trip to the park

Last Thursday, we decided to check out the park in our new neighborhood. We'd been there last week, and found it's actually a park on two levels. The upper park is at our street level; the lower park is 100+ ft down a steep bluff/hill. Much too steep to really climb back up. A couple of days ago, I picked up several maps of walking tours in Albuquerque, including one for the neighborhood immediately around the park. It showed a biking/footpath winding down the mesa north of the two park areas.

When we arrived at the upper park area, we found a couple of 20-something guys there with a pit bull that was jumping into a small tree and biting the lowest branch, which was maybe 4' up. It looked like the dog would have happily climbed the tree.

We easily found the bike/walking path and started out. The path is less steep than the hill, but only because it's mostly switchbacks on an asphalt path. Given the slope and our recent rains, at many points the path is covered by dry sand left behind by mudslides. Dan and I were on our bikes. Andy had his scooter since he'd been unable to find his helmet.

The views are great from the park -- among the best in, and of, the city and surrounding mountains. Once we reached the bottom of the path, we spent about 30 minutes at the playground, tho it was both too hot and too covered by mud-flow sands to be much fun. Dan and I hiked up the hill a bit to see the gullies cut by the recent rains. I am amazed by how very green things are this year.

By the time we got back up top, the dog was gone so we lounged around for a while in the shade. The trip home seemed much longer, but we hadn't been home 10 minutes when Andy asked if we could go back later that day!