Framedlight

  As we left Hatch the skies started to cloud over and the temperature dropped (maybe the lack of chilies). We drove east along Highway 26 and then turned north onto 27, a tiny road which led through to Hillsboro via an old mining ghost town, Lake Valley. As we turned by the habitation of Nutt there was a lake at the side of the road which had numerous sandhill cranes resting by the waters edge. In the autumn they migrate south for the winter. We passed wind farms and the remains of the old railroad, built to bring ore down from Lake Valley. The stormy light was absolutely stunning as we drove through fields of cattle and, strangely oryx which have naturalised in the neighbourhood, presumably escapees from a collection. They are a bit tiny in the picture. A little further and past some rugged hills we approached Lake Valley.

 We decided that today would be a bit of a road trip. The Rio Grande flows through Las Cruces and we thought we would follow it north on a minor road until we reached the town of Hatch, famous for its chiles. As we drove away from the house in Las Cruces we got a good view of the Organ Mountains. The sky showed us that the hot weather we had been experiencing might well be coming to an end. At points along the way we could see the river that was meandering slowly and shrunkenly. We were starting to see large fields of chillies growing at the side of the road. An old road, the Camino Real had followed the course of the Rio Grande until it left the side of the river to travel north east to Santa Fe on the Jornado del Muerto. A camp had been set up at this junction, near the present town of Radium Springs, centuries before at Paraje de Robledo, which in the mid 19th century helped defend the local white population against attacks by the Apache. In 1861 the Confederate Army established a p