April 8, 2025
by David Ryan
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2025 Albuquerque’s Jane’s Walk Weekend – May 3 and 4

For those of you who live in the Albuquerque area, this will be our fourth year of holding in-person Jane’s Walks in Albuquerque. The walks will be held on the weekend of May 3 and 4 and will feature six different Albuquerque neighborhoods. There are a total of ten separate walks.

For more information and to register for a walk, please visit the Jane’s Walks webpage on this website. If you’re using your Mobile Device, hold it in Landscape Mode to load the page. Walks are filling up fast so please register soon.

Jane’s Walks are held in over 200 cities worldwide to celebrate walkable urban neighborhoods and are named after the celebrated urbanist Jane Jacobs. Her 1960s book – Death and Life of Great American Cities – was a wakeup call to protect walkable urban neighborhoods.

In past years we have held walks in the Wells Park/Mountain Road area. Those will be held in conjunction with the Grand Opening (expected to be sometime in June) of the newly reconstructed Wells Park (between 5th and 6th Streets on the north side of Mountain Road).

Hope to see you in May. If you can’t join us in May, you can find maps and descriptions of previous year’s walks on Jane’s Walk webpage to walk them at your leisure. Again, if you’re using a Mobile Device, hold it in Landscape Mode to load the page.

2023 Walk Scene – photo courtesy of Jeffry Hertz

April 1, 2025
by David Ryan
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Wandering Through a Red Rock Wonderland

Last week my little dog Sparky and I headed off from the North Rainbow Bridge Trailhead on the northern flank of Navajo Mountain in the Navajo Nation just north of the Arizona/Utah border. Our intention was to backpack for three or four days to make the 30-mile roundtrip hike to and from Rainbow Bridge National Monument. When it took us over three hours to hike a little less than four miles, I realized that a backpack loaded with four days’ worth of food for Sparky and me may be a bit of a stretch for someone of my age (77 ½ and now closer to 80 than 75) to carry over extremely rugged terrain.

Rather than risk further exhaustion and finding ourselves stranded in an extremely remote part of the country, we made the decision to make camp in a beautiful red rock canyon (Bald Rock Canyon) and then hike back to the trailhead the next day. Although we came up short on the original goal, we were given the gift of being immersed in one of the most majestic places on earth. And we had it all to ourselves in total quiet and beauty. Who could ask for more?

Off and running from the trailhead into our red rock adventure.

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March 17, 2025
by David Ryan
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Checking Out the Durango, Colorado Sky Steps

While Durango, Colorado is best known for its old-time steam engine train rides on the Durango and Silverton narrow gauge railroad, it is also home to a 529-step stairway. The stairway connects Durango’s historic downtown residential district with Fort Lewis College, 250 feet or so above on a bluff overlooking the community.

The 9:15am train steaming up and getting ready to pull out.

Not all wandering adventures have to be extremely exotic or particularly significant, some like in this blog post can be as simple as following up on something you may have read or heard about. In my case, as someone who likes to explore public stairways, I put the Durango Sky Steps on my radar scope to check out as soon as I heard about them a few years ago. And finally two weeks ago, my dog Sparky and I found ourselves in Durango, Colorado with sufficient time to check out the Sky Steps.

The Sky Steps begin at the base of the bluff at the intersection of East 10th Street and 6th Avenue. The first step is only about a mile away from where you catch the steam engine ride and just a few feet from the starting point of the Durango’s Nature Trail. The Nature Trail, too, works its way to the top of the bluff and crosses the steps several times along the way.

The first step at the intersection of East 10th Street and 6th Avenue.

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