A misty morning; nice for a bird walk. Saw some snow geese, redheads, canvasbacks, scaups, a hooded merganser, mourning doves, collared doves, kestrels, shrikes, harriers, robins, an American pipit, a spotted towhee, tons of white crowned sparrows, tons of juncos (Oregon and pink sided). I love the dark-eyed juncos; don’t see nearly enough of them, plus all the other usual suspects like house sparrow, starlings, rock doves, ravens, etc.
The fog lifted to scattered clouds for a cool easy drive to Santa Fe. Know how some freeways are trucker’s freeways and some aren’t? Some freeways are mostly just cars driving along, but some freeways, like Interstate 80 and Interstate 40 are clogged with trucks. There are likely to be at least as many trucks as cars. Guess those routes get them where they need to go over the terrain of least resistance.
Anyway, we drove highway 60 across New Mexico and discovered it is a railroad highway. Know how you’ll drive along and see a train or two all day? Highway 60 parallels east/west railroad tracks, side-by-side tracks, and you can generally see two or three trains at any time. These trains, out in the open country, travel sixty-five miles per hour, exactly the same speed we were traveling. We could drive for twenty minutes right next to the same train. Trains loaded with trucks.
Arrived in Santa Fe at the same time as the snow flurries. Perfect timing. Checked in to the RV Park, Santa Fe Skies, a quick trip to a clinic for some minor repairs, drive by Monday’s client’s office to locate it, a stop for some Mexican food (not hard to find Mexican food in Santa Fe), and a drive past the rec center with the racquetball court to make sure they really were closed late on a Sunday night. They were.
Home safe and sound and warm inside the house. Let it snow.
(We hear they're gearing up for the blizzard of '06 in Denver).
