We did not arrive at the cave, which is really a lava tube, late enough to see the bats come out. But is was a nice walk in the cold fresh air.

I am likin’ the lichen

China pose, or her best attempt.

The signs promised that it would be rare to see a bobcat, and tat if we did not to play dead cause they like to bite your neck! But I swear this is a mountain lion trak in the mud.

Before we made it to the bird sanctuary we took a side trip to the VLA. http://www.vla.nrao.edu/ AWESOME-AWESOME

When they focussed in on a new "target", the would slowly glide in to a new position and to see 27 of these huge dish move together like a slow motion ballet dance, to me, and very creepy for Sharon.

Yes dear, it is a very large array!

South of Albuquerque is the Bosque del Apache Bird Refuge, through the careful palnning of our driver and hosts Gerald and Judy Curtis we arrived at sunset to see the landing of flock after flock of snadhill crane. Very impressive.

This last one is a fake composite, I waited and waited for the cranes to fly near the moon but everytime the camera failed (operator) where photoshop did not.

After our meeting at the University in Las Cruces we had a chance to meet up with some old friends that we met while serving in Haifa. Jean and Dean Wilkey. Jean is an artist and teacher and Dean works for the University as the historical photo archivist, he also has taken some of the most beautiful images of Baha’i Holy Places in Haifa. If you make your way to Las Cruces you will see a miniature art gallery in their home.

They treated us to a visit to Mesila, and while there we visited the Preston Conptemporary Art gallery.

Art of Kathy Breslaw

This model showing the work is not the artist but Jean Wilkey who was convinced to give us scale.

A side detail of one of Kathy’s other works.

Works of Pascal (my favorite in the show)

DO NOT TOUCH, see here!!!

This one above is not Pascal’s but had a nice look with the overlay of gold and silver paint.

Joshua Rose

His reminded me of some of the Australia aboriginal art — all of the over-painting was done with small dots

And finally our hosts walking in Mesila with their favorite young lady.

We headed down to Las Cruces for a meeting at the University. We got treated to some beautiful skies on the way.

This is the cottonwood tree outside the computer lab at NMSU-Grants

We took Judy’s homemade applesauce up to Denver and our granddaughter seemed to enjoy it

We did not make it to the top 11,300 ft., but the altitude when we stopped was around 10,000 feet which got us both breathing pretty hard. Hopefully we can try again before the snow comes in.

It was good for a few weeks but has gone bitter now.

Since we have newly-ripened apples on our trees we have an excuse to turn them into tasty snacks. Sharon found a caramel recipe online that required almost no milk and it tasted great.

Sort of.

While we snacked so did the finches –  on the sunflowers that grew in the yard over the summer.

Just to the Southwest of Grants is a slowly shrinking lake in the mountains. We had our first trip there today.

Panoramic view

Bugs, flowers, etc.

dragonfly

Looking back

One of our friends gave us a packet of seeds last spring, duly planted the seeds and then shortly afterwords we left for the summer. To our surprise we came back to a fairly healthy crop of plants. We have seen the hummers visiting these flowers but I have not been able to capture them in action yet.

I guess he was looking for mice, but acted a little unsure so we think it may have been a chick.

Thanks to advice and material support from a local  “fixit-guru” we have built a water catchment. Total cost is about $15 for the faucet, the barrels and wood are both recycled freebies. It rained last night and in a matter of minutes the first barrel was 50 gallons full, now I need to solve the overflow problem and link to two barrels. I think 100 gallons will go a long way towards watering the garden. From what I have read it has to be by-passed in freezing weather or the barrels will be ruined.

The “new” camera is amazing, but I did tweak this in photoshop slightly, can you tell?

Carissa posted this package to us. It is now decorating a bedroom.

Thanks to a very generous daughter-in-law who passed a SLR my way I can capture some action shots.