A Day on the Town

On Saturday Allyson and Summer planned a girls day in, sewing pillowcases and watching movies in which nothing blows up and no one chases anyone else in a car, so the boys and I went out to hike the bosque. We began in a bit of open space near the bosque, where Montano Road crosses the river. Built in 1997, the Montano bridge was a bit of a controversy, as it cuts through Albuquerque’s North Valley, an old part of town that prides itself on its rural ambiance. The bridge has made the commute from the West Side immensely easier, and helped propel the urban sprawl on our side of the Rio Grande, for better or worse.

The area near the parking lot was burned out a few years ago in a bosque fire, and the city commissioned a local artist to carve some of the dead but standing cottonwoods; here is one of the pieces:
A pedestrian and bike path crosses the river with the car traffic (this was actually one of our first glimpses of the city—a bike path across the river), and we walked out about halfway. Here an overlook extends from the edge of the bridge, and you can stand over a grated surface and watch the muddy water (“too thick to drink, too thin to plow”) beneath your feet:

After working our way back to the car, we headed off to the east side of the bosque. Our destination was the Rio Grande Nature Center State Park. We hiked a spell to the river’s edge and then returned to the picnic area for lunch. But the challenge here was to decide which of the two trails to follow; the boys disagreed when we reached the fork in the road:

After a quick trip to my office, we decided to visit Tingley Beach. Named for the mayor and then governor, Clyde Tingley, who revitalized the area in the early 20th century, the beach is a series of fishing ponds directly south of the BioPark off of Central. We walked over to the train station (a little line runs from the aquarium to the zoo) and watched a few trains come by. Then we wandered around the kids’ fishing pond (the boys begged to go fishing, so maybe we’ll do that some day); here the boys pause by the decorated inlet that fills the pond:

Tingley Beach is a wonderful little oasis in the city, minutes from downtown, but a haven for geese and ducks, 3 or 4 dozen of whom float the ponds and waddle around the edges of the water. We actually saw a mother duck with 6 ducklings coming ashore. Here a small band follows the boys, hoping for handouts: