The Visitor Center at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge:
Some of the many Sandhill Cranes we saw today:
Today we got up very early (for us anyway!) so that we could go to the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge. It's about an hour's drive north from where we are at Elephant Butte.
On the way up Highway 1, we saw a sign pointing to Fort Craig and decided to check it out. We found the ruins of a fort that had once housed over 2000 Union troops (including Buffalo Soldiers commanded by Kit Carson) during the Civil War. There is nothing left of it except for some stone walls of the Sally Port and crumbled adobe walls and ramparts. It sits on a desolate plain above the Rio Grande. I can't imagine what it must have been like to be stationed there. We walked most of the trail around where the fort had been -- I was pleased I could walk that far without any difficulty or pain!
Bosque del Apache is a great Wildlife Refuge -- this time of year it has oodles of snow geese and sandhill cranes. The cranes were scattered throughout the auto route around the refuge -- we saw many of them feeding and you could hear them all over. We saw two bald eagles and one golden, lots of ravens, coots, shoveler, northern pintail, bufflehead, and mallard ducks, Canadian geese, white-crowned sparrows and two coyotes.
We stopped on the way home at the Owl Bar and Grill for green chile hamburgers and fries. At least Forry had the one with the chile -- I was not that brave!
Thanks, I'll check out the website -- sounds interesting.
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