BERNARDO, NM

Yesterday (Monday) morning, April 18th, we left Santa Fe, NM headed south on I-25. It's a shorter drive this time (108 miles) to our destination - Bernardo, NM and the Kiva RV Park & Horse Motel! Bernardo doesn't show up on the Rand-McNally Atlas, but it is about 60 miles south of Albuquerque. No pictures this time of the scenery along the way - it looks pretty much like the pictures in the last post. The main reason for this stop (and the next one) is that there are some National Wildlife Refuges and Wildlife Management areas we want to visit.

We checked into the RV park about 11:00 and as far as commercial parks go, it's not too bad. It's a small family operated place and yes, they do have stables & corrals for horses.

We got our camp set up and LaVerne put out a couple of hummingbird feeders. Didn't take long to start getting customers. This one is a Black-chinned Hummingbird - very similar to our Ruby-throats back home.

A couple of miles from the RV park is the Bernardo Waterfowl Management Area. We went to it and drove around the Auto Tour. The main draw for this place is the Sandhill Cranes that winter here, but we're a day late and a dollar short - the cranes have already moved on. We did see several American Kestrals and also a herd of Mule Deer.

In this age of liberal enlightment, we did see a 'new age' outhouse. Good for either sex!

Today (Tuesday) we drove about 5 miles south on I-25 to the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge. It covers thousands of acres of desert landscape, but does not have an Auto Tour like most NWR's do. It did have several trails and we walked a couple of them. The cacti are starting to bloom.

Across from the NWR Visitor's Center is the long valley of the Rio Grande. A lot of folks may not be aware, but before it becomes the border river between Texas & Mexico, it originates in the Rio Grande National Forest in Colorado, then flows north to south down the center of New Mexico. At this point, it parallels I-25.

After an hour or so at the NWR Visitor's Center, we drove some back dirt/gravel roads just checking out whatever we could see. On one of the paved roads we found the Rio Grande. We also saw this crazy plant (vine) that grew these round balls. We thought to start with we had found a baseball plant.

Of course, we're always looking for birds and were not disappointed - saw a whole flock of Audubon's Yellow-rumped Warblers, a Gambel's Quail, and a Loggerhead Shrike.

Tomorrow is moving on day again - headed about 40 miles south to San Antonio, NM near the Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife Refuge.