Socorro New Mexico, My new home for a couple of nights

I'm tired of driving, but I never tire of clicking the pics.

My camping spot for the next couple of nights. I figure tomorrow I'll drive the 20 miles to the Bosque Del Apache during daylight hours, and see what's going on out there. Hopefully there'll be some Sandhill Cranes that will let me take their picture. I can't believe I drove all the way here just to take a picture of a bird..... And they're not even good to eat! I don't know whats got into me. I hope I'm not becoming a closet..... Birder.

I had a peaceful night at the Walmart in Trinidad, Colorado, last night. I wonder if all Walmarts are closing at 10 p.m.? Because the one in Trinidad, Colorado, and Las Vegas, New Mexico did. That made sleeping in the Walmart parking lot more peaceful, nobody coming and going, no groups of people standing around talking loudly to each other; I think I like the 10 o'clock closing time.

There were hardly any cars in the Walmart parking lot after it closed, so it was more noticeable that the city police would cruise through every once in a while. This made me feel good on two counts. Number one, they didn't roust me out of the parking lot. And two, it made me feel a whole lot safer to know there were around.

I made the 200-mile drive to Socorro, New Mexico, without incident and arrived about lunchtime. I was tired of driving and really tired of sleeping in Walmart parking lots, very much in need of a safe place to stay while visiting the local sites, such as the Bosque Del Apache, so I pulled into an RV Park in Socorro that's on the southern end of town closer to the Bosque and signed up for a couple of nights.

The remainder of the day, I spent straightening up the Arctic Fox and relaxing to rest up from four nights of parking lot boondocking. Tomorrow I'll probably go to the Bosque and check things out. It's been so long since I've been there, I don't remember a whole lot except how cold it was, and I remember that vividly. I'm still trying to make up my mind if I want to get there before dawn to get a picture of the "lift-off" when thousands of snow geese fly off the lake at once or drive around and get some daytime pictures of the flying critters.

Before daylight tomorrow morning, it looks like the temperatures will be just above freezing, but Wednesday morning, it's supposed to be better and in the low 40s. So if I decide to do the "lift-off," it will probably be on a warmer morning.

I also want to get up early one morning and take some pictures of downtown Socorro before many cars show up. Socorro is a very old town, and even though I've driven past it dozens of times, I've never actually driven through town.

But this winter I'm going to shake up my box a little bit, stick my head out of the rut and take a peek, just to see if there's something else going on in this world except the same things I saw last winter. I'll take some time tonight to look on the Internet and see if there are some old buildings that might need their picture taken.

                            theboondork

The mountains behind the RV Park.