Roswell – The Story Too Stupid to Die

(Roswell, NM) Mike has looked forward to coming to Roswell for many years. So he was very excited to have time to go to the local museums. Therefore, his first order of business was to wear the dogs out so they would rest nicely for me while he was gone. As usual, he did a bunch of research on the internet to find a nice place to walk. He found a walk described as a paved trail along the river that goes from one side of town to the other. This sounded very pleasant so off we went.

In my mind, Roswell would be this small little town out in the middle of nothing with maybe six or seven little buildings. You have got to be kidding me! A long time ago someone made up a story about a UFO landing here and now, out in the middle of nothing, is this huge town with a bazillion hotels, a gazillion fast food restaurants and even two skyscrapers. But from what I could tell on our walk, the aliens must have stolen the river. Here is walk they call a "nice paved trail along the river."



It just looked like a six inch wide sewer to us, with quite a lot of garbage along the way. We walked for about two hours. I tried really hard to find something that was worthy of a picture. Finally, I found one tiny little patch of pretty grass.



Nearby was a fire hydrant. I guess Boogie has never seen one before as he was very scared. He did that little thing where he leans forward slowly and then jumps back. But mostly he growled and barked. He wasn't going to turn his back on it to walk away so he walked backward while continuing to growl. What a silly boy.

The one, and only, thing we saw on the walk that was interesting was a very small little viewing area. According the the sign, during WWII there was a prison camp built near Roswell where 4,800 German prisoners were kept. A 50-man detail worked on a flood-control project by layering rocks on the Spring River (you're kidding me - they even named this trickle of water a river!) banks. At one point on the north river bank they used different sized rocks to make an iron cross on the bank. Some Roswell citizens were incensed by this and poured five yards of concrete over the POW's handiwork. The concrete washed away over the years, and the iron cross is clearly visible again as you can see in my picture. And that was that - you've seen ALL the highlights of our two hour walk.



Finally I (Mike) got to visit one of the holy sites of UFOlogy, Roswell, New Mexico and tour the Museum of UFO Research.





To my pleasant surprise, the museum was actually pretty thorough in relating the 1947 Roswell incident, and although credulous about the flying saucer stories it tried to be objective. If somehow you are not familiar with the Roswell incident, the basic story is that in July 1947 something unfamiliar crashed on a sheep ranch just north of Roswell. The rancher brought some of the debris into town a few days later and showed it to the local paper and the nearby Air Force base. Since this was in the middle of the one of the first UFO crazes, just a few weeks after the Arnold UFO sighting in Washington State that created the concept of the flying saucer, the press immediately announced that a flying disc had crashed and been found.











The supposed alien spacecraft debris was nothing more than aluminum foil, neoprene rubber and balsa wood from a top secret balloon project the Air Force was experimenting with for detecting Russian nuclear tests. Although the general of the base quickly retracted the flying saucer claim, he could not tell what it really was and tried to call it a weather balloon. Thus began a seemingly endless tale of mysterious government cover-ups, captured alien spaceships, and dead little aliens in the possession of the Air Force.



This is from a scene from a TV movie about Roswell showing an alien autopsy.



The museum had copies of letter from many supposed witnesses to secret shipments of extraterrestrial materials and bodies and other weird events, most of the evidence for the cover-up seemed to consist of the memories from long after the event or what grandchildren remember from 1947. They all just talked about rumors and unusually mysterious shipments and boxes, but nobody claimed to have actually seen anything but the tinfoil, rubber and wood. There was little mention of the fact that the local Air Force base was heavily involved with a lot of top secret activity in the late 1940’s because of its proximity to the Los Alamos atomic labs and the White Sands Missile base where captured German rockets and scientists were being used to create the US space program. So unusual flights and shipments and strange top secret events were probably going on all the time. Yet the story never seems to die out. As recently as 1996 there were excavations at the site looking for evidence of alien artifacts, but they don’t seem to have found anything.



About half of the museum was devoted to the Roswell crash, and the rest to a general history of the UFO story and the types of evidence and events that have taken place. They even had the panel from ancient Mexico that some people think portrays an alien astronaut and space craft visiting earth thousands of years ago. Not skeptical enough for my taste, but at least not totally loony about it.



Debbie & Mike
10/29/07

Take a Chance (or Two)

(Albuquerque, NM) The trial this weekend was put on by Southwest Agility Team (SWAT). From everything we saw, it is a very close knit group of hard working people. It was a fairly easy going group that put on a very nice trial. We really enjoyed this group of people.

The trial was held on a school ground. There was a large sandy area that had playground equipment - monkey bars, swingsets, etc. Then there was a large grassy area that was used as a soccer field, although part of that grass field would be the outfield when baseball was being played.

Many people attending this trial must be from out of town as there were at least 20 RV's there. Of course there were no hook-ups but the parking was extremely convenient to the rings. There was no charge for RV parking which was nice. I always find it odd that some trials charge for RV parking when there are no hook-ups and you're just in the middle of a field or parking lot.

It was cold in the mornings and 70 degrees in the afternoon. Wazzu thought mornings were great, while I enjoyed the afternoons....a little something for both of us.

Saturday morning, the first run was Touch N Go. The ground didn't seem wet at all - just a little cool on puppy feet. This made Wazzu very perky. They were running small to tall and I wanted to make sure Wazzu got warmed up well due to her bad back so we were walking around the field as the dogs were running.

I have never, in all my years of agility, seen so many dogs fall of the dog walk. Interestingly, they weren't falling off the ramps, they were falling off the top plank. I thought this was very odd. Wazzu managed okay but on the way out she just missed the contact. Darn, she did everything so fast and happy (2nd best time of all dogs). Sparkie then started and was doing well when very suddenly she went flying off the dogwalk. Sparkie has never fallen off a dogwalk and neither had a number of other really experienced dogs that were there. It's one thing when Novice dogs fall off a piece of equipment, but when it's Elite dogs falling off I tend to think there is something wrong with the equipment.

After the Elite class finished, we went over to look at the dogwalk. The ramps were textured nicely but the top ramp had virtually no texture. What you could see were a lot of scratches on the middle of the top plank where the dogs were doing all they could to hang on. This struck me as odd as I'd never seen scratches like this on the top plank of the dogwalk. These were fairly deep scratches.

I asked around to see who the equipment manager was. After I found out who to talk with, I went over and very politely voiced my concerns about the dogwalk. This guy got super defensive and was very rude to me. What I did learn was that this was a brand new dogwalk and this was the first time it was ever used. If so, then the scratches on the top were all from just the Elite class first thing this morning. I didn't talk to the judge for this trial as there were other high ranking judges there. A number of us saw the problem with the dogwalk so one of the competing judges made sure that the courses were set so that the approaches were straight on to help avoid the problem of dogs falling off.

My point was that I wasn't worried about the dogwalk for my particular dog (as we're slower and thus it wouldn't be as much of a problem for us) but that I was worried about ANY dog getting hurt. The club didn't seemed concerned at all. I've been doing agility for eight years and never once have I complained about a piece of equipment (not even the a-frame that bowed about two feet). But this truly was not safe. The club had another dogwalk in the equipment trailer but didn't switch it out. I was very disappointed in their lack of concern about their equipment. Just because something is new doesn't make it safe. There weren't any problems the rest of the weekend once the entries were straight on. I sure wish rubber would become a reqirement!

The courses the judge chose to bring this weekend were great courses. They were very challenging but extremely fun at the same time. We tend to see some courses over and over. But I've never seen these courses before. I sure hope we get to see this group of courses again - and it's not because I did well on them (Wazzu and I only got four Q's this weekend) - but the courses were some of the best we've ever seen.

Originally, the trial was scheduled to be two rings with two judges. But about two weeks prior to the trial, the entries were low so they cancelled one judge. Then one week prior to the trial they received a lot of entries but decided to stay with one judge. They still utilized two rings by having one being set while the other ring was running. This saved a little bit of time but not that much. By Saturday afternoon we were really having to push things along so we could finish before dark. We finished just in the nick of time.

They had electronic timing which should have helped things move right along. But they were very lax about people getting to the line. I'd say there was at least a minute between most dogs - especially in Open and Novice.

This was a fairly bare bones trial. There was no check-in other than a list of names left out on a table. You could check there to see if your name was on the list if you wanted. The trial was Oct 27-28 and I got a confirmation in August and never heard another word. We just went hoping the trial was still on. There were no check in gifts or gifts for Q's, etc. Ribbons were all flats. If you worked two classes you got a ticket for lunch from a small food cart. The first day we were only scheduled for one class each so we didn't get to eat - even though we stepped in to help and did work two classes. Sunday we were scheduled for two classes so we did get lunch tickets. The lunch was actually very good. You got a sandwich, chips, cookies, and a coke.

This club still uses the old fashioned scribe sheets. They even go to the extra expense of having NCR sheets (meaning there is a duplicate) so as soon as you come off the course you can pick up your copy and immediately see how you did. While it is a very nice idea, most people didn't pick them up. I'm not really sure it is worth all the extra money it must cost the club.

It seemed like scores were posted within 30 seconds of a class being finished. They were extremely efficient. But they put the scores out in notebooks - my pet peeve. It wasn't as bad as most trials that do that though as it was a one ring trial and they put the scores in three separate notebooks.

It isn't very common that we see Pits competing. But this trial was fun as there were at least six or seven. They all did extremely well. There was one that looked exactly like Slugger although it had a little more muscle. But he is much faster and more driven than Slugger. They were all so sweet, goofy and well-behaved.

Since Wazzu has been having back trouble we gave her some pain meds (Metacam) that her Valley Fever vet recommended. One vet suggested we give Wazzu Rimadyl for the pain. But on the VF list I'm on, I'd noticed over the last year that VF dogs that took Rimadyl had a lot of problems. So before giving that to Wazzu on a vet's suggestion, I contacted our VF specialist. She told me not to give Wazzu Rimadyl as it causes havoc to VF dogs. Whew, I'm so glad I checked and didn't just go with the regular vet's recommendation even though he tried really hard to convince us that it was a safe thing.

Wazzu seemed very happy and seemed to be moving better than she has for a couple weeks. It seemed to me as though the course times on Saturday were overly tight. I wasn't dragging Wazzu around at all. She was running ahead of me. Many times at trials I've had to look back at Wazzu the whole run and we've made time. This time I was seeing her tail (yippee!) yet on three runs on Saturday we were over time. I really had trouble beleiving this - but I didn't care all that much as Wazzu was happy - and that's what makes me happy. She wanted her turn! She was running! She was happy! She was doing the courses correctly! Now that's what it's all about for sure.

Wazzu and I had five runs on Saturday. While she did great (other than the weaves) we only ended up with one Q - but it was CHANCES, the last run of the day. She did a great switch out and away from me and then did a great out to three obstacles that were layered by two other obstacles. I was so proud of her. What she showed me today is that she can do it when she wants to! So on paper, 1/5 isn't good at all. But if you throw away the paper, Wazzu was great today.

Sparkie had a great day. After her fall off the dogwalk (fortunately she was okay!) she was perfect the rest of the day, coming in 1st place in every run. She even had great (and very friendly) competition with a team that came in 2nd at Champs. Mike was very pleased with 5/6 - who wouldn't be.

Slugger was entered in two runs Saturday. As luck (or un-luck in this case) would have it, both his runs came at the end of the day. This is normally his nap time so we didn't have very high hopes. While he wasn't head boppin' fast, he actually ran. For the very first time ever in his entire life, he missed a contact - that shows you that he was running fast. So he didn't get a Touch N Go Q today but he had a great run. Then he amazed us by getting a Chances Q! That was his Outstanding Novice Chances title. What a guy!

Wow, three Chances Q's for the Mason family in one day! That is probably a first...and most likely a last.

There were three border terriers competing today. All three are related to Boogie...two are half brothers. Here are Geordie and Jingles.



The gal that owns two of them knew Boogie from when he was a baby. Turns out that if the breeder has puppies but needs to go out of town, this gal babysits. When she saw Boogie today she thought he looked a little shaggy. So first she did his toenails for us. We've been trying to get Boogie used to the dremel but he said "nothing doing!" But she took no guff from him and held him down (he screamed a couple times - just because he didn't want to do this - he wasn't getting hurt). His toenails look the best they've ever looked since we got him.

Then she did a little bit of stripping on him. My goodness, when I do a little bit I get enough hair to make a ball the size of a ping pong ball. She did a little bit and got enough to make a wig big enough for most people! He does look a little smaller now - he should - it looks like a whole Boogie here on the counter. Hopefully that will help him not to be so hot on his hikes.



After the trial was done for the day, two of the borders (Geordie and Bezel) went out on the grass for some terrier play. I had just happened to take Boogie out to practice some "outs" when I noticed the border play. I took Boogie over and asked if he could join in. They said sure...and that was the end of any saneness!

It was a great time for Boogie. He got to play with dogs his size and dogs who play just like he does. They took turns chasing each other in huge circles....for a long time. I sure hope Boogie gets more opportunities like this as he got some great exercise and obviously had a great time.

Sunday morning it was again really cold. But it was easy to put up with since I knew it was going to warm up soon. It's not unusual to see a pretty sunset here or there. But it's pretty rare to see a beautiful sunrise - but that's exactly what we were treated to this morning.



We were a little worried how the dogs would do as the grass was really frosty but it didn't seem to bother the dogs or the people - the footing was actually very good.

They had courses set in both rings. One ring had Chances set up and the other ring was Jumpers. I noticed that the Chances course had a serpentine at quite a distance. The Jumpers course also had a serpentine so I decided that I would do the serpentine at a distance in the Jumpers course to get Wazzu used to that.

Wazzu loves frost on her toes. It always makes her very frisky so when we started the Jumpers course she left me in the dust, which of course is always fine by me. She was working at a huge distance and going exactly where she was supposed to go. Wazzu's favorite thing in all of agility is the serpentine so I knew we'd have no trouble doing it at a distance since she was going so fast. She started off great. She does a tighter line in a serpentine than we've seen any other dog do. When it was time for her to flip out to the final jump, something happened. I can't imagine what happened but for some reason she didn't flip out and we ran right into each other. It knocked me so off balance and turned me around that I got a bit disoriented. She did do the last jump in the serpentine just fine but I had to look around to see where I was and in that short nano-second, Wazzu took the off course tunnel - that MANY dogs took. Darn, she was doing so well. I continued on like the tunnel was the right obstacle so she had no idea we'd done anything wrong. She had a very big happy smile at the end of the run.

Sparkie took the same off course tunnel in the Jumpers run as did almost every dog. But she and Mike had a good time and finished the course being very happy.

In addition to the serpentine, the Chances course also had a very difficult discrimination. Wazzu had no trouble with the discrimation and things were going well until we got to the four jump serpentine. Each time Wazzu had to go out away from me she would stop and look at me like "you can't possibly want me to go all that way away from you all by myself." Each time I kept my arm out and insisted. And then each time she would turn and slowly trot away from me and do the jump. It wasn't pretty but we got another Chances Q. Way cool!

Poor Sparkie did the discrimination perfectly. But while she was in the tunnel, Mike was looking around to see where he should go as he'd forgotten to do the cross he had planned on doing. While he was busy looking around, Sparkie zoomed out of the tunnel and took the obvious obstacle....unfortunately it wasn't the correct obstacle. They continued on ad Sparkie did the prettiest serpentine of any dog. That was huge as Sparkie doesn't typically do well with serpentines. So even though it wasn't a Q, it was a great step forward for Sparkie.

The Tunnelers course was really fun and had one particularly difficult turn. Many dogs went off course there. But all three of our dogs did it perfectly. Slugger ran first and for his first time since being back from his surgery he was running so fast he was doing his super cute head bop. Sparkie had a bit of an odd turn but it kept her from going off course. I told Wazzu she was going to have to really run fast to beat Slugger! Sparkie was fastest, Wazzu was two seconds behind Sparkie, and little Slugger was only two seconds behind Wazzu. Very fun!

In Regular, Sparkie was superb getting two more 1st place Q's. One run had weaves at a distance which Wazzu didn't do. Once I crossed the line and helped her she did just fine but we had a five point fault for me crossing the line. She Q'd in her last Regular run even though she was exremely deliberate through the weaves. Slugger didn't get his turn until last run of the day. By then he was in nap mode and was pretty slow. But that's okay, he did very well overall this weekend.

It was a great weekend with nice courses, nice people, and nice weather.

We took off as soon as Slugger was done as we had quite a drive ahead of us. We prefer not to drive at night as Wazzu hates it! Plus it is difficult to pull into RV parks in the dark and get all hooked up. But the trial ended much later than we expected so we had no choice.

We made it to our destination just fine with only a little bit of stress getting situated in our spot. Let's just hope we make it through the night without any UFO's getting us.

Debbie
10/27-28/07

Change of Plans

(Albuquerque, NM) We had planned on leaving our RV park around noon to make the 30 - 40 minute drive to the trial site. But when checking the directions this morning I came to realize that the trial site was a school field. We weren't allowed on the field until 4:45 as after school activities were being held on there.

Mike went to see if we could do a late check-out at about 3:00 (check-out time was noon). Since the park wasn't all the busy they said we could but it would cost us $15.00. Seemed like a rip to me but we paid it as we didn't want to have to drive around for close to five hours in a big RV - the gas would be more than the late check-out fee.

This left us most of the day to do something. So we decided to go hiking again. This time we went to the opposite side of the mountain from yesterday. That turned out to be a great decision!

Here you can kind of see where we went each day. The first day we did a small section of Oso Corredor trail which you can see on the upper left section of the map. Today we started where it says: "You Are Here" on the middle right part of the map. We followed the Sulpher Trail until it dead ended into Faulty Trail. We turned right on Faulty Trail but in only about 50 yards the trail got so overgrown we thought it must not really be the trail. So we turned around and went back the opposite way on Faulty Trail.



This was a great decision. The trail was beautiful. As you know if you've been following my blog for very long, I love trail pictures. I've been good about not posting many but today I just can't help it. One thing you'll notice that is very consistent on all the trail pictures is that we are all alone.



There were signs at the trail head that said to beware of cougars and bears. I'm happy to report that we didn't see either of those and we only saw one person the entire time. The girls were off leash from the moment we got out of the car. But the boys had to stay on leash as one would antagonize a bear if we saw one and the other would be a tasty little appetizer.



As we continued on, the trail and forest got a little more open so we decided to let Boogie off leash - he had been a huge pain on leash!



He was perfect. He stayed right on the trail the entire time and never went far from me at all - in fact, he'd get a little ways ahead and then just sit in the middle of the trail and wait for me. I must say he is a mommy's boy all the way....which is just as we had hoped.



It seemed like each time we turned a corner the trail was different than before which led to very nice scenery the entire hike.



There were also some beautiful views at various times during the hike. Here we could see some homes in the foothills.



There were a few trees around that we found very interesting. Notice the bark on the tree in the foreground. At first we thought maybe something had happened to the tree. But interspersed throughout the forest we saw a few trees like this.



This tree I just thought was very interesting. It's not the best picture due to position of the sun but I thought I'd share it with you anyway.



We were up pretty high in the mountains so it wasn't that hot at all - it was very pleasant in the upper 60's. But Boogie thought it was too hot. So he'd go ahead of me on the trail just a short ways to the first shady spot where he'd dig himself a trench to lie down in.



Then just before getting up he'd roll over on his back to cool it down a bit I guess.



Even though it wasn't that hot, we stopped so the dogs could have a drink a couple times during the hike. That's always a popular activity - although Sparkie has trouble standing still long enough to drink much. There are so many things that need checking out in a forest!



After we finished the hike, the trail ended a little ways down the road from where we had parked. Since it was uphill, Wazzu and I stayed behind while the rest of them went up to get the car.

Sparkie and Slugger were both watching us as the car came toward us. They were very concerned about Wazzu and I being on the side of the road.....



....or maybe Sparkie was just looking for bunnies.



We got over to the show site just fine and got all set up before dark. We were very surprised by the number of RV's here. I guess most people in this part of the country have to travel quite a ways for a trial so they are well equipped.

Debbie
10/26/07

Science in Albuquerque

(Albuquerque, NM) Today I (Mike) took some time in the afternoon to check out a couple of the museums in Albuquerque. They were both conveniently located right next to each other just a few blocks from the touristy Old Town area.

The New Mexico Museum of Natural History was very new and up-to-date, and mercifully not very child infested. They had a big section on astronomy, which was flashy and high tech but not very clear or well laid out. Some of the displays were so dark you couldn’t really see them. The ancient life section was much better, although the arrangement was weird and I kept finding myself going backward in time. Beside some well-done displays of the apparently obligatory T. Rex skeleton....



...and dinosaur battle....



...they had a cool replica of a T. rex footprint – several feet across and with big scary claws...



...and a window into the fossil preparation lab, where you could see the stages of how fossil bones are laboriously cut out of the rock and pieced back together as they were in life millions of years ago.



One of the scariest displays was just a rock with the tracks of an ancient giant millipede, with a reconstruction of what that critter must have looked like. It was about 5 feet long! That is just too big for a bug.



The best part of the museum, as it is with most natural history museums, was the part concentrating on the periods best represented on the local fossil record. For New Mexico this is the period just after the dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago, when the southwest was much wetter with a greater variety of habitats. Even though the huge dinosaurs and giant bugs were gone, there were still some pretty weird creatures around as the mammals diversified. They showed this variety with a series of murals form various periods.



This one is from about 50 million years ago, with a lot of animals that are funny looking but are sort of similar to current species. There are ancestors of horses, camels, hippos and rhinos in the picture (these all lived for a long time in North America but disappeared 10,000 years ago), along with quite a few that have no surviving relatives. The big guy with the bumps on his head is a Uintathere, which has no surviving descendants. They also had some fossil skeletons of Ice Age animals like this saber tooth cat.



The other museum I visited was more unique, the Museum of Atomic History. It was a bit too full of stuff and jumbled, but they had some very interesting displays such as the amounts and types of radiation that exist all the time.



They also traced the story of the discovery of radioactivity, especially the work of Madame Curie in discovering radium.



There was a lot of material about the ways radioactive material was used in the early days, before anyone really understood its effects. This product, the Revigator, exposed water to radioactive radon gas. Then you were supposed to drink the water and the radioactivity was supposed to make you feel younger.



Pale faces were very fashionable then, so a little radiation poisoning probably made you popular. Fortunately, most of the other radioactivity based products of the early 1900’s were harmless bunk.



The museum really concentrated on the history of atomic weapons, and displayed a copy of the letter Albert Einstein wrote to Roosevelt which led to the Manhattan project and the atomic bomb.



Since most of the scientific work in developing the atomic bomb was done on nearby Los Alamos, they had a lot a memorabilia of life at that very secret installation and descriptions of the first atomic bomb test, also in New Mexico. From there they showed the development of atomic weapons, with reproductions of the plutonium based “Big Boy” bomb used on Hiroshima...



...and the uranium 235 based “Little Man” bomb used on Nagasaki.



To their credit, they did not avoid discussing the moral and military issued behind the decision to use these bombs or describing the devastation created by them. This is a picture of a tricycle a three year-old boy was riding in Hiroshima at the time of the blast. He died from severe burns a few hours later.



After the war ended the military seemed eager to find all kinds of ways to use atomic weapons. They not only developed big bombs to destroy cities and armies, but all kinds of smaller bombs to destroy dams, submarines, tanks and whatever.



Incredibly, they even built an A-bomb that was carried in a 60 pound backpack. Somewhere, it seems they crossed the line between military needs and the endless male quest to find cool new ways of blowing stuff up.



It was amazing to see how many bombs were built by various countries, and how many hundreds of bombs tests there were in the 50’s. The US Air Force almost accidentally blew up Spain in 1966, when a B-52 crashed and dropped 4 H-bombs around a small village on the coast of Spain. None exploded, but they spread a lot of radioactive plutonium around which required a huge cleanup. Needless to say, Spain was not too happy about the incident and now forbids nuclear weapons in its airspace. The museum had a display describing the incident in detail, along with the empty casings of two of the recovered bombs.



I had a fun day out enjoying a couple museums but it was time to go back and see what little emergencies my family had while I was gone!

Mike
10/25/07

Sign - What Sign

(Albuquerque, NM) Yesterday was a long full day of driving. We still can't believe how lucky we are to have gotten a puppy that travels so well. He never made a peep all day long. As soon as Mike picks up the keys, Boogie runs to his kennel. He turns on his back and sleeps the whole way. Oh, we're so lucky!

When we awoke this morning we were in sunny and warm Albuquerque, NM. Mike had stayed up late last night researching fun places for us to go. So after taking care of a few things this morning we headed out for what we hoped would be a fun day for all of us.

We drove up into the Sandia Mountains outside of Albuquerque. Our first stop was a trail called Oso Corredor. It wasn't an especially pretty or interesting trail (which I guess was why we were the only ones there) but since it was deserted it was a great place to let the girls run free the entire time. Boogie sure needed exercise after a full day of driving yesterday but we just didn't feel it was a safe place for him to be loose. The sign at the bottom of the trail said there could be bears and coyotes. But that is true just about anywhere we go I suppose. However, now that Boogie is starting to develop some prey drive, we're not sure if he'll stay right on the trail like he always has so far. This just didn't seem like the time to test it.

Evidently Mike learned during his research last night that this area has quite the insect infestation. Therefore, the large majority of the trees are dead. This makes me think there really aren't too many critters here. The only evidence of any wildlife we came across was the sound of a woodpecker and the sounds of some grouse. Most of the trees looked like this with lots of stuff hanging from the tree branches. At first I thought they were bird nests. But when I investigated more closely I found that it was just a lot of twigs that got stuck in most of the branches when the wind blows. There were probably twenty of these in each tree.



Most of the trail was a little bit difficult just because the trail was so rocky. We found that we really had to spend most of our time watching the trail instead of looking around. Fortunately it didn't really matter as there really wasn't much to look at (Sparkie would tell you otherwise).



We were pretty high (about 8,000 feet elevation) and in the shady areas there was still a small amount of snow on the trail. Wazzu and Boogie, our two dogs that love cold weather, had a great time in even just that little bit of snow. I can only imagine the time they would have in a field full of snow! Boogie was digging trenches in the snow and then lying down to keep cool. The thing was it wasn't even that warm out - probably up at this level it was only in the 50's (don't worry, I was fine as I had two pairs of thermal underwear on!).



After about a two hour hike we at least had taken the edge off Sparkie. She ran up and down and around the entire time. Sparkie can hunt for hours and never tire of it. She doesn't even have to find anything - she just likes to hunt. And she really likes it when she has her best hunting buddy, Wazzu, along with her. Wazzu was acting really happy today. Her stamina wasn't anywhere close to what it should be but she ran around with Sparkie for a little while. The rest of the time she kept track of Sparkie from the trail - ready to run help Sparkie if she actually looked like she found anything.

From there we drove to the top of the mountain - Sandia Crest. Now we were at an elevation of 10,600 feet. We could see 360 degrees around from the view point at the top. No matter which direction we looked it was very hazy. It would have been so beautiful if it would have been clear.

Looking in one direction we could see desert type area - with a thick band of haze hanging over it..



In the opposite direction was the city of Albuquerque. However, due to the haze you can't actually see downtown. What a shame!



And in another direction we could see a more mountainous area. It was interesting to see so many different types of terrain from one spot.



Wazzu wondered what we were looking at from the view point so she decided to take a look - just in case we were watching squirrels!



From here there was a short 1/3 mile loop trail. A very small portion of it had a fence to keep you from falling down the cliffs. But most of the trail had no fence - and often times the trail was only about two feet from the edge of sheer cliffs. As you can imagine, all the dogs were on leash the entire time!

Here is a look back up to the view point.



In this particular area the trail is about five feet back from the edge and as you can see there is no fence here.



It's hard to get a picture of something that is straight down as I was to afraid to get right up to the edge. Mom, you would not have liked this trail at all - in fact I'm pretty sure you wouldn't even have gone on this walk with us! There isn't any kind of slope at all - it is just straight down.



Here is a different section of Albuquerque - but still just as hazy.



One thing we noticed that was interesting was that at all the trail heads and parking spots there were pay stations with prices anywhere from $3 - $10. You'd think if everyone had to pay they could at least keep their signs nice. But every single sign looked exactly like this:



On the way back down we saw a sign that said there were some caves down this other road in five miles. What the heck - sounded fun so off we went. Little did we know that the road was only paved for the first 1/4 mile. From then on it was a very narrow and bumpy dirt road. Even though it was hard on both Wazzu and me, we continued on slowly.

After we'd been on this road a while, it was obvious to us that we were going to be the only ones at this trail. This of course meant that the dogs could be off leash! And sure enough, when we got there, it was just us. But the very first thing we saw was a recently killed large deer. Someone had been snacking on it but hadn't come anywhere close to finishing it off. We then thought it best to keep the boys on leash.

Unlike our first hike this morning, this trail was very pretty with beautiful views. The trees weren't dead so some of the colors were very pretty.



It was a good thing we had the boys on leash as some portions of the trail had some pretty steep drop offs - but not so steep the girls couldn't navigate them.



The views along the way to the caves were very pretty and sometimes interesting.



As we rounded one corner I noticed what I thought may be the caves we were headed for.



As we got closer, I was sure that what I was seeing was indeed our destination.



By then I could also see that in order to get to the caves you had to climb a lot of steps.



As we got closer we found that you had to climb a flight of stairs in the rocks before you even got to the stairwell. This was the end of the line for me. So I held the boys while Mike and the girls went ahead. Wazzu only ended up going about five feet before she realized I wasn't going so needless to say she turned around and stayed with me.

Sparkie happily went along with Mike. And Boogie very UNhappily stayed with me. He wanted to go so badly. But we didn't know what the caves would be like so we made him stay with me. He barked the entire time.

Sparkie was ahead of Mike the whole time until they got to the metal staircase. There were huge spaces between the metal rails. Dog paws would fall right through so Sparkie couldn't go up with Mike. She paced back and forth at the bottom while she waited for Mike.

Mike took the camera with him and took some pictures on his way up. Looking at this picture, I can see why Mike decided not to carry Sparkie up with him. It looks way to easy to loose your step and fall.



And as you can see, it is straight down!



Once up at the top, Mike found the caves. There were just two of them and they were fairly small.



Since there were no signs anywhere, I can't tell you the significance of either of these caves.



By the time we got home the dogs were well exercised. Or so we thought. The three big ones were down and out - but little Boogie acted like we'd left him home all day. On leash hiking just doesn't wear him out. And here we were worried before we got him that he wouldn't be able to keep up! I don't think any of us can keep up with him.....

Debbie
10/23-24/07