Shrine Of The Stone Lions
One of the passions that Rick and I share, besides the obvious; photography, is hiking. We both love the outdoors and have a secret hankering for hiking accessories. Yes, that’s right, we love to collect packs, boots, socks, hats, shirts with zipper vents, and anything that has to do hiking many miles through the desert or mountains. As a result we are very well equipped for our outdoor excursions although this has not always been the case. In our quest to hike to the Shrine Of The Stone Lions at Bandelier we have had two previous failed attemtps. On the first attempt we ran out of water being approx 6 miles from the car. It was sweltering hot and that death march through the high mountain desert was no fun! On the 2nd attempt our GPS crapped out and we got lost. It had actually died right before we left so we bought a new one on the way out of town. Unfortunately there was not enough time to load all the Bandelier maps into it so other than providing a way point, latitude and longitude, it was not really very helpful. We took a wrong fork in the trail and by the time we figured it out we had gone 2 miles in the wrong direction. All in all this little mistake set us back nearly an hour. By the time we got to the approximate location of the lions we had 2 hours to hike 7 miles back to the car before the sun went down. Although we knew we were super close to the lions we could not afford to lose any more daylight and had to turn back without actually finding them. That hike ended up being 18.5 miles. Well finally, on May 31, 2009, and with my cousin Matt in attendance, we made a third attempt at the lions and this time we found them!
Rick and I both have lots of photos from this adventure. In the interest of saving time I am providing links to these albums on facebook
To view my photos click here
To view Rick’s photos click here
*important* once you click the link to view the photos click the title of the album not the thumbnail of the image to view the album. If you click the thumbnail facebook will want you to sign in or join.
Rab Freeman, the officiant from
An unexpected surprise – an old friend from high school, Kenny Trueba, was in attendance with his lovely wife.
Jim Gross from 
