Raton is the first town you encounter when you enter New Mexico from the north via the interstate.  The name is actually Spanish for for ‘rat’ or ‘mouse’ which adds a bit of humor to any number of business that include the city’s name in their own.  (Want to stay at the “Rat Hotel” or eat at the “Mouse Cafe”?)

It’s a beautiful place, though.  Nestled between the Sangre de Cristo Mountains to the west and some younger volcanoes to the east, Raton sits on the transition from shortgrass prairie to mountain conifer forest.  That location was key to probably my best wildlife sighting since I’ve been here.

A little south of here, there must have been two to three hundred elk in two large groups between I-25 and US 64.  One group in a low valley, another up on a low ridge.  Both kept their distance from a small group of cattle.  They were way too far to get a good photo.  All I could do was watch from a distance as the group on the hill started to make its way down toward the group in the valley.  Magnificent.  I haven’t seen that many elk outside of a National Park ever.

I’m leaving this area tomorrow and just in the nick of time.  24 hours from now, they’ll be getting snow around here.  Several inches.  Good thing I’ll be going back to Wisconsin, away from all that.  Heh, heh.

I had some free time at the end of last week due to some faulty equipment.  Fortunately, we happened to be Santa Fe and took advantage of the many restaurants and bars in the old school downtown they have.  They are between tourists seasons in Santa Fe this time of year.  Between the end of the late summer/early fall Fiestas and the ski season, the town is pretty quiet.  But we still managed to catch some live music and eat a wide variety of good food and sample a bunch of local brews.

On Thursday, I got a chance to do a little hiking the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.  I haven’t hiked at that kind of elevation for a long time, so keeping moderate pace was mandatory.  There was some snow up there, but nothing that would have required an upgrade in footwear.  It’s tougher to trek in mountains, but there is plenty of great views to reward the determined.

Only a few days until I head back to Wisconsin!  See you Saturday, Cheeseheads.

I’m currently working in the northern part of New Mexico.  We’re trying to wrap up these areas before the snow flies.  If it’s east of the mountains and north of I-40, we are on it.

Saw another elk earlier today.  It decided to run along the road for a while.

Look at all these pronghorn.  I’ve seen a few large groups of them like this in recent days.

Behold, the state bird of New Mexico (right along the edge of the mowed grass).

No sign of any pursuing coyotes at the time.  I’ve seen a few roadrunners in my time here, but this is the best picture I’ve been able to nab.

I’ve got a little off time coming up over Thanksgiving and get to fly back to Wisconsin for a week.  Should be nice to see some familiar, albeit flatter and woodsier sights.

Just a couple more pics from that little town of Mongollon.

It’s a little dark, but check out this upside-down building.

Here’s the ‘downtown’.

Google Street View for a before comparison:

https://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=33.397715,-108.798873&spn=0.011411,0.024784&t=h&z=16&layer=c&cbll=33.397723,-108.79899&panoid=ZReNT8X1lkQlKIiTHgrKVA&cbp=12,283.21,,0,16.52

We are back to the Silver City area to collect some data on roads that were closed during September’s flooding.  Parts of those still need months of repairs as we saw firsthand today.

On the west side of the Gila Mountains, tucked in a narrow valley is a tiny, mostly abandoned mining town called Mongollon.  A hundred years ago, they pulled a lot of gold and silver from the mountains around there, but during all of our lifetimes, Mongollon has been an out-of-the-way tourist curiosity; home to but a small handful of year round residents.  It’s connected to the outside world via a windy, often one lane road that tries to distract the driver with its impressive views.

http://mapper.acme.com/?ll=33.39540,-108.79885&z=15&t=T

Back in September, however, heavy rains lead to some devastating flash flooding in Mongollon, completely obliterating the one road and damaging historic buildings.  The flood also beat up some old mining relics.

I challenge anyone to look at that and not think of the Temple of Doom and the mine cart chase.  How awesome is that?  That’s our collection van sitting where the road used to be.  Heavy equipment has made the route just barely passable since the flood.

That track leads out of this old mineshaft behind me at this spot.

Apparently they have a long history of getting smacked by floods in this valley.  I’ll put up some pictures of the town later.

Reporting from Silver City, NM.  (Oh and props to the Econolodge for having grills available to use.  We made our own meal tonight)

To get out of the way of the oncoming van.

(reporting from I-10 exit 85)

It’s been kind of a running joke between myself and Jordan, the guy I’m working with here in New Mexico.  We thought it’d be pretty cool if we could see an elk or two while we’re here.  After the first elk crossing sign we saw, we were like “Oh yeah, bring on the elk; this is where they’re at.”  It was us being funny because how often to you see a deer immediately after you pass a deer crossing sign?

After a month and a half of passing elk crossing signs and not seeing any elk, we’d start pointing to them and say something like, “It’s one of those lying signs.” or “Watch for invisible elk.”

Well all that sarcasm paid off on Saturday morning.  Just like getting a bite after complaining at length about how terrible the fishing is.  On US 60 in western New Mexico near Magdalena, we saw a young elk looking for a place to jump a fence along the highway.  I took this terrible photo before it trotted out of sight. (Stupid sun!)

Granted it would’ve been way cooler if it was a big bull with a huge rack, but why be a choosy beggar?  This little guy is still awesome.

Does this look like an elephant to you?

I don’t see it.  Maybe you need to look at it from the other side.

At any rate, this hill gets a reservoir on the Rio Grande named after it.  As you can see, it’s not exactly full.  That’s pretty normal as it’s used to store water for downstream irrigation.  The Rio Grande is one of those streams where humans use so much of the water that downstream from here, it runs dry for large chunks of the year.

I know you’ve all been secretly clamoring for some exotic Southwestern wildlife, so have a peek at this menagerie.

I’ve probably seen a hundred of these bad boys already.  Where the deer and the antelope play indeed.

Not very cuddly, but certainly exotic and cool by Midwestern standards.  This was the first rattlesnake I saw on the road that wasn’t, shall we say, “vertically compressed”?

This jackrabbit was hanging around US 60 by the Very Large Array.  (Don’t worry, I’ll get to that eventually.)

Drive around enough on open rangeland and eventually, you run into the occasional bovine roadblock.  One honk is all it takes to clear a path, though.  They understand that much automobile.

Finally my favorite was this horned lizard.  On a cool, cloudy morning, this dude was sitting by a roadside pullout hoping the sun would pop out and give him the energy to start his day.  The look on his face says, “It’s to cold to deal with you, buddy.”

It’s an annual event in the Southwest.  Warm, moist air muscles in from the eastern Pacific and Gulf of Mexico on the back half of summer and thunderstorms dump large volumes of rain on this mostly arid region.  Little stream beds, arroyos and washes that are dry for most of the year can suddenly surge with water as heavy rain screams off the steep slopes.

This year has been particularly intense for New Mexico and Colorado, too, as I’m sure you’ve all seen on the news.  This is apparently the wettest monsoon in at least 30 years for this media market.  It comes after the rest of summer was particularly dry.

The rain has been hampering my job in this state.  So far, we can pretty much bank on being boxed in by rain by 3 pm at the latest.  Several roads we need to collect data on are currently closed or otherwise unavailable.  On the plus side, it has made for some interesting scenery.

This is the San Francisco River just down stream from the small town of Reserve. It looks like a normal river except that just two weeks ago, it was bone dry.  (Note the high turbidity.)

A monsoon thunderstorm is just like one you’d see anywhere in North America.  What’s new to me is being able to see it coming for miles ahead.  Distant curtains of water ready to inundate this normally arid landscape.

A place that only gets around 15 inches of rain a year suddenly gets half of it in just a couple days.  It is an awesome demonstration of the power of water moving downhill.  Material is carved from the hillsides and sorted by size as water redistributes it on the valley floor.  This is how landscapes are created.

Lastly, a bit of humor from Pie Town.  (Seriously, it’s a real place on US 60 in western New Mexico.)

http://mapper.acme.com/?ll=34.29474,-108.13302&z=14&t=T

Seems a local septic service has fully embraced its repurposed vehicle and created quite the brand identity in the process.  Perhaps this is Mr. Hankey’s extended family?

(reporting from I-25 exit 150)

But not enough to make it to the post season.  The Oklahoma City Redhawks took the division this year.

I speak of the minor league baseball team the Albuquerque Isotopes.  I made a day trip down to Albuquerque today to drop off one of our company guys at the airport and the ball park is right in the neighborhood.  So I stopped in to see what kind of merchandise I could score.  While I was disappointed to learn the season ended a week ago, when I was just leaving for New Mexico, I am the proud owner of a new hat and a sweet hoodie.

I was pleased to see one can meet Homer Simpson at an Isotopes game.  (Anyone who went to a large cineplex in the summer of ’07 might recognize that plastic statue.)

For those who don’t know the back story, on the TV show “The Simpsons”, their town of Springfield has been home to a minor league baseball team called the Springfield Isotopes since the very first season.  In a 2001 episode, Homer discovers the team’s owner is secretly planning on moving the team to Albuquerque and goes on a hunger strike until they admit it.  Two years later, Albuquerque got a minor league team to move to town and the name “Isotopes” won handily in a survey conducted by a local newspaper.  Given the state’s contributions to America’s nuclear program over the decades, they went with it and so the world’s greatest Simpson’s reference was born.

Pretty amazing how quickly you can get across a large swath of this continent if you want to.  In just 24 hours, I went from Des Moines, Iowa, to Santa Fe, New Mexico.  I’m a bit jet lagged (or van lagged?) but this seems like a fairly cool city.  They’ve really embraced that Southwestern Adobe style of architecture in these parts.  Nothing classes up a mundane strip mall like some tasteful arches and few earth tones.

I’ll be spending the majority of the rest of this year in this state and I think most of it is going to be pretty sweet.  Already the bosses are telling us we’ll need to get on some of the mountain roads right away before the snow starts flying at those higher elevations.  Expect cool photos to start showing up by this weekend.

One has to be pragmatic in this job.  On Sunday, I thought I would probably be going to Iowa before the big New Mexico project.  On Monday, it looked like I’d stay in Wisconsin thru the weekend.  For a few hours on Tuesday, the boss wanted to take me and another New Mexico guy with him to Michigan, but before the day was over, that trip was off.  So I was back to being around for Labor Day.  But on Wednesday I come to find out that I am going go to Iowa after all.

That’s how it has come to be that I am sitting in North Liberty, Iowa tonight.  Right in my brother’s former backyard.  In another timeline, I’m having a beer with my bro right now.

The Iowa project is one that is cataloging the height of every overpass in the state.  Instead of a big van, we are cruising around in a little Rav-4.  It’s a little cramped, but much more maneuverable.

I will be in Iowa through the weekend and the plan is to have one of the New Mexico vans pick me up en route.  So it will be some time before I see Wisconsin again.  I’ll be sure to snag some pictures of the cool landscapes while I’m out there.

-reporting from exit 4 of I-380

The last couple days of this Illinois project were a whirlwind of zipping all over the northern third of the state.  From the most rural strips of pavement to crawling down the Dan Ryan in Chicago a day later is probably one of the more marked contrasts one can experience.  We ended our time in the state doing equipment validations near the capital of Springfield.

It was an interesting experience and I think I’m comfortable doing this stuff for a while.  One day you’re collecting data on the Kennedy Expressway and two days before, you collected data on this:

That’s a neglected little piece of old US 66 somewhere near Pontiac.  That concrete is older than anyone reading this and looks every bit of it.

I’ve got some off time now and it happily coincides with an annual gathering of family colorfully called “Camp Zagar”.  So I’ll be seeing some of y’all in person in the next couple days.  It’s always a fun event and I enjoy seeing everyone.

At this point, it seems I might be heading to New Mexico for my next project.  Nothing is certain, but it’s leaning that way.  I wouldn’t mind picking up some swag from the Albuquerque Isotopes, the world’s greatest reference to The Simpsons.

Yesterday, we completed our work in the media market of Davenport, Bettendorf, Moline and Rock Island.  Turns out you can get a good deal on a casino hotel room if you sign up for their player’s club crap.  Here’s my view the last night from the Isle Casino in Bettendorf.

Those twin suspension bridges carry I-74 over the Mississippi between Bettendorf, IA and Moline, IL.  (Super narrow, by the way; no shoulders and substandard lane widths.)

It might be easier and more descriptive if we were to combine all four cities into one called “Johndeereville”.  I lost count of the number of facilities they have and the buildings and roads that use some form of the company name.  Moline is the world headquarters for this ubiquitous manufacturer of tractors and you can tell.  That was just on the Illinois side.

Moline has a decent downtown, much more so than Rock Island.  Bettendorf has pretty much nothing apart from the casino.  Davenport is the largest of the quartet, and I only drove through there once, but it seemed to have the most going on; including a casino of it’s own and the local minor league team.

Something about casinos in Iowa; apparently they have to be floating and they have to look like old paddleboats. Even though the insides look like any other casino.  I only went inside to drink cheap beer and see exactly how these things work.  Makes me appreciate how nice it is that indoor public smoking bans are in effect in most places.  It was also my first experience with a casino buffet and holy cow, it is so easy eat way, way too much.  You better believe I got my $14’s worth out of that sucka!

With the QC behind me, I’m looking at a few days’ work along the I-39 corridor and some places between there and the fringe of Chicagoland. By August 1, I could find myself back in Madison.  I’ll keep y’all posted.

-reporting from Loves Park, Illinois (that’s a Rockford suburb)

Since that is the one thing everyone wants to know when you get a new job, I will provide an short explanations of what I do as a Field Systems Operator.

To start with, the company I work for collects information about roadways for state departments of transportation.  The company has vehicles outfitted with specialized equipment involving lasers and digital cameras which can document the conditions of pavement, signage, vertical and horizontal clearances.  The states use this information to prioritize maintenance, provide information to the transportation industry (aka trucking) and verify which segments of roadway do or do not meets various federal and state standards.

I am partnered with another FSO and we trade off driving the customized 15-passenger van and operating the equipment inside.  The driving is pretty straightforward.  Keep the van in the middle of the lane, follow the driving directions of the operator and don’t exceed the maximum speed for the equipment to function.  That’s pretty much it.  Oh, and don’t run into anything.  That’s important too.

Being the operator means navigating the vehicle, engaging and disengaging the equipment at the start and end of a route, and making adjustments to the cameras to compensate for changes in lighting conditions.  There is a list of routes that need to be collected and it’s up to the operator to plan the day’s travel so we can hit up as many of them as efficiently as we can.  You need to be able to adjust your plan on the fly in case conditions in the traffic or the weather change.  For a spatial thinker like me, it is an engaging daily exercise.

Much of the job involves documenting as much of what your doing as possible, so if something goes wrong, they can know if it was the operator, the equipment or the list of routes provided by the DOT and then the project managers can make a call about possibly redoing a route.

That’s the core of what I do.  There is some other minutia I could mention, but it will only make this wordier than it is.  In the future I might go into some more detail about some of these laser-based devices because they are pretty cool.  Especially the LIDAR.  I’m not working with that on this Illinois project, but that’s some awesome technology right there.  It basically renders the environment in 3D in real time.

I hope that answers some of the basic questions you might have.

-reporting from Moline, Illinois

Okay then, lets see what this looks like.  I am currently trying to get a feel for this thing so if it looks a little plain and rough, that’s to be expected.  It may look better by the time anyone sees it.  We’ll see how much effort I want to put into it.

Just to catch up on the last week or so, I’m in NW Illinois.  I’ve seen some cool places and a lot of boring places.  Apple Valley State Park was sweet looking and Galena is a nice looking town.  Was in Savanna over the weekend and apparently it’s a big hang out with the Harley crowd.  They were all pretty chill at the motel.  This is a motel that came with two happy hour beers with the price.

Think I’ll experiment with providing links to Google Maps or something so folks can see where it is I’m talking about like this.