Last week the dogs and I drove a little over three miles to the other side of the Rio Grande to check out an acequia ditch in the “Pat Hurley” neighborhood of Albuquerque. We found a place to park near the ditch and started walking. Five minutes into our walk, it became very obvious to us that walking along this ditch was not going to work. The ditch path was full of goat heads.
We had hoped to wander along this ditch.
If you are not familiar with goat heads, they are a seed from a spreading ground vine and are about the size of dried pea. The problem is that they have a vicious thorn. They are the only thing in the entire world that can stop a dog from walking.
I spent so much time pulling goat heads out of the dogs’ paws that it took us ten minutes to walk less than two hundred feet.
We bailed out of the ditch trail as soon as we could. Ironically, we found a small stairway leading to a nearby street where we bailed out. At the time, I thought that it was probably the best that Albuquerque could offer us in the form of a public stairway.
This small stairway and footbridge allowed us to escape the goat heads on the ditch path.
We continued walking along a series of residential streets at the base of an escarpment on the west side of the Rio Grande. I kept thinking that if Albuquerque were an older city, this would be a perfect place to find a public stairway.
When we reached Pat Hurley Park at the base of the escarpment, I had to rub my eyes. I thought that I had spotted some stairs. And when I looked again, there were stairs!
I thought I was seeing things when I spotted these flights of stairs scattered on the hillside.
