Month: January 2018

World of Zoo Alameda Zoo Park

World of Zoo Alameda Zoo Park

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To my fellow animal lovers I bring to you a post from Alamogordo, NM.

In New Mexico you can find the oldest zoo in the southwestern United States. Alameda Zoo is a real nice little zoo where the animals are happy.

They have nice kangaroos. A big enclosure for them where they can run and jump all they want… just as long as they don’t get out! Kangaroos can jump at least three times there height, that’s a LOT higher than I can jump!

The mule deer were pretty happy too! Some of the zoo keepers drove by and the mule deer started begging for food! They know who feeds them! Mule deer antlers can grow up to a 1/4 of an inch a day. That’s pretty fast.

They have a Mexican grey wolf which just looks amazing!! This lone wolf is endangered. When their habitat is seen on a map, you can cover it with your pinky!

The antelope shared an enclosure with the peacocks. Did you know that antelopes are the second fastest land mammal?

We couldn’t get a very good pic of the emu, but one of them loved us. It kept following us around and yelled out when we left. I wanted to keep him but… he wouldn’t fit in the RV.

The coyote kept his distance. I think it was sleepy but who knows?

The porcupines were foraging for food, I do not want to fall onto one of those. That would be pretty painful!

In the monkey area, there was a baby monkey who followed us around. Luckily we didn’t get poop thrown at us! These are the same kind of monkey that’s on the movie Night At The Museum.

In the bird house there was this beautiful bird! I have no idea what kind of bird it is but just look at it! It looks kind of like a samurai bird to me. It walked up and all the quail ran away.

There were all kinds of birds in that bird house!

Some pretty ducks! This one looks pretty sleepy.

The ocelot wasn’t too happy. It looks like it was in an accident or something because it’s tail is smashed. A lot of the animals here are rescued.

The mountain lions were snoozing. Reminded me of our cats! They were having their siesta, but they kept a close eye on where everyone was. You could actually walk under their habitat! It was really neat!

There are a few bald eagles at this zoo. They were being all majestic.

A very sleepy owl.

These are some nice looking hawks to! They posed for us.

There’s a cute capybara. Did you know that capybara can hold their breath for five minuets! That’s at least four and a half minutes longer than I can hold my breath. We hadn’t seen a capybara in a zoo before so this was a first for us.

The tortoise was staying nice and warm under its light. It was pretty cold out the day we visited. This guy was HUGE!!

The lemur was being very active. Running up and down the branches. I don’t think he wanted his picture taken. I had to sneak up on him to get this shot!

“What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, man would die from a great loneliness of spirit. For whatever happens to the beast soon happens to the man.”  I liked this quote from Chief Seattle a lot so I decided to share it with you.

I’m giving the Alameda Zoo a 5 star review based on the happy and healthy animals we saw! This was just a small county park and was different from the usual zoos we go to, but I really enjoyed it just as much some of the larger, better funded zoos we’ve been to.

See y’all at the zoo!

Written by Nicholas

Sand, Science, and Chilies

Sand, Science, and Chilies

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Hey Guys! We spent one jam packed week in the Alamogordo area of New Mexico. This was our second visit to the Alamogordo area and we still didn’t get through our entire to-see list!

The first thing we did when we got back to town was grab one of our absolute favorite burgers! Rockin’ BZ Burgers is still as good as we remembered them to be.

The second thing we did was revisit White Sands National Monument to get some sled time in!

Alex thought his sled was going a little slow so he waxed his sled up for some speed, then he found the tallest dune he could find! We expected a scene out of Christmas Vacation when Clark sprays his varnish on the bottom of his sled. It wasn’t quite that fast, but he did say he could tell a difference!

We did a Ranger guided sunset stroll one evening at White Sands. I love how bright white the sand looks next to the vivid blue the sky on a bright sunny day, but I have to admit…I’m kind of digging how soft everything looks in the late afternoon lighting.

And Guys, check out this sunset!

We finally made it to the New Mexico Museum of Space History! We tried to make it last time we were in Alamogordo, but we ran out of time. We learned about Ham, the worlds first Astrochimp who traveled into space in that little capsule you see in the above top picture. Nicholas had a good time dressing up in astronaut gear! :-}

There was a whole section on Star Trek. Beam me up Scotty!! There were some very cool exhibits! This one in the right picture was a rumble pad where you felt the power of a shuttle take off. It was a really cool exhibit!

We had way too much fun with the Whisper Dish! We all took turns whispering and listening to each other from across the Museum park. The nerd always comes out of us when we find an interactive museum! Our nerd hearts were very happy at this one.

We found an old train trestle while we were out exploring Cloudcroft. Check out the view we found! Can you find White Sands NP in the pic above? It’s there! Check the left side of the picture.

Oh! We found these really yummy and super huge biscochitos at a place called Rizo’s! They were fresh baked and so so good.

We never know what the grocery store is going to be like. The first time we visited Alamogordo we found Lowes and fell in love with it! We were all excited to go back to the tortillaria for some fresh made tortillas and to grab some roasted chilies from the produce section!

We had to stock up on our favorite treats before we left town. What’s not in the picture is the 10lbs of frozen green chilies we bought. We love green chilies!! The only other thing we had time for was hitting up the two pistachio farms to stock up on some tasties!

Alamogordo was one of our favorite places from our first loop back in 2015. When I added it to this loop I worried that it really wasn’t as great as we remember it to be. That burger wasn’t really that good. White Sands really wasn’t that fun. But Guys, it totally was! Alamogordo is definitely one of our favorite places and after two visits…we still have new things to do there!

See y’all down the road!

#grandwesternloop

World of Zoo the Living Desert Museum and Zoo

World of Zoo the Living Desert Museum and Zoo

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To my fellow animal lovers, I bring you my second Zoo post, and this time it’s in Carlsbad, NM. Now, the Living Desert Museum and Zoo was really neat since all the animals were found within the state park. I’ve been to a LOT of zoos but I have never been to one that is also a state park… how cool is that?!

I liked the views from the zoo, it was pretty neat!

They’ve got two Mexican wolves, sadly they are really rare, but they look amazing!

They’ve got various birds like the golden eagle, which was watching us very closely.

The horned owls took quite a while to find and were very neat, can you find them?

The last bird I’m going to share is a blue jay, isn’t it so pretty?!

The prairie dogs were probably my favorite part of this zoo. It’s hilarious to see their little tails wag when they run! It looked like they just got some food too!

The javelina decided to say hello and came right up to the fence! It’s nose was working trying to sniff out some food.

The black bear they have looked very sleepy. Not only was the bear sleepy,

but the grey fox found a patch of sun and decided to take a nap too! It looked very comfortable!

We must have come during nap time because the porcupine was sleeping too!

Although the mountain lions were not happy with us making an appearance and kept going back where we couldn’t see them,

the bobcats decided to pose for us! It looks like it’s smiling at us! Neat!

Walking around you could find some pretty flowers, you could also find some gypsum! We’ve been to some sand dunes made of gypsum, White Sands NP was awesome.

There is a nocturnal area where you can see some rattlesnakes, it gave me the heebee jeebees. I don’t like danger noodles.

Then you walk around the corner and BAM! Giant bat head! Kinda startled me it’s hidden until you round the corner!

They have a plant area which when you go inside, prepare to take off your jacket because it is warm in there! That area has some plants from all over the world!

It had barrel cactus, some neat trees and pretty flowers.

The tortoise was a fair size and was on the move.

The bison were just lazin’ around like bison do.

The mule deer weren’t doing much either, but look at those antlers!

The entrance had a neat little museum with a touch table and the coolest part of the museum, in my opinion, was the fact that it shows you what the area looked like a really, really long time ago! The area was under a sea!

Based on the variety of animals and how the animals were all happy and healthy, I give the Living Desert museum and zoo a 5 star review.

I’ll see y’all at the zoo!!

Written by Nicholas

The Top Of Texas

The Top Of Texas

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Hey Guys!! While we were in the Carlsbad, NM area we spent a couple of days at the Guadalupe Mountains National Park in Texas.

The Guadalupe Mountains sit right on the New Mexico-Texas state line. We were so close, we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to explore another Texas National Park Unit!

Our first day at Guadalupe Mountains NP we did two hikes and the boys completed the Junior Ranger program. We did the Pinery Trail which is a short trail to the ruins of an old stagecoach stop from the 1800s called the Butterfield stagecoach station. This was a super easy almost one mile paved trail.

The second trail we hiked was the Devil’s Hall Trail. This trail started off great with about a mile of constructed trail. We saw some really pretty fall colors on this trail! Just when we thought the Devil’s Hall trail was going to be easy peasy, the constructed trail ended and dumped us out at a wash and the “trail” followed the wash for about a mile or so. This was a difficult trail due to the fact that there wasn’t really a trail. There were several times where you could tell which direction you needed to go, but there wasn’t a definite way to get there. And there were a couple of time when we weren’t really sure if we were going the right way. The wash was littered with big boulders and slippery round rocks. So…the going was slow.

One of the things we learned while doing the Junior Ranger program here is what an Alligator Juniper looks like! The bark looks like gator hide! We had fun pointing out the different trees while we were picking our way down the wash.

At the end of the wash you get to a natural staircase that they call a “hiker’s staircase”. You can see Alex making his way up the staircase in the picture above. It was a little tricky to get up with a camera around my neck. I ended up having to hand the camera up then scale the “staircase” myself.

Once you make it to the natural staircase you’re almost there! I probably took way longer than necessary because I kept stopping to take pictures. Devil’s Hall turned out to be a short narrow canyon. We walked down it and explored the area for a little bit before turning around to traverse the wash again.

We decided to do a hike on Thanksgiving Day. We did the Guadalupe Peak Trail which is a strenuous trail that gains a total of 3,000 feet of elevation.

I try to do my homework when it comes to trails like this. Everything I saw said that if you can make it past the first 1,000 feet or first mile and a half then you won’t have any problem finishing the hike. What they failed to mention is that after that first mile you’ve worked so hard going almost straight up that your legs are shot for the rest of the hike. So, while the rest of the hike isn’t quite as hard…it feels just as hard because your legs are jello! And, I would like to point out…the entire hike is hard. Not just that first mile. Check out the switchbacks we hiked up in the pic above (top picture). Parts of this trail are on exposed cliffs where if you slip…you slide a loooong way down.

Now that I’ve warned you how strenuous and possibly dangerous this hike is…lets enjoy some of the views! Because lets be honest…the views are the whole reason to hike trails like this. This view was about half way up at the end of one of the many switch-backs. I stood there a good few minutes catching my breath and ogling the vista.

I thought this bridge was so neat the way it’s right on the edge of the cliff! Once I got across it and to the other side I got a better look at it and wowzers! It really is right on the edge of a very high cliff!!

Funny story…there was a part right toward the end of this trail where we couldn’t really tell which way we were supposed to go. The couple in front of us each went a different way. I chose to follow the girl and well…we didn’t exactly take the easy way. See those two hikers on top of that rock in the pic above? Yeah, that’s the way we took up to the top. Notice we’re on the trail on the way down. It was much easier! But wait!! I’ve left out the best part!!!

Welcome to the top of Texas, y’all!!

Not a bad place to have a Thanksgiving picnic! We were so hungry from all of our hard work that we promptly sat down on the most comfortable rocks we’d ever found and ate lunch before we actually looked around at the views. You’ve got to have priorities, you know. Food is very important. ;-P

We wolfed down our lunch in record time and then took in the awesome views at the highest peak in Texas! Things sure look different at 8,751 feet up. Oh, I know…there are mountains that would make this one look like a mole hill…but y’all…check out that view! We spent a good half hour or so eating lunch and taking in the views. We wrote our names in the log book and then started the looonng hike down!

It was faster going down than up and we made it back to our car and the most comfortable seats in the world! Some of us (I’m not telling who…it might have been me) started to worry that our legs weren’t going to make it the whole way down.

Do you remember those little pencil trolls that used to be so popular with the wild hair that went all over the place? That’s what this pretty reminds me of. Troll hair.

Well y’all, we made it to the top of Texas and survived the hike! I would say the Guadalupe Peak hike is rated as the second hardest hike we’ve done so far. The Harding Ice Field hike still holds first place.

See y’all down the road!

#grandwesternloop