Monday, March 14

Our best Roadrunner

Cactus in bloom in Tuff Canyon

Santa Elena Canyon

Paul, Dee, David in Tuff Canyon

Monday

Wind came up in the night rattling the vents on the roof of the camper.  What few clouds we had are gone.  It will be a beautiful day and because many of the hikes in the Basin are much longer than we want to tackle (6.6 one-way) we will do half of one of those and then call our hiking in BBNP done.

Securing a place on a first-come, first-served basis.  This is how it is done.  We awoke to see four younger guys standing in the campground road near us.  They had been walking around and we wondered what they were doing.  Paul asked them if they were waiting for a bus.  All this is at about 6:00 am!  Our neighbors were getting their RV ready to move out and these guys were just watching from a small distance.  Then, just as soon as they pulled out, these four reappeared with their car and got out their equipment and set it up!  There was an empty camping space for no more than 5 minutes.

The Internet connection here isn't always the best in the afternoon so this morning we headed first to the restaurant/gift store and checked email and news.  Then we went on our hike which was part way along one of the basin rims, however, we were never high enough to get the views we had on the Lost Mine trek.  Now we are back again adding to the blog!

Tomorrow we'll be moving on to Guadalupe NP and hope to stay there for several days.  The camp sites are first-come, first-served so it will be a matter of luck.  If we are unable to get in there we'll head to Carlsbad Caverns and will stay near by there.  

Four on a rock in Santa Elena Canyon

So far we have seen no mountain lions, no bobcats and no black bears! We have seen plenty of scat though which we suspect is from bobcats.  We did see more deer today but nothing that would raise the hairs on the backs of our necks...maybe that is a good thing though.