
Carrizozo, New Mexico



White Oaks Schoolhouse was built in 1895. It’s only open on weekends, so I did not get to go inside. White Oaks, New Mexico is 17 miles northeast of Carrizozo, New Mexico. The White Oaks webpage is at http://whiteoaksnm.com/index.html. There is also a wiki on White Oaks, NM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Oaks%2C_New_Mexico.


It has a three-hole outhouse.




A safe from the old post office and bile of mystery metal. Although there is an old tricycle on the concrete slab.


View from the west side of the school.

The south side of the school.



The east side of the school.

Three Rivers School 1904 on NM Highway 54 between Carrizozo and Tularosa. I don’t know anything about this building other than it sits behind the Three Rivers Trading Post, it’s old, it’s red, and where it is.





The above satellite map shows the location of Three Rivers School. The school and the trading post are 24 miles south of Carrizozo and 18 miles north of Tularosa. The border of the White Sands Missle Range is about a mile west of NM Highway 54 at Three Rivers. The south end of the Valley of Fires lava flow is the black area west of the Three Rivers. East of Three Rivers is Sierra Blanca Peak which is 11,981 ft (3,652 m) high. The Trinity Test Site where the first nuclear bomb was detonated in 1945 is north and west of Three Rivers.

I drove to Alamogordo this morning to deliver a proposal. It was a three-hour drive straight through with one short stop along the way. On the way to Alamogordo, I made mental notes at places I needed to stop and take photos on the way back. Needless, to say It took me six hours to drive back after all the stops. Here are a few photos of the landscapes I got on the drive back.




Cranes In The Mist. November 2009.
Cranes In The Mist is one of Susan Brant Graham’s favorite photos that I have done. Below are some cranes in the mist from this morning, but they don’t quite have the same magic as the original taken in 2009. Susan is not only my photographer of the day for my last post in the Travel Photo Challenge, but she is also one of my favorite photographers, period.
Laurie and I have known Susan for 20 years now. It all started with the Albuquerque Rose Society where Susan, Laurie, Tristan, Susan’s mother, and I all competed in rose shows and rose arranging competitions. I believe it was the summer of 2007, Susan was taking photos of roses in our garden when her camera broke. She had a Canon point-n-shoot then. That incident inspired her to get a Canon 5D full-frame camera, and she started taking photography seriously. She upgraded to a Canon 5D Mark II soon after it became available. Susan is an OBGYN and also has a Ph.D. in Anthropology. Over the years she has won many awards for her photography. She wrote the American Rose Society guidelines for judging photographs of roses and published a book on matting photographs for rose shows.
Susan and I share the same birthdate, so we have used our birthdays to do photography day trips. Susan, Laurie, and I have also photographed various special events together. Susan retired a few years ago and has recently been working on projects that show how colorblind people see color and on genealogy. She has published books on El Dia de los Muertos parade in Albuquerque, her colorblind project, and she is currently working on a book or books based on her family genealogy. Susan’s blog is http://susanbgraham.com/blog/. She has not been active on her blog this year with all her other projects and the craziness of 2020.
You can see photos from one of our more notable birthday excursions to Abó Ruins and Quarai Ruins at https://wp.me/p1yQyy-2cH and https://wp.me/s1yQyy-quarai. El Dia de los Muertos parade and the Blacksmith World Championships were two of the more memorable events we photographed together. Photos from those two events can be seen at El Dia de los Muertos: https://wp.me/p1yQyy-Vg. Blacksmith World Championships: https://wp.me/p1yQyy-1BG.
My last set of travel photos for the challenge are of Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge along the Rio Grande about 55 miles south of Albuquerque. The photos were taken in December 2009 when Laurie and I drove down to explore the area. It was cold and wet, and we saw very little wildlife that day.
Jupiter and Saturn were in the trees tonight. December 31, 2020.
Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge
Powdered paw prints look like tuft.
Tuft luck Paparazzo. Don’t look at me. Those ain’t my stinking powdered paw prints.
Jupiter with moons and Saturn are becoming more distant. December 30, 2020.
Day 8 of the Travel Photo Challenge is photos from Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument, New Mexico about 45 miles north of us on the Pajarito Plateau at the base of the Jemez Mountains. These photos were taken in November 2015. The Tent Rocks are formed from pyroclastic rock in the volcanic tuft. The softer tuft erodes under the rock-forming tent-shaped hoodoos. The only other place on earth that has formations like this is in Turkey.
The travel photoblog of the day is Jet Eliot’s Travel and Wildlife Adventures at https://jeteliot.wordpress.com/. Jet & Athena are serious travel photographers and adventurers who go to many exotic places around the world. Jet is also a novelist, and Athena is a wonderful photographer who does a lot of the photos on Jet’s blog. We have followed each other for many years.
Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument