Doggin’ El Paso, Texas: 14 Cool Things to See While Walking Your Dog
“If your dog is fat,” goes the old saying, “you’re not getting enough exercise.” But walking the dog doesn’t have to be just a bit of exercise. Here are 14 cool things to see in the greater El Paso, Texas area while walking your dog.
AIRPLANE.
Part of the hike through Box Canyon skirts the Las Cruces city airport, where vintage biplanes and two-seaters can be seen zooming by.
ARTWORK.
The lined trails and grassy areas of the Chamizal National Memorial are a dog walker’s delight, as is Our Heritage, the mural painted on the exterior wall of the Chamizal. It is an excellent representative of Chicano/Hispanic art and is one of the best preserved murals in the city. It represents the historical mix of cultures along the US-Mexico border.
BALD EAGLES.
Caballo Lake is a great place to scan the skies for bald and golden eagles while your pooch enjoys a rare doggie dip in the wilderness.
BEACH.
One of the most spectacular beaches in the United States is hundreds of miles from any ocean or lake. The white gypsum sand dunes in White Sands National Monument are the largest in the world. Visit at night in the summer when the sand is cooler and the dunes are hauntingly beautiful.
DAMS.
The movement to dam the Rio Grande began in 1896, but the plan was fraught with difficulties, not least of which were the international implications of diverting water from Mexico. A water rights treaty on both sides of the border was drawn up in 1906 and the Elephant Butte Dam, now a state park near Truth or Consequences, was completed a decade later. The concrete dam is one of the oldest and most important pillars in the Bureau of Reclamation’s water master plan in the West. Not as ornate, but a few years older, is the Leasburg Dam.
STRONG.
Camp Furlong, in the border town of Columbus, New Mexico, was the scene of General John “Black Jack” Pershing and his 10,000-man Punitive Expedition to hunt down Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa in 1916. Pershing invaded Mexico 400 miles but never caught Town. Several buildings remain from Camp Furlong in Pancho Villa State Park: a recreation room, the camp headquarters, and the judge’s attorney’s office among them.
FOSSILS.
The Robdelo Mountains contain a large number of well-preserved vertebrates and invertebrates from the Early Permian era 286 million years ago. Marine fossils are common on Crazy Cat Mountain trails.
I LAUGHED.
Concordia Cemetery contains 65,000 of them and we invite you to tour this historic ground with your dog. The most famous grave, that of Texas gunman John Wesley Hardin, wasn’t even marked until 1965, 70 years after his death.
HISTORICAL BUILDINGS.
The entire city of Lincoln, New Mexico is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, a survivor of the bloody Lincoln County Wars. You and the dog can trace the events that turned an ordinary 17-year-old William Bonney into the immortal “Billy the Kid.”
OLD MINES.
The only tin mines on the North American continent can be found in Franklin Mountain State Park. You and the dog will stand and look at these historical treasures. More dangerous are the abandoned mines on the east side of Bishop Cap.
RELIGIOUS ICONS.
Mount Cristo Rey is the place where two countries and three states meet and the summit is adorned with the largest limestone cross in the Americas, painstakingly carved over a year into the top of the mountain.
ROCKS.
Rockhound State Park encourages you to collect and save rock samples you discover on your dog walks here. This includes a large amount of beautiful red jasper, a fine-grained form of quartz. You may be lucky enough to find white opal, agate, quartz crystals or thunder eggs, which can be cracked open to reveal spectacular minerals and formations within. There is a fifteen pound limit here for rock anglers.
TELESCOPES.
A hike to the top of Tortugas Mountain in Las Cruces will bring you and the dog to a 24-inch telescope reflector in use for the last 25 years, creating one of the largest planetary archives available in the US. It is currently being used to monitor storm systems on Jupiter.
VOLCANOES.
Hunts Hole and Kilbourne Hole are “maar volcanoes”. They were formed as a result of volcanic explosions, as a result of contact of hot magma with groundwater or shallow surface water. This contact turned surface water into steam, causing an explosion that ripped volcanic glass and other materials from the ground. The black rock you see as you walk around the rim or descend into the crater is lava rock called Afton basalt.
copyright 2006