Friends, Old and New (continued)
We next drove to friends, Peter and Francis, living near Portal, Arizona. However, on the way we stopped at Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge. We spent several hours hiking and driving around the area. We saw a fair number of water birds.
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- Bosque del Apache
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- surrounding countryside
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- boardwalk
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- Bosque
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- Northern Shoveler
the ranch
Our friends live on a huge ranch in southeastern Arizona on the eastern edge of the Chiricahua Mountains. They have several hundred cattle, plus horses, llamas, alpacas, chickens, and camels, plus dogs and cats. We shadowed them during the day as they went about various jobs they needed to do. They both have other professions (nurse practitioner and construction) so spend most of their weekend working on the ranch. We went along as they carried some extra food/nutrition to a group of cattle. Sally Jo got to bottle-feed a 10-day old orphaned calf. We went along when they went to an older part of the ranch where they were looking for a leak in the water system but also had time to show us remains from an early 1900s stone home and the pottery remains from Native Americans from the 1300s. We climbed a hill near their home to look at remains from early mining days.
We also hiked a few hours in the Chiricahua National Forest on the way to Douglas.
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- camel
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- one of 17 horses
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- llama and alpaca
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- feeding an orphaned calf
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- supplying extra nutrition
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- a few of the cattle
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- early 1900’s home
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- searching for pottery pieces
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- area of 1300s village
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- Francis and Peter
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- on the ranch
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- Chiricahua Mts
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- blooming catus
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- opening of an old mine
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- the ranch
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- staghorn cholla
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- Chiricahua National Forest
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- Chiricahua National Forest