Blackwater Draw and Oasis

July 19, 2006

Today I drove down to Portales which is about 15 miles south of Clovis. I went to the Blackwater Draw dig site. Last year Jared and I went to the Blackwater Draw Museum. It wasn’t much of a museum; they had a goofy looking wooly mammoth display and some Clovis man information along with ancient tools, arrowheads and such. By the time we were done fooling around at the museum it was too late to go to the dig site. So that was my mission for the day as well as to go back to Oasis State Park which is basically right next door to the dig site. The visitor’s center at the dig site was by far more exciting than the museum. They had tons-literally-of bones on display; huge teeth, skulls, tusks and so on. I was duly impressed. You take a self guided tour of the area. Sadly there was no digging going on at the time. Right off the bat, as I walked the trail down into the dried up spring fed lake bed, an owl flew in front of me…an owl! In broad day light-I swear he looked right at me! That was pretty fun. Truth be told I was hoping to see some new birds at the site but didn’t expect to see an owl. On I went, it was hotter that the dickens but I paid my three bucks and I was gonna take in the whole dig site if it killed me! There were signs with pictures along the way that were interesting and informative. They claim that this was a favorite place for mammoths, horses, camels (yes, camels), saber tooth cats and bison to come and bathe in the cold spring. This must be true as there are a plethora of these bones in the area. In the interpretive center, where the active dig site is covered, you can see the actual bones that are being excavated. Very cool to be so close to ancient artifacts! You could even walk amongst the bones on a wooden plank pathway and get up close and personal-no touchy, though. At one point in the tour I heard an eerie bird cry coming from a huge tree. I tried and tried to see the bird and entice it to come out of hiding but sadly to no avail. I’m pretty sure it was a hawk-a big ‘un. The rest of the walk was relatively uneventful, just HOT!

Oasis State Park is a park preserve of grasslands. You can camp, fish and picnic there. The man made pond is home to mallards, geese, and other water fowl. I was here last year and really enjoyed it. I wanted to see if the same birds were still there and as best as I can figure, they are! I had hoped to see some new birds but alas I did not. I think things are more active in the spring and fall during migration NOT in the heat of July! So maybe some day I will be able to visit New Mexico in the fall during migration. I would have to go back to everywhere I have been-just to check out the birds…Hey! I think I could handle that!!

Taos

July16, 2006

The 70 mile drive from Santa Fe to Taos was very different from the drive up to Chama. Even though we were driving through mountains, it was surprisingly different. Chama’s color palate was full of what you would expect in the Southwest…orange, yellow, pink, white, and cream; in layers like a cake. Barren, dramatic, sheer, beautiful. Taos’ mountains were black and brown with lots of green trees and shrubs covering the terrain. The mountains were rounded and undulating from side to side like a gathered curtain. It was pretty obvious that they were formed by volcanic activity. They are the baby foothills of the great Rocky Mountains. Parts of the highway ran along the Rio Grande River and made for some pretty spectacular scenery; we even drove through a tunnel in the side of the mountain. As you get closer to the town you drive into the valley that really looks more like a basin surrounded by hills than an actual valley. To the left you can see glimpses of the Taos gorge which is 650’ deep and very jagged and steep. The gorge runs smack down the middle of the valley floor and contains the Rio Grande River. It looks like a deep black crack in the surface of the sage green earth-ouch! It is almost as impressive as the Grand Canyon-ok, maybe not QUITE as impressive, but pretty remarkable to behold. At any rate, it sure made an impression on me!

Taos is pretty old as western towns go-founded in about 1598-and pretty ancient as HIStory goes-artifacts dating back about 5,000 years! Kit Carson lived here for a while. Taos held a couple of things that I wanted to see, the Taos Rio Grande River Gorge Bridge (boy that’s a mouth full!) and the Taos Pueblo. The town itself is small with a plaza that looks a lot like Santa Fe’s just smaller. The drive to the Taos Bride was a short one. The bridge was not very impressive, even though it is said to be on of our highest bridges. But wow was the gorge ever cool!! You can walk out onto the bridge and there are observation points where you can look over the side and see the river. It’s pretty deep with black rocky sides and the river has a green tinge to it. It’s kinda crazy to look across the flat valley floor and then visually come to the gorge and look down into this black scar on the earth. No wonder she groans for the return of Christ and for her redemption as well!

From the gorge we made our way to the Taos Pueblo. The Pueblo is pretty typical as far as Pueblos go. However, as the story goes many Indians still live there as their ancestors did 1,000 years ago-no running water and no electricity-yikes! Stucco structures were crammed in close together. One large apartment type building with rooms piled on top of rooms in a pyramid shape was in the middle of the Pueblo. Outdoor beehive adobe stoves are all over the place with some of them being used to bake yummy bread. There was a very interesting old cemetery and very awesome ruins of an old church. The bell tower and various parts of the adobe walls were all that were left. Good photo ops! We checked out the ‘new’ church, San Geronimo Chapel, which was kinda creepy to be in with all of the saints and other statues so we didn’t tarry there! It was a pretty interesting afternoon and I’m glad we made the visit.

The Taos plaza, as I said, was very much like Santa Fe’s plaza-made for tourists! The town was installing a statue when we got there so there was a lot of activity buzzing around the square. We bought our lapel pin and a couple of refrigerator magnets, ate a late lunch in a restaurant overlooking the square and headed back to Santa Fe.

On the way home we stopped at the Nambe Reservation to see Nabe Falls. Nambe is a three-tier fall that you have to hike up a steep rocky path to see. The weather was getting a little dangerous but we decided to make the 15 minute hike anyway. It was worth the trek. The water was emerald green and it did indeed fall into two pools creating a lovely three-tier waterfall. We took some pix, ganked some rocks, slid down the trail to the car and made our way back to Santa Fe for a well deserved night of rest!

Chama Choo-Choo

OK, that last post came out kinda funky, mebe it was because I wrote it in Word then copied and pasted it to my blog. Sorry, I know it was a little hard to read; well at least it was for me! At any rate I will continue to write in Word, so I can get my blog caught up to date so you will just have ta grin n bear it!!


July 14, 2006

We arrived in Chama around 6:45. Our hotel room is really cute and quaint-no A/C, though-but I really don’t think we will need it! Gary enjoyed the drive from Santa Fe to Chama. Since I have bee on this route I drove so Gary could take in the scenery. The views are spectacular on the road to Chama. The mountains are pink! Multiple colors of pink, cream and orange! They are sheer, jagged and angular. No trees until you reach Chama! It is absolutely gorgeous!! I love this part of NM. Chama is a tiny little town packed with charm and everything you might want for a short stay. Outside of the office door of the hotel there were hummingbird feeders hanging along the walkway. Noisy little hummers were flitting and fighting for access to the ‘goods’. What a treat that was!! There were so many of them and they were not at all bothered that Gary and I stood close enough to feel the wind from their wings! Fascinating!! Our hotel is right across the street from the train we will be riding tomorrow. Occasionally the train whistle would blow and echo around my head taking me back to my childhood. In Macon, where I grew up, we lived in a neighborhood that was at the top of a hill, at the bottom was a lake and across the valley there were train tracks. On any given summer night you could hear the train whistling in the distance. Ah, memory lane, but I digress. So as we stood on the sidewalk checking out the train station, guess what we saw? Another double rainbow! Cool! We took a short walk around town-and I do mean short! We bought a shot glass for Leah’s collection, post cards, a magnet, a lapel pin, a tee shirt and I found a nice pair of leather sandals that were on sale. That is our usual MO whenever we visit a new place, we get a shot glass, a magnet, a lapel pin, post cards for the family and sometimes a tee shirt-depending on where we are and if we want a tee and if we find one we like! (And of course I gotta boost a few rocks!!) We ate at High Country Salon which was recommended by Frommer’s. The food was good but the service was awful, so they do not get any stars for the Leonard’s! Back to the room to relax and sleep and dream of the train ride tomorrow!!


July 15, 2006

We woke up to humming birds outside our room, how odd they are-but I love ‘em! The local breakfast spot was next door to our inn. We grabbed a bite and made our way across the street to the train station as the train was scheduled to leave at 10 am. Not knowing how to dress for the adventure, I overdressed in a cream sleeveless top and nice cream flowered Capri pants. Why, you ask, am I sharing this? Well, you see, not knowing if the train would be air conditioned or not and knowing that we would be stopping for lunch, I wanted to look kinda nice and be comfortable at the same time…BUT it was a COAL-STEAM powered train!! YIKES!! We found out really quickly that it was going to be a very dirty and a very hot ride!! DOUBLE YIKES!! Black grit was everywhere and on everybody!! The seats, your face, your hair, your clothes and in your mouth and eyes!! Someone should have warned us!! But that was ok because the ride was TOTALLY worth the dirt and heat! Colorado, as you know, is beautiful and she did not disappoint us on the ride! Mountains and valleys and lovely vistas that make you ache to want to live there and never go anywhere again. We ate lunch at Osier, Co-elevation 9,637 feet. By the time we got there we were all hot and hungry and the food was yummy to the tummy! As we pulled out of Osier the cooking staff stood along the tracks and waved good bye to us, kinda nice! On the train was an open car where you could stand and see all around you, this was my favorite part of the train! Dirt, steam, strangers and nature all in one place-awesome! I could go on and on about the ride but that would prolly bore you, suffice it to say, I would do it again in a heart beat but I would wear black!! We have some pretty nice photos of the trip and some pretty nice memories to go with them. We arrived back in Chama around 4:30 and headed back to Santa Fe-dirt and all. Boy was it ever nice to get to the La Quinta and take a shower!! I still felt like I was swaying!! Taos tomorrow.

Trip Planning

July 5 to July 9, 2006

I have been enjoying being back in Clovis. We have spent nearly every meal with Daniel & Maria. I have done laundry at their home, which is a big help as the laundry spot at the hotel is usually being used.

Sunday Gary & I went to the Clovis Zoo, yes Clovis has a zoo...AND it is the second largest zoo in the state! Yikes! It was larger than I expected but kind of a crummy zoo-which I did expect! However it was well worth the two dollars we spent to get in!! They had a bald eagle, various birds, and your run of the mill zoo animals. All in all it was a fairly pleasant afternoon.

There is a park just outside of town called Ned Houk. It’s a nice, pretty large park that has two sections with ponds on it-both sections are very similar but have different visiting critters. It is my favorite spot in Clovis. I can go there and spend hours just watching the birds and prairiedawgss and other critters. Youwouldn'tn’t believe what all I have seen…a Swainson’s hawk feeding on a prairie dawg-watching me like a hawk as I watched HIM like a hawk, Mississippi kites stalking prairie dawgs, meadow larks meadow larking-a very soothing sound-, great blue herons hiding in the trees next to the pond, avocets screeching as they fly across the road, killdeer, sandpipers, all manner of ducks and geese galore-attacking you as you approach them cause they think you have food for ‘em!, ugly as sin but fascinating turkey hawks, burrowing owls that live in prairie daw holes, prairie dawgs sunbathing and then fussing at you because you have been so bold as to invade their territory, federal squirrels-they have thirteen stripes on their backs thus the name, jackrabbits-ears flopping in the breeze, burrows, buffalos, and…well…I could go on and on but I will spare you that ‘enjoyment’! Fascinating stuff, if you like that sort of thing…and I do!!

July 10th …Leah and James’ second anniversary, but they are away at a school somewhere in NE Germany, I think, out of cell phone range so we didn’t get to wish them a Happy Day . It is hard to believe that they have hit that two year milestone already! It seems like just yesterday that we were racing around getting flowers to the church on time and generally having a grand time making wonderful memories! They are hoping to visit Prague while they are in that part of the world…too cool!!

Amber informs me that Aiden has 4 teeth now-two up, two down-and is beginning to crawl…look out world here he comes!

I went to Hastings, which is a book store, and bought a Frommer’s New Mexico guide book Maria showed me hers and I wanted one WOW, what a great investment! Frommer’s is the way to go if you need to buy a guide book, they are very user friendly and full of really good info. When I get home I’m getting one for Georgia. I went back to La Quinta to peruse the book and plan our next week end trip! YAY!!  Am I a happy camper? (traveler) or what??!!


July 11, 2006

I spent the morning at, yup, Ned Houk Park. It was a pretty good morning. I saw the two Mississippi kites that Jared and I saw last year-well at least I think they are the same birds! The burrows and buffalos were ‘back in town’ too…yay…I was beginning to think they fell into the place where burrows and buffalos go…wherever THAT is…

We-Gary, Daniel, Maria and I-went down to Tatum, NM this evening for dinner. On the drive down (about two hours) we were entertained by a lightening storm on the Texas border. We saw a double rain bow, which was very cool as I have only seen one double rainbow in my lifetime. I thought they were rare, but out here they are quite common as I was to find out later on my trip! Tatum is where Maria was born and raised. It is due south of Clovis along the Texas-NM border. Maria’s mama, Ninia, owns a little steak house there where we had a wonderful dinner. Ninia treated us like royalty and we met several of Maria’s relatives-all very nice. The running joke is that Gary and I (mostly Gary as he practically lives here) are adding to the ‘white’ population in Maria’s family, which is of Mexican decent. Up until a couple of years ago Daniel was the only ‘white boy’ in the family!! Ninia is awesome and she fed us until we were in danger of popping! Her pies are outa this world!! After meeting everyone it is so easy to see why Maria is so special!


July 12, 2006

I got lots done before lunch today-I ironed (very exciting), exercised, showered and went to Wal-Mart!! Thank you Lord that Clovis has a Wal-mart!

We ate lunch at I-HOP with Daniel and Maria. Yummy!!

Gary and I made our final plans and reservations for our next two week end trips. First, we will go Central northwest to Chama. Chama is a quaint little mountain town that I briefly visited last year on one of my solo trips. It is bordered by the Carson, Rio Grande and the Santa Fe National Forests-prime bird and critter watching territory. Chama is the home of the Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad which is the longest and highest narrow-gauge coal-fired steam line (that’s a mouth full!). It winds through valleys and mountain meadows on a sixty-four mile long track between Chama, NM and Antonito, Co. The ride is an all day affair with lunch included, so toot toot here we come! We will spend Friday night in Chama, ride the train on Saturday and then head south to Santa Fe which will be our base camp (there is a La Quinta there where we can stay for free as Gary has racked up enough points to do so-many times over!) From Santa Fe we will go up the other side of the mountains to Taos to see the sites there on Sunday. Monday we will head back to Clovis. So there you go, yet another NM adventure planned and looked forward to!! Then the next week end we will go south to Roswell as our base camp-thanks to La Quinta again! From Roswell we will go to Alamogordo and the White Sands National Park. My Grandma and Uncle Joe used to live in Albuquerque and my parents and I visited them several times while they were in NM. I remember seeing pictures and post cards of theirs of White Sands and I have always wanted to go there. We will go to Cloudcroft-mostly because it is 9,000 feet above sea level and I want to experience that…good a reason as any I figure! And lastly we will hit Ruidoso which is on an Indian Reservation and has a famous gambling casino-Inn of the Mountain Gods Resort and Casino.

Two jam packed week ends to be sure, but oh how much fun it will be!!!

Stay tuned for my next post…life rocks on-get it? ROCKS on…and I have thangs to do so I’ll stop for now and do em…and…mebe write more in a day or two!

More...

July 5-11, 2006

I have been enjoying being back in Clovis! No, really! We have eaten nearly every meal with Daniel and Maria-which is always a good time. Maria is the service supervisor at Plateau and Daniel has his own business with Plateau as one of his customers. So needless to say a lot of shop talk goes on...mostly all I hear is bla, bla, bla...but that's ok.

Gary and I went to the Clovis Zoo-supposedly the second largest Zoo in NM, next to the Albuquerque Zoo-which we went to last year when Jared was here. The Zoo was much larger than I expected but a little, no, a lot grungier than I expected, too! I made for a nice afternoon any way!

I have also spent a good bit of time at my favorite place in Clovis-Ned Houk Park. I have seen tons of critters! Jack rabbits-odd looking creatures-, prairie dawgs, burrowing owls, turkey buzzards-UGLY!,-blue herons-yup at the pond there are three of 'em-the prevalent kingbird, a Swainson's hawk munching down on a prairie dawg-very cool to see (he was watching ME like a hawk!)and my Mississippi kites were back in town too! Also the cute little burrows and huge wooly tatonka-buffalo-that Jared and I saw last year. I love this place it is so peaceful and full of live entertainment!

The 10th was Leah and James' second anniversary!! Yay!! HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!!! We tried to call them but they are out of town at a training class for James and have no cell phone service there, so we will have to wait until they get back home :(

Amber informs me that Aiden now has four teeth and is beginning to crawl-look out world here he comes!!

There is a really nice bookstore in town called Hastings. I have been there a couple of times. I bought a NM travel guide book by Frommer's. The guide is really comprehensive and informative; there is even a tear-out map included. If you ever need to go anywhere this is the company to get your info from! I plan to get one for Georgia when I get back home-just to have it on hand for myself and for visitors. At any rate the NM book will be very helpful on our week end trips!

Maria's mom, Nina (neen-ya) owns a restaurant in Tatum, NM and has been after us to make the two hour drive south for dinner. So on the 11h we went down. The drive went quickly because we were in such good company! Nina's place is just a little spot but oh boy is the food ever good!! The place was jam packed with people-mostly relatives of Maria's!! We were treated like royalty! It was such fun! Nina has insisted that we come again-maybe next time Daniel will fly us down!!

July 3, 2006

YIKES!! At 5:45 am Debbie, from the flower shop, called to find out how to turn the call forward off of the phone!! At 5:45 AM!!! Actually, she did me a real big favor, coz I got up and went outside to see what I could see around the hotel. WOW!! What a show! Huge red rock formations were EVERYWHERE!! I thought I died and went to heaven-heh, heh. I love my rocks! I got some really good am photos and terrorized some birds for about an hour! It was all pretty impressive.

We all met for breakfast and headed toward the Grand Canyon-boy was I excited to see THOSE rocks! But first we stopped at Starbucks and the view from there was out of this world! No Starbucks in Georgia has a view like that! On the way out of Sedona we did see evidence of the recent fires. All of the canyon roads were blocked off and there were some charred places, but all in all, it wasn't too bad.

As we waited in line to enter into the Grand Canyon Park, I spotted a Western Tanager in a tree! But that was nothing like my first glimpse (and I do mean glimpse-through trees...and people!) of the Grand Canyon!! I was almost afraid to look- I wanted to savor the experience and wait until I could get a really good look at the Canyon!! But at first glance...it was PINK!! My first thought was that Taylor would be so happy for me coz she knows my favorite color is pink! Good grief there were PEOPLE every where!! So MANY and so STUPID!! Well, that is another story... We ate lunch and then caught a bus that would take us to the south rim. No words can describe my first Grand Canyon gawk! HUGE, BIG, MASSIVE, DEEP, STEEP, COLORFUL, BEAUTIFUL, MASSIVE...none of those even come close. WOW, what God has done with what amounts to the result of our sin!! We spent several hours there and still did not see the whole park!! I smell a return trip!! While we were there, besides seeing the Canyon and the Colorado River-which is green by the way-we saw two toned canyon squirrels, scrub jays, ravens and CALIFORNIA CONDORS!! For crying out loud I NEVER thought I would EVER see one of those in the wild, but there they were big as day flying around and enjoying the canyon like everyone else! Too cool!! (Did you get that I was excited yet?) Back to the Colorado River there is a spot on the rim that you can see and hear the river! It's like a ribbon but you can HEAR it! That was pretty cool and we even saw rafters rafting! AND the rocks around the rim had petrified roots in them-that was really odd and interesting. And, yes, I did boost a few rocks...how could I not? I prolly have enough to put me away for many many years!! Oh, well, gotta have my memory rock...it's Biblical, you know!!

Back to Sedona in the dark, again. But what a blessed day it was!!



July 4, 2006

Happy Birthday, America!!

This morning, while Gary and I were waiting for Daniel and Maria to bring their luggage down to the car, we saw a quail running with something-prolly a bug-in her mouth!! So, I got to add to my bird list a Gambel's quail spotted in Sedona!

We took a short tour around Sedona starting with, yup, Starbucks! Most everything was on the main drag in the town so shopping was pretty easy. Our mission was to find a t-shirt, magnet and lapel pin for my growing collection of those items. But the rule is they must have the name of the town or place of interest on them. Our first stop was at the famous Tlaquepaque-which in Spanish literally means shopping mall! I have seen this place on HGTV but never thought I'd ever visit there! It was interesting but most of the stuff was kind of artsy-fartsy. I did buy a magnet and a couple of Christmas ornaments, though. So at least I can say I SHOPPED there :) The strangest things we saw there were chairs made out of rocks! Odd but actually quite comfortable! I would have loved to have one, but it would cost a fortune to have it shipped home! We found the t-shirt and lapel pin in downtown Sedona. I could very easily live there!

We hopped on the road again to finish our trip. When we got to the meteor crater-which you can see from the highway-we found out that it cost a small fortune to be a visitor! More than the Grand Canyon! So, sadly, we opted to steal a rock, take a pix from afar and haul out to the Petrified Forest since we had already paid for that when we drove through the Painted Desert!

The petrified Forest was exactly like I pictured it. Most interesting!! We had such fun walking the path at the visitor's center and speculating about how it all happened. There were lots of photo opps which we took advantage of in a big way. But it was so odd to see all those trees just laying on the ground like rocks. They were all over the place! We saw more rock formations and blue plateaus and well, just odd stuff! Oh, I did not help myself to a rock from there as we heard that just a bit before we got there someone was arrested for lifting a piece of petrified tree! And besides I got a free pebble at a gift shop AND at home I have a huge piece of tree and a small chunk that Uncle Joe gave me from when he lived out in Albuquerque and visited the forest.

Daniel and Maria are such fun to travel with and we made such good memories. We saw so many wonderful things on this little trip. I still marvel at most of them and think of how great a God we have to create-out of a moaning earth-such beautiful things for us to enjoy!

The drive back to Clovis, while long, was pretty entertaining as we saw fireworks from Gallup to Albuquerque to Santa Rosa! Our hotel room in Clovis is like an apartment! Two really big rooms, one is a den area and the other is the bedroom. Very comfortable and really nice to come 'home' to after traveling over 1532 miles!!

Ok, that's about all I can write for today!

More from New Mexico...

July 2, 2006
Yeah it's really July 16th but I'm only up to July 2nd...

Daniel, Maria, Gary and I left Albuquerque on our week end adventure! We took a little detour off of I40 to see the Bandera volcano crater and Ice Cave. It was very cool. First off, at the 1930's Trading Post there were humming birds all over the place-a real treat for me! They were ruby throated and Rufus hummers. To get to the ice caves you have to walk on a path over a lava flow which was interesting all by itself. We saw all manner of formations-some a little freaky-flora and fauna. The ice cave was at the bottom of al long stairway and as you go down the stairs it gets colder and colder until it's 31 degrees!! Oh yeah, my kind of temperature! The ice at the bottom of the cave was green-sorta glowing green at that. The ice was supposedly hundreds of years old. The path to the volcano crater was a little more interesting. Up, up, up we hiked until you go around a curve and there it is-a big black crater like hole in the ground. Awesome! On the trail to the crater were these really cool looking pine trees-yeah PINE TREES! Some of them had black bark and some had black and orangeish bark. I found out later that they were Ponderosa Pines and that is how they normally grow. The all black ones were the younger trees.

The next stop was El Morro-a large rock formation, where when it rains the rain flows down the rock into a natural cistern that has been used over the centuries by the Indians for fresh water. There is also a place on the rock that ancient people and moderns have carved their names into the rock. There were Petroglyphs all the way up to the 1900's...but no one is allowed to do that anymore.

We drove through the Zuni Indian Reservation and boy was that awful!! It was a really nasty little place-yikes, how do people live like that? Imagine the worst 'town' you have ever seen and Zuni land beats that in yuckie-ness! So now things are Zuni or Zunified if we don't like it!

On we went to the Painted Desert. What a treat that was! Very colorful dirt, and rock formations. Golds, greens, reds, pinks yellows, oranges, blues...oh, my! It sure was purdy!

We ate dinner in Flagstaff at Black Bart's. Remember him? He was an out law that Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid ran into all the time as they robbed the train. Anyway...it was a fun place as the waiters were the entertainment! They sang on a stage-some were good and some were VERY bad!!

We drove to Sedona in the dark so we were not able to see all the rock formations for which the countryside is famous. Ah, sweet sleep after a wonderful action packed and full day!

Well, here we go!

Well, here we go...I have finally decided to join the blog bandwagon! My first post will be a day out of my travel journal. Most of you reading this know that I am out west in the lovely metropolis of Clovis, New Mexico. Why am I here? you ask...to visit my long lost husband who is being held captive by the Plateau phone company, working against the tide to switch out their system. "Nough of that...here I go with my first real blog post...

July 1, 2006
The flight to Albuquerque was wonderful, as usual. I saw the mighty Mississippi River-there is no missing or mistaking her from the air (unless it's cloudy) she is HUGE!! I sit smugly in my window seat knowing that it is only by God's gift that I have seen the river each time I have flown over it...pretty cool. The second leg of my flight (Dallas to Albuquerque) was a blast because I went first class!! Very nice! Such pampering!! I think I am spoiled now! I picked a window seat and the only one left was is first class-heh, heh. I love to sit with my nose pressed up against the teey tiny window and watch the earth go by. It's so entertaining for me to see trees, lakes, rivers, farm land, mountains and such from so high up. It's so funny because I actually saw all the towns from Texico, NM to Clovis to Cline's Corner. Each town was so obvious to me and that was really cool! The approach into Albuquerque was especially entertaining. As you fly past Cline's Corner the earth changes from brownish pink to lush green trees, then you fly over the Sandia Mountains and boom there is the Rio Grand riverbed and Albuquerque. As you are taxing to the gate, you see tons of prairie dogs running around, diving into their holes and in my mind I can here them barking their cute little bark. Gary, and our good friends, Maria and Daniel, were there to pick me up. We ate, went for ice cream at the Cold Stone Creamery-yum-and went to the hotel for the night. Tomorrow we head out for Arizona-to see the Grand Canyon and Sedona and anything else we feel like seeing along the way!