November 11-12, 2022 Socorro, New Mexico

 52 and mostly sunny.

The abandoned mission church in San Antonio. A cool house with a crane sculpture in front in San Antonio.

The San Miguel church in Socorro. It was closed today so we didn't get to see the inside. We tried to go to the  Historic Hammel Museum in Socorro which is in a historic building that was originally a brewery. I was closed, looks like it is open only one day a month. 

The gazebo in the historic plaza of Socorro. Historic plaza in Socorro. The Capital Bar is now a brewery. 

We had lunch at the Capital Bar and brewery in historic Socorro. The bar has been there since 1889. At one time is was owned by Judge Green. He held court there and put prisoners in the jail in the back. Now the brewery is in the old jail. John with his Jailbreak IPA. 

The gym at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. It says it has been around since 1889. We went to the Mineral Museum that was fantastic. 15,000 different rocks including glow in the dark ones. 

This red chili is either a cool decoration or a bike rack. We saw a few around town. The points of interest map of Socorro. But there were no flyers in the box telling what they were. A crane mural in Socorro. The Buckhorn is in San Antonio where we are staying. It also has world famous green chili burgers. We had a world famous green chili burger at the Owl Cafe across the street. In the historic plaza was a piece of Jumbo-in the lower part of the photo, which was the housing of the first atomic bomb set off at the Trinity site east of town. In the grocery store I saw Hatch green and red chili wine. 

Sunset at the Bosque Del Apache refuge. A few thousand cranes flew in way after sunset.  

Cranes at the north viewing area near our campsite. We got up before the scream of dawn to watch the birds take off in the morning. It was 23 degrees when we arrived before sunrise. The snow geese gave us a nice show. 

I had thought that the couple thousand cranes would rise in mass and leave in the am. But no, they leave in small groups, so it was similar to them arriving in the evening. And most of them were below the horizon line so they did not even show up. John  keeping warm. 

The moon was still up so many of the cranes flew by it above us. The clouds in sunrise were lovely.

While we were there it got colder. It was 19 degrees according to the car thermometer when we left. When we arrived there was no frost, then all of a sudden there was. And a thin sheet of ice froze over the water as we watched. A few cranes post sunrise waiting I guess till it got warmer to take off.

There was steam rising off the canal this am. These three cranes were hanging out at the north parking lot wet land. There was a sheet of ice across the water by then. 

John with a giant tumbleweed he captured. One this size blew into our car the other day.  This afternoon we hiked the short John p Taylor memorial trail. John  P Tayler was a trail blazer in restoring the wetland for the birds. It was in the mid to high 50's by then and very nice. Some really cool tall grass on our walk today. 

Our friends Jeff and Val are down for a few days to see the cranes too. We met at the viewing area with our lawn chairs.  Fun to see them. The redwing black birds did some pretty flying in the sunset. 

Thousands of cranes came in after sunset. It was really too dark for photos by then. It has been almost deserted while we have been here. The weekend crowd showed up tonight. But still not bad.