After that I thought we would have an easy pleasant afternoon wandering through the Living Desert State Park in Carlsbad, NM. The state park exhibits more than 40 species of animals and hundreds of species of plants native to the Chihuahuan Desert. This is not your typical zoo. Most of the animals here are here because they cannot, for one reason or another, be released in to the wild and a few, like the Bolson Tortoise are part of a breeding program to keep them from becoming extinct. The animals have very large enclosures – which I'm sure makes for happy animals but also makes it easy for them to hide from prying eyes.
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| Notice what a nice sunny day it is! |
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| Monte is getting a little batty. |
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| Roadrunner. We have seen several of these in the wild but no Wile E Coyote |
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| Bolson Tortoise |
We were having a nice time until – it
decided to storm. This is the DESERT. It has not rained since –
well, for a long darn time. With all the lightning our main concern
was getting out from being in the open and we were able to go pretty
much from one covered viewing area to the next – our wandering had
turned in to a trot and then a dash and Shelley is not good at
dashing much less trotting. As the rain intensified we got in to a
building where we waited out the worst of it before bolting for the
visitor's center and then our car.
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| Difficult to tell but the rain was pelting down. |
Our concern was all the windows we had
left open at the RV. As it turned out the storm tracked just south
of the Brantley Lake State Park where we are camped but the wind was
wicked and turned over chairs and the satellite antenna and blew the
cover off of the grill. Nothing was lost and all is well.
One good thing about getting caught in
a rain storm here – even if you are soaked – you will dry out in
about 5 minutes. So we are no worse for the wear and the 'ol hearts
got good exercise.
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