Our usual schedule for a day hike involves setting out after breakfast with lunches packed for eating on the trail. Yesterday we broke that tradition by not leaving the house until the morning was half spent.
It’s a little over an hour to drive from Albuquerque to Socorro and from Socorro another 30 minutes to get to Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge. Our plan was to spend the afternoon hiking somewhere around Socorro and then head over to the refuge shortly before sunset with the hopes of seeing the evening fly-in of the sandhill cranes and snow geese.
It was lunchtime when we got to Socorro and we knew that by dinnertime we would be out at the refuge looking at birds, far removed from any opportunities to eat at a restaurant. We made a last minute decision to save our lunches for an evening dinner snack and, instead, to eat a restaurant meal in Socorro.
We’ve enjoyed several meals at a place called Socorro Springs but discovered that it was no longer in business. It had been replaced by a Mexican restaurant that had moved there from another part of town. The locals must have known it was a good place to eat because it was quite busy. The food, the service and the prices did not disappoint and we will probably eat there again on one of our Socorro outings.
We had made no definite plans of where to go for our afternoon hike. After lunch we decided to drive out Highway 60 to a parking area off the Highway that was BLM land used mostly by mountain bikers and rock climbers. We had been told there were some interesting trails but we didn’t have any maps or GPS tracks to follow.
Surprisingly, there was a trail sign at the parking area and a well marked trail that led in the general direction we wanted to explore. We made it up to a ridge that gave us views into an area called the Box, a canyon known to rock climbers and a place we had hiked in before but with an approach from the opposite side.
There were a couple of intersecting trails at the top of the ridge and we managed to find one coming back down that saved us some of rough the bushwhacking we had done to get up the ridge. We have since discovered more trail maps of the area and it does warrant future hikes.
We made it over to the refuge a half hour before sunset, after taking time for dessert and coffee at a small cafe in San Antonio (New Mexico, that is, not Texas). It’s always a challenge to find the place in the refuge where most of the birds will come in and we didn’t hit it at the right place in time. But given the other pleasures of the day we had no complaints. And now we will have a new trail system to explore for winter hikes.
Living Wonderously 