Posted on 02/05/2017 2:16:57 PM PST by nickcarraway
Camel Rock is a landmark along the interstate betwSanta Fe and Espanola. It's a pile of rocks that look like a camel sitting down. Locals love it, and tourists flock to it.
But Camel Rock now looks a little bit different. It's hard to tell from a distance but up close, it's easy notice a huge chunk of rock that created the camel’s mouth is now gone.
When compared side by side, it’s easy to see.
“I feel sad. I feel sad,” said Vincent Lopez, who lives nearby in Nambe. “It's Camel Rock. I mean, you could compare it to Bandelier. You know the caves and all that. I mean they've been there forever.”
For Lopez, this has been a hangout spot since he was a kid. Before these fences were put into place he says he would climb the rocks with his friends and admire the natural beauty.
“Not only is Camel Rock historic, it’s symbolic. So it's a great loss,” Lopez said.
That's how he describes the look of the rock now after a big chunk broke off. For those who live around the landmark, many people say they haven't noticed much of a difference. But will the changes cause tourists traveling on US 84 to keep on moving instead of stopping to take pictures?
“It looks a little bit still like it but I guess you can tell before it was more noticeable,” said Krystal Mantei, a tourist that stopped at the Camel Rock Casino.
Not for these tourists from Texas.
“I believe people would still come out to see it. It still looks enough like a camel to me, from being a tourist myself,” Cody Mantei said.
KOB reached out to the Pueblo of Tesuque to see if anything could be done to fix or repair it, but has not heard back.
Nothing a little duct tape can’t fix.
It’s time Congress banned erosion, for our own good.
Camel? Looks like Bikini Atoll on a bad day.
Could be Hiroshima though...
I think it’s a neat rock formation. It doesn’t look a damn thing like a camel (it didn’t before either). But then again people see Jesus and Elvis in the clouds. So I guess it’s all in the eyes of the beholder.
Oh, that’ll buff right out!
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
-Robert Frost
the old man of the mountain eroded too.
It obviously smoked too many of itself, and got mouth cancer.
the horror!
*NM ping*
Someone will blame it on global warming, I guarantee it.
Stay away from Meth and practice good dental hygiene.
Don't dip or chew tobacco.
Cigarettes are fine.. unless you've lost most of your mouth like that irresponsible camel has.
New Hampshire lost our Old Man of the mountain one night. After 100 years of trying to patch it up in one slide it was gone.
What a shame.
Just change it’s name. Maybe “ET Rock.”
I was crushed when that happened.
Somehow, Trump or global warming caused this.....
At least the 'Old Man' profile was 'immortalized' on the 2000 US Quarter before the profile disappeared. This poor Camel, never got the votes!
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