant that he had to get up before me.  The night before, I remembered I packed my bag with 2 movies, Night At The Museum for Avi and The International for myself. I magnanimously thought of Chad and left out 2 movies for him, Iron Man 2 and Tropic Thunder. We had watched half of Tropic Thunder during the trip so I would think that Chad would want to finish it. Then i thought, how could Chad watch a movie if he had no movie player with him, only his iPad. Anyway, I still left the movies for him sitting right on the table. Apparently, Mrs. Kamen had allowed Chad to deliberately search through my own private bag to get a movie he couldn't watch on the flight. I was very angry but kept it in. If Chad is reading this, you will regret this heinous act of burglary. Anyway, after a bad start, we had a nice trip back home and arrived at our house safe and sound. This was definitely one of the most memorable Spring Break trips I have ever taken.

     I have been around many geographical themes this past week. Since I rode home on a plane, there was Movement. Santa Fe does not have any airports. So we had to drive to Albuquerque to get on a plane. There were no airports because Santa Fe is a small town with few residents. Back in the day, people had to take carriages or ride horses or maybe even walk to a destination far away. Luckily, we invented the plane so traveling to far away places is much easier. Being on a plane also benefits people's sense of direction. Since the pilot has already mapped out your destination and has a GPS system, people who travel on planes won't get lost or have a hard time finding where they want to go. This was a big problem a while ago since people were sometimes just following a dirt trail that could be misleading. When we were on top of Tsankawi, we noticed shards of pottery. Apparently, these were left after a fire burnt down the house that it was in. This form of HEI was very common among Native Americans. Since the weather conditions include vast open areas, hot and sunny days, and very heavy wind, it is not unusual for this type of thing to happen. The fires have lead us to many discoveries and we continue to research and find cool things like very old pottery. I have really enjoyed my stay in Santa Fe and plane to come back in the near future.

                           Until I blog again,

                           This is Asa Hiken signing off and,

                           Goodnight Louisville, Kentucky!

Santa Fe Shopping: To The Extreme

      Since the beginning of this trip, I have hiked more then I ever had. I used to go on weekend camping trips at Camp Piomingo with my dad and two brothers. Now since we're older, we don't do it anymore. We never walked nearly as much as we have done in Santa Fe. Apparently, my whole family was tired too so we decided to stay in town again. We slept in pretty late (for the first time). I was happy that I didn't have to have Starbuck's for the fifth morning in a row. I woke up late, watched some TV, had a snack, took a shower, and got ready to go to breakfast. I had heard some great things about the place we were going to. It was called the Tune-Up Cafe. It was a restaurant mostly for breakfast but they served other things as well. Although there were many words used to describe Tune-Up like amazing, delicious, spectacular, one word really popped out to me. The word was organic. My first experience with organic food hadn't been that great. I wasn't too excited but I was willing to try it. So I entered the restaurant, with a feeling that something I was going to try there would be delicious.

       As I entered the restaurant, I was suddenly blinded by the vibrant colors that filled the restaurant. There were pink walls, purple walls, green walls, blue walls, and orange walls. The tables were red, yellow, pink, and blue. But what caught my eye the most was the artwork. There were breathtaking pictures of canyons in Santa Fe, beautiful paintings of the small towns in New Mexico, and a gargantuan picture of a swordfish jumping over a ship. I liked how Tune-Up picked such a variety of pictures that were totally irrelevant to each other. I was already impressed of Tune-Up and I hadn't even started eating yet. When we sat down, I ordered a nice hot chocolate with extra whip cream. After that I ordered two massive chocolate chip pancakes. When we got the food, I looked at mine, seeing only three or four chocolate chips. As I sliced the pancakes open, I instantly saw thirty huge chocolate chips, ready to fill my stomach. So I dug in, every bite was even filled with more chocolate. I ate until I couldn't possibly eat anymore. After I was done, I needed something cold to quench my thirst. I asked the waitress what her favorite was and she immediately said, "watermelon juice." So I ordered watermelon juice and right as I took a sip, I gasped. This was definitely the item that I loved the best. I had found my delicious food that I would try. It tasted like the watermelon was just juiced. It turns out that although the Tune-Up Cafe was organic, they could still make a killer chocolate chip pancake. I left Tune-Up with a full stomach and ready to plop down on my couch and sleep but my parents were just about to tell me that we were going to walk around town.... for the rest of the day.

      The first shop we went to was a little store that was ensconced between an agglomeration of very big trees. It was run by a little plump lady who was of Native American descent. I really wanted to buy a Santa Fe style belt while we were there, and this looked like the perfect place to buy one. It took me about ten minutes to decide which belt I wanted. I ended up buying a gold belt with a couple green, red, and yellow shapes on it. It is a very unique belt and so far, I am the only person who I've seen wearing this belt. You may have seen me wearing this belt during school, as it is my favorite belt I own. After the belt store, we went to a couple other shops and then we stopped at this cool looking fossil store. Inside, there were so many unique things like fifty million year old rocks and huge, archaic fossils.  One thing that really caught my eye was an insanely large tooth. It had belonged to the world's biggest shark, the Megalodon. The extinction of this animal happened a long, long time ago. Another thing that was really cool were the 550 million year old trilobites. They were very small.  As I was taking pictures left and right, I noticed the cashier getting a little irritated. I saw a sign that said, PLEASE, NO CELL PHONES, THANK YOU. As I looked at this poster, I quickly took a picture of it with my cell phone and ran out. I remembered that every picture I had took was with my cell phone and I pretty much took a picture of everything in the shop. The rest of the day was kind of a drag but I made sure I had fun by either taking pictures of everything or running around and practicing my parkour.

       As I looked at the fossils and cool rocks, I noticed that a lot of these things were found in the area. The location of New Mexico was perfect for finding those types of things. Due to it's vast desert-like surrounding, New Mexico was probably home to many prehistoric animals that were killed by drought. That would make fossils. These included many dinosaurs. The rocks also showed that a decent amount of the items in the store were from New Mexico. There were loads of sandstone, which is very common in New Mexico. Of the sandstone, there were sandstone necklaces, sandstone bracelets, even painting used with sandstone. Santa Fe is in the Mountain region. Obviously, there are many mountains and cliffs. There are also huge, beautiful meadows, lakes, and volcanic rifts. The Rio Grande is an amazing body of water, flowing all the way through New Mexico. The volcanic rift that we looked at when we hiked with the llamas was really cool too. The rift started with different types of hard rock from the bottom almost to the very top. The top was layered with awesome sandstone that was bright orange and yellow. Although we didn't do much other than walking around town, it was another great day on our amazing trip in Santa Fe.

                               So long for now,

                               This is Asa Hiken signing off and,

                               Stay Classy, Louisville, Kentucky

Ladders To Heaven

       During my stay in Santa Fe so far, I have had some delicious food. The first night we went to a place called the Zia Diner. While watching the Kentucky basketball game, I was enjoying some delicious fajitas. I finished all of the chicken in two out of the six wraps. That's why I stole some french fries from Samantha and some onion rings from Chad and ate them up before they could stop me. For dessert, I randomly picked a chocolate sundae, thinking it was going to be like any sundae. Apparently, they gave me my sundae eight minutes before I actually saw it so it was melted. When I looked inside, I saw droopy, soggy, mushy ice cream swirling around in my bowl. I didn't know what to do so I just sat and watched it melt away. Chad came over and tried to make me eat it by swirling it around and saying weird noises while singing an excerpt from the world's most worthless song, My Jeans. The second night, I had a huge country fried steak with a baked potato. Although I had great dinners, I kind of got tired of having Starbucks' cinnamon scone and hot chocolate for four mornings in a row. The fourth morning, I quickly stuffed down three pop tarts and cereal so I wouldn't have to have Starbuck's. I happened to be even hungrier a little later so yet again, we went to Starbuck's and I had the same thing. What a great variety of food for breakfast.
           On the fourth day, we went to the Bandelier National Park. We had to drive two hours to the park and two hours back. Bandelier is located right next to the Los Alamos laboratory. This laboratory was famous because one of the first nuclear bomb tests went on here. It was called project Manhattan. When we got to Bandelier, I tried to make out just one little hole from the explosion but I couldn't. When we started our hike, we came across some ancient civilizations. These included some burial circles, ladders and petroglyphs. There were a lot of caves in the cliffs where apparently some Native Americans had been living. It was really interesting. There were petroglyphs everywhere, especially big ones. There was one that was far away on a cliff and it looked like it was a seven foot long bird. There were a lot of petroglyphs of little people too. I thought the hike was so easy and pretty boring until my parents told me we were going to climb to the top of Alcove House, 140 feet above the ground.

        To get to Alcove House, we had to cross a bridge and walk a little more then half a mile to get to the base of the house. From there, we had to climb 140 feet worth of ladders. The thing that was a little nerve racking was that if a person fell, they would either suffer serious injuries or die. There were no ropes or chords or anything to break their fall. Just a huge, 140 foot drop. The first ladder went by pretty easily. Then the second ladder, the longest took a long time, but I still made it. Then there was the third ladder, almost as long as the second but not quite. I made it up there and then just one more, five step ladder to climb. I got past that and was on top. The trip going up was so exhilarating that my heart started beating at 1,000 miles per hour. Apparently, the trip going up was the easy part, the trip going down was tricky. I loved every second of my descent down the ladders. Every step and it felt like my heart started beating faster and faster until it finally felt like it was going to rip out of my chest at any moment. When we finally made it down, we took a few pictures, got our stuff, and walked away, like nothing exciting had just happened.
      While at the Bandelier National Park, there was a lot of HEI that I saw. Like I said earlier, the Native Americans needed some sort of communication. They started writing on walls and rocks to make stories and they would read them. The Native Americans also needed shelter from rain and storms. They built little houses in cliffs where they could stay. To get to the shelters, they built a ladder depending on how high up the houses were so they could enter and exit the shelter at any time. Luckily, most of the cliffs that the shelters were built into were strong enough and thick enough to hold all of that weight and not cave in. The physical features in the Bandelier National Park were unreal. There were huge cliffs with hundreds of shelters in them. The creeks that flowed through Bandelier seemed interminable. There were also myriad cacti everywhere. They were sometimes in bushels or sometimes standing straight up. The Native Americans really took advantage of these features, getting water from the creeks, alloy from the cacti, and building homes in the cliffs. The environment really affected the Native American's lifestyle and may have been the root of their survival.
                             So long for now,
                             This is Asa Hiken signing off and,
                             Stay Classy, Louisville, Kentucky

The Exotic Case Of Spitting Llamas

    Out of all the adventurous hikes we were going to do, llama trekking was definitely the one I was looking forward to the most. I had never seen nor touched a llama before the hike. My family, the Kamen family, and I drove up all the way to go hike with them. It was a two hour drive to the llama trek area and a two hour drive back. The place was called Wild and Scenic Recreation Area. The problem was that my parents nor Chad's parents had ever seen what our guide looked like. All they knew was that his name was Stuart. Stuart could of been a very fit, young man who could bring all of us back up the mountain if we got tired or if he was an old, out of shape man who would have to be brought up the mountain by us if he got tired. Luckily, he was in good shape and had been hiking with llamas for a very long time. When we finally got to our destination, I looked out my window to find five insanely hairy animals. My mom had to remind me that we were taking llamas down the mountain, not that there were just a couple of hairy beasts outside our window. Right when we got there, Stuart told us about the llamas. What he kept repeating was that llamas spit, and the spit is gross, so don't get in their way when they're fighting. I could already tell that the llama hike was going to be very interesting. 

    The weather was perfect, 65 degrees and a little sunny. The hike was two miles down and two miles up but the problem was Stuart kept on warning us that the hike up actually felt like four miles. A A little later, Stuart introduced us to the llamas. In order from what seemed to be the new private all the way to the wise general, there was Raja (brown), Diego (black), Pichu (white), Machu (brown), and K2 (white). I was paired up with Machu and to lead the pack down and back up the mountain. Apparently, the reason I was in front wasn't because I was the leader, it was because I had to watch out for rattlesnakes. I was a little worried at first but after a little bit, I escalated down the mountain with much ease. Our destination was to go down into a beautiful volcanic rift and have lunch there. The amazing Rio Grande flowed right through the middle of it. On our way down, I saw a couple animal tracks. These included beaver tracks, lizard prints, and a mountain lion den. When we finally reached the Rio Grande, we were told to tie our llamas to a nearby tree and then come eat lunch. Stuart had set out an awesome picnic table with salad, turkey, bread, and organic soda. After I finished eating my toothsome lunch, I went to go check on how the llamas were doing. For some reason, the llamas started moaning so I quickly took out my phone and shot a video of the loud noises. Since nature was so loud, the moaning in the video can only be vaguely heard. I really had no idea llamas moaned or even made a sound.

     After we got everything back together and ready to go, we decided to hike half a mile downstream to look at some ancient petroglyphs. They were all on rocks, the ground, and even on trees. After that we hiked right back up the mountain. During the hike up, I really saw a lot of cool things like turkey vultures, agglomerations of cacti, and sandstone. Next, we stopped at a really cool vista and took some awesome shots of the rift. Personally, I felt like I had the best llama because he didn't have to go to the bathroom every two minutes on the path. As we tried very hard to finish the hard hike up, I couldn't help to think of Rob Hall, as he desperately tried to make it to the summit of Mount Everest. We finally made it to the top of the mountain and we all quickly quaffed down what seemed like gallons and gallons of water. As we wrapped up, we took a couple last second photos, said our goodbyes to Stuart and the llamas, and departed in our cars back to our house in Santa Fe. I thought it was an overall great experience to actually hike and eat with llamas. It was definitely the best activity we had done yet in Santa Fe.

       During the llama trek, I saw a lot of HEI. When we were on the Rio Grande, there were some gold, silver, and copper particles everywhere in the water. Stuart told us that there was once a lot of gold mining done right in the very spot I sat. When we saw the petroglyphs, Stuart told us the Native Americans wrote them many, many years ago. They needed some sort of communication so they decided to write on rocks. Actually, a lot of their writing was very clear. The most common pictures were people, flowing water, birds, snakes, and the Medicine Man. When we were hiking up and down the mountain, I thought of Movement back when the Native Americans and early settlers lived there. They probably needed some strong animal to carry their stuff up and down the mountain so they probably used a horse or cow. These were closely related to llamas, strong in the legs, able to carry a big load, and very perceptive of their surroundings. These llamas are really great animals for this job and I absolutely had no idea that these small, scrawny animals actually had a lot of strength and endurance.

                            So long for now, 

                            This is Asa Hiken signing off and,

                            Stay Classy, Louisville Kentucky

Shopping: Santa Fe Style

Having a plan everyday in Santa Fe was kind of overwhelming. We were going to be so exhausted if we went on some sort of hike or adventurous trek everyday. That's why we left an extra day to shop and just hang around town in Santa Fe. I didn't know what it was going to be like. I had only driven through part of the town and at that time I was half asleep. What I thought it would be like was a town with adobe style buildings and clothes sold on the street that resembled anomalous kinds of Native American culture. I also expected many street vendors. I thought they would be everywhere. I didn't know if there were going to be any well known stores like a Borders or a Haagen-Dazs but I was wrong. I was very surprised to see not only necklaces and street vendors but well known stores too.
    Everything was within walking distance from our house. To start off our day,we walked about 1/2 a mile to a restaurant called Cafe Pasqual's. Since I was so hungry, I was craving a big basket of wings to devour and then a nice, cold root beer to quaff. Little did I know was that Cafe Pasqual's was an organic restaurant. I was excited to see the differences between an ordinary restaurant and an organic restaurant. When we walked in, we were immediately sent to a big table by what seemed a very saturnine man with a long pony tail. Since they didn't have wings, I decided to get french toast with a side of apple-smoked bacon. I wanted a root beer but I learned that they only had organic root beer. I passed on that and just had some freshly squeezed apple juice. The apple juice was so amazing. It tasted like it had literally been squeezed one minute ago. Since we weren't aloud to have cell phones in the restaurant, I decided to look at my surroundings. What I saw was a huge, hand-made chandelier made out of paper and flowers. Then I saw a lot of paper art hanging from the ceiling, a very cool addition to an awesome atmosphere. The french toast was not the best but the bacon was extraordinary. Even though everyone was enjoying their food, the gloomy man seemed to get very irritated so after we ate, we scuttled out the door and continued our walk through town.
     The first couple of stores we stopped at weren't very exciting. They were mostly for the moms to look at so I decided to enter a Tibetan Monk store. It had candles, books, prayers, all kinds of things and I found that pretty interesting. We then moved on to an outside store that was selling these jackets that looked like carpets. I knew it was definitely something I would wear so my parents let me buy it. Then we went to an antique shop that had a very small statue of a Mariachi band. It was so detailed and colorful. Across the street, there were these interesting wind chimes that constantly moved in a spiraling and 3-D way. We then moved to the Santa Fe Plaza and saw many street vendors. My brothers bought these handmade bookmarks that were cool from one of the vendors. Since we walked for so long, we could rest and get something to eat. To my surprise, two of the options were Haagen-Dazs ice cream and Starbuck's coffee. I picked Starbuck's and relaxed there for an hour and a half while playing Words With Friends. After we got organized, we decided to go across the street to the luxurious El Dorado Hotel and had dinner while watching the 2011 NCAA Men's Basketball Championship. What a way to end an exhausting day!    
    Since we walked around town a lot, I got a real glimpse at what Santa Fe was really like. The Movement in Santa Fe was unlike something I've ever seen before. Most of the buildings were adobe style and looked almost like clay buildings. That has seemed to carry from Mexico to Texas all the way to Santa Fe. Most of the people there were of Native American descent. There was usually some sort of bead necklace or turquoise bracelet being sold at the stores. There also was a lot of hats and western clothing at the stores in Santa Fe Plaza. In Santa Fe, the majority of the people were Native American with cool additions to their clothing. I found this appearance very interesting because they keep a more western appearance then most do. Most of the people had their own stores where they sold their own specific thing. The people were very nice and kind. Most of the time, when the prices of somethings were a little expensive, it was possible to make a quick bargain with them and get something's price a lot cheaper.                  
                         So long for now,
                         This is Asa Hiken signing off and,
                         Stay Classy, Louisville, Kentucky