La Kiva creeps me out.
My most interesting la Kiva experience was one New Year's Eve.
December 1992...
Itinerary... The 26th.... drove to BIBE from Enid, Oklahoma to DFW to the park 850 miles straight through. Threw out our sleeping bags on the ground at Dugout Wells at 2:00 AM,
27th got up at 6:00 to avoid being arrested... breakfast at the Chisos Mtns. Lodge in the Basin, got our permit at 8:00 at PJ.
Drove down to Santa Elena Canyon and did the short dayhike in. Our backpacking began at the curve in RMSD about three miles south of the Mules Ears overlook. As we distributed gear we realized that we had no cooking pots!
We had fifteen people going out for seven days with no way to cook. We headed over to the Study Butte Store to buy what they might have in the way of pots (which I surmised might not be much) and then sent my friend Steve to the restaurant up by the motel near the junction of 170 and 118 to see if he could borrow a larger pot or two. I gave him a $20 bill to leave as a deposit if they had any questions. the rather corpulent woman in the kitchen, wielding a rather impressive looking knife said, "I don't need your money. You WILL bring this pan back or I will hunt you down and kill you!" We headed back to the park and got ready to start our trip.
We angled southeast and looped south of the Mules Ears Complex, then headed NE up Smoky Creek, camping due east of Mule Ears.
28th did a dayhike scrambling over all the weird formations in the Mule Ears area before heading cross-country up a drainage parallel to the Smoky Creek Trail, camping fairly close to the Dodson Trail.
29th, north to the Dodson then west to a point almost due south of Blue Creek before heading cross-country due west to the Chimneys Trail. We camped just west of the Pena Spring/Black Mesa area.
30th climbed Pena Mountain and hiked over to Luna's Jacal before heading up Javelina Wash to camp at Tule Spring.
Dec. 31, New Year's Eve 1992. We did a lengthy cross-country Burro Mesa dayhike. We started out heading due east from camp, climbing to the top of the mesa. The morning was spent climbing various high points and meandering towards the old corral. From the corral we headed north along the east side of the canyon to the two large orange rock amphitheaters. We rapelled into the Apache Canyon from the east rim before heading back to camp. Descending the slot canyon due west from the corral we then headed south back to camp. At 10:00 PM we made it back after about fifteen hours of hiking.
We all wanted to stay up until midnight, but just couldn't get too excited about playing cards for the next couple of hours. One thing that we had noticed at the Basin, at PJ and all over Study Butte were fliers for a New Year's Eve party at la Kiva. A band called the "Sofa Kings" would be playing. So, at 10:00 PM camped at Tule Spring, having been in the back-country for five days, the adults and older kids decided to hike out and go to la Kiva to bring in the New Year.
From Tule Spring it is a short hike to the Burro Mesa Pour-off road. It was a total of about six miles from camp to where I had left the van parked at the Sotol Vista parking area. I ran to get the van while everyone else hiked out to the road. By about 11:45 we were enjoying the somewhat peculiar sounds of the Sofa Kings ("sofa king smooth, they're squeezably soft" the fliers said.) Although it was an odd mix of instruments played by an even odder assortment of musicians, they were quite good. There is no way to adequately describe the style. They were folkish with a jazz/bluesy/progressive feel.
What was really odd, however, was the crowd. Most of our crew could not legally be there. None of the people at la Kiva cared. The assortment of people in the room was astounding. It has been more than fourteen years, so I don't remember as much about particular personalities as I wish i did, but TWWG's "creeps me out" would have been a major understatement. The funniest thing was when a 60'ish woman trying to look 30 pounced on sixteen year old Adam, would not take "No" for an answer as she tried to dance "up close and personal." Adam was horrified, she was obviously hoping for a "Mrs. Robinson" moment, we all tried as hard as we could not to laugh.
The whole evening was sort of a surreal blur. Another little place in town was serving black-eyed peas and a "traditional" New Years Eve dinner. It turned out to be badly planned, slower than molasses and not very good chicken-spaghetti. We finished eating a little after 3:00 AM and drove back to the Burro Mesa Pour-off parking area, hiked the two miles back to camp and by about 4:30 got to bed.
Jan. 1 We slept in until about 10:00 and then did our hike over Burro Mesa and up to camp at Ward Spring, arriving right at dusk.
Jan. 2 we headed south, cross-country to Blue Creek Canyon, hiked out to the road and I ran back to the Burro Mesa Pour-off parking lot to get the van. We retrieved the other two cars further south on RMSD and (after returning the borrowed pot!) headed over to Boquillas for 3-for-a-dollar tacos and burritos, soaked for a while in the Hot Springs and headed up to the Gage Hotel for dinner and the night in Marathon.
