Into New Mexico and Beyond

You have to admit, the Interstate highway system in America is going above and beyond in their construction of bridges and overpasses:

 

I wonder if the prong horn antelope appreciate the effort?

New Mexico, surprisingly to me (I'm embarrassed!), didn't become a state until 1912 - as the 47th state to join the United States.  Mexico lost their war with America (1846 - 1848) and gave up the land now known as the American Southwest and California.  Texas was a nation unto itself  from 1836 to 1846, and laid claim to land west of the Rio Grande (Translation: Grand River).  In 1850, for $10 million, Texas settled with the Federal government and allowed that the land west of the Rio Grande could be Federal land.  That then became the New Mexico Territory, encompassing what would become most of Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado.  (Wow.  If you think Texas is big NOW, you should have seen it in 1849!  Woo-hoo!) But New Mexico was just a Territory of the United States until 1912.

No, this isn't a wagon train, it's a freight train.  I suspect New Mexico wishes it was a wagon train, because here it is, the 21st century, and New Mexico's population is kinda at the bottom of the list nationwide:  36th out of 50 states, as far as population density goes.  

She is also considered a mountain state, and, as we drove all the way across her mid-section, we can attest to the fact that there are mountains everywhere.  They're not as big as the Colorado Rockies, but there certainly are a lot of them.  It was a beautiful drive, with landforms on both sides of the road, topped by gorgeous clouds of all kinds, and off in the distance as the afternoon heated up we watched huge rain showers march across the landscape.  

 

This is a mesa in front of one of the mountains.  It's like a broad terrace with an abrupt slope on one side.  Some folks refer to it as a bench - but in the American southwest it is absolutely called a mesa!

There are a multitude of different kinds of rock and sediment, but there's not a lot of difference in the vegetation...

A lot of her mountains are volcanic in nature though they haven't erupted in eons.  In the past we have climbed two of them: Capulin and Bandera.  At the base of Bandera there is a cave that is full of ice year round.  That's quite a combination - a volcano harboring an ice cave!