Valles Caldera

Ever since the first time I saw Valle Grande over 40 years ago, I love going there, and especially taking visitors there. The sight of the immense volcanic caldera (over 1 million years old) is stunning. After visiting Los Alamos, I went there with Jake and Debbie on Sept. 10.

On this visit, for the first time, we went down into the caldera on the paved road that goes back a little ways to allow visitors to actually enter the basin.

The views, as always, are just spectacular, but on this visit, we had an added bonus -- we spotted a herd of elk, with the male elk guarding his herd of probably 50 females as they grazed in the caldera. It was really something interesting to see!









The elk herd:




Watching the elk herd with a nice young family we met:




Areas of burned trees were all over the Jemez area near Los Alamos; it was a heartbreaking sight to see: