Happy Birthday, Kari!

It’s Kari’s birthday today!  We enjoyed a quick phone call with her and sang “Happy Birthday” – well, I sang anyway!

Our intent today was to go see Sitting Bull Falls, but on our way there we looked at the gas gauge and decided it would be more prudent to drive in to Carlsbad first and fill up.  Did that and then decided to go visit the National Forest Services office for some more information.  The gentleman there was very helpful and, besides giving us lots of brochures and stuff, he also gave us some helpful hints about snakes and mountain lions.  Maybe now we feel a little braver about doing some hiking around here…

Anyway, by the time we got out of there it seemed to make sense to practice being flexible (our new retirement catch-word!) and forgo the Sitting Bull Falls trip till another day since the road to it was back towards our campsite and there were other things we wanted to do and see in town.

So, we walked across the street and went to see the museum.  It was free and very nice.

  

Then it was time for our picnic lunch so we drove a few blocks over to the Pecos River.  Here’s the view from our picnic bench:

Then it was time to explore the Pecos Riverwalk.  We headed down the path enjoying the ducks and geese along the way.

These guys had a little topknot of feathers…

Down about 1/4 mile was a floating pedestrian bridge just before the dam.  These ducks were just hanging out on the edge of the dam.

We crossed the river and wandered down the other side back in the direction of our car (only on the wrong side of the river…).  Saw this beautiful flowering bush – not sure what kind, but it sure smelled good!

The sidewalk veered off the river just a bit through “Pecos River Village” which was quite uninhabited.  Seemed a little odd to us as it looked like a pretty neat place.

We asked a couple of locals and apparently it gets used at Christmas and only a couple times through the year.  Hmmmm….strange. 

So we wandered farther on assuming that there would be another way across the river down there somewhere.  You know where assumptions will get you.  Ours took us on about a 2 1/2 hour walk as the sidewalk dead-ended at a picnic pavilion just before the railroad trestle!  Soooo….we walked all the way back the way we came!  At least we got to see these two little guys – pretty cute!

Then a stop at the grocery store for some supplies and home to watch a movie after eating the yummy chicken and rice supper John had in the crock-pot.

It’s a rough life but somebody’s got to live it!