Day 5 - An Interesting Drive

As we are well ahead of the time we need to be at Buenos Aires, we decided to make a stop at the Bosche del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico for a day of birding. We altered our route to take the secondary roads from Amarillo to the refuge, taking us through Clovis and Roswell, NM and then west to the refuge.

Once we got off the Interstate and on to US routes the traffic dropped off to nothing, no racing cars, no parade of heavy trucks, just four lanes of good roads. We made a fuel stop in Clovis at a nearly new Pilot station and did the first of our 10 minute marches around the truck parking lot (two loops was 10 minutes), our second stop was in Roswell where aliens are the theme of the city (little green men aliens, not migrant aliens). After we had lunch at a fairly good Mexican restaurant, Cerritos, we did our second walk through the city center where it seemed every second shop was alien-themed. I did get a very good latte from Stellar Coffee on the way back to Speedy.

After Roswell, we finally ended up on a two-lane road that went west across pretty varied terrain to San Antonio, New Mexico (home of the Best Green Chile Cheeseburgers, but we had none). In addition to the open range, with lots of cattle and a surprising number of Pronghorn herds, we wound through a couple of mountain ranges and crossed a somewhat otherworldly landscape, a large rugged lava flow near the Valley of Fires.

The last time we stopped at Bosche del Apache, we stayed at the Bosche Birders RV Park, but it closed last January. Fortunately, we found that a new small park had opened up just up the road, also just outside the refuge. The Chupadero Mountain View RV Park and Gallery has only 10 sites, but has electricity water, toilets and showers ($3 extra, groan!), but they are very busy. We got lucky and were able to get the last site available for two nights.

After checking in, we drove down to the first set of pools right along the refuge entry road. They have built a new parking lot since we were here three years ago and it was teeming with birders, most with cameras and big lenses pointed at the Sandhill Cranes. It is the pool where the cranes congregate each day at sundown. We arrived about 45 minutes before sunset and I counted 39 cranes and a smattering of various ducks. By the time we left, there were about 2000 cranes. From the time we arrived until after sunset, they just kept coming in.

We will spend tomorrow on the refuge birding. We will have to be out around dawn as that is when they have the big movements. We will start at an inside the refuge pool where the Snow Geese come in at dawn and also hope to catch the cranes leaving in the morning as well. Then it will be a search for ducks and rarities. 

When we stopped today, we noticed the water pump cycling on every minute or so for a short time. This is not good as it means that the water system is losing pressure. It could be indicate of a leak or of a failure of the pump’s seals. The outside temperatures the last couple of nights have been very near freezing and I hope that we didn’t freeze something. I haven’t seen any drips under the van and there has been running water when we first use it in the morning before dawn. It will be a project for tomorrow. It’s always something.