It's 5:30 AM, and I'm wide awake again. My internal clock is working well. It will probably be hard to readjust to a "normal" work schedule next week.

We cooked breakfast, filled up the water bottles, and hit the trail at 7:15 AM. It was a really nice walk down the Rayado Canyon, with several great views. We hit the mouth of the canyon at 10:45AM. It was so clear that we could see I-25 in the distance. We also saw Abreu down in the valley. We hit New Abreu at 11:30 AM. I didn't think that the last 1/2 mile would ever end! We set up camp, ate lunch, and hit the showers.

I walked down to Zarstrow Training Center, about one mile downstream. Zarstrow is a training camp. There are several large buildings, a pioneering area, and other such venues. I'll be taking Wood Badge there in August.

I walked back to our camp site and took a shower, and then went up to the cantina. We sat and drank root beer, and played cards for an hour. The cantina is an adobe building, with a small bar, and three or four tables in it. Being adobe, it's very cool inside. New Abreu offers a adobe building activity, but we didn't participate in that, due to the fact that living in Albuquerque, we are all quite familiar with how adobe is made.

After a while, I headed back to our camp site. It hadn't rained for the past two days, but it looked like it should today.

At 5 PM we cooked our Mexican dinner. We had tacos (using real ground beef, fresh tomatoes and lettuce, and green chili sauce), and sopapillas. It tasted real good! Not freeze dried, and something besides a casserole.

And now it's time for... Burro Racing! We walked up to the stables, and got instructions from one of the staff members on how to handle the burro, how to attach the bridle to him, and how the race was to be run. Our guys choose "Tool", the only male burro. He was really laid back. Then GO! Off they went. We raced against two other crews, One of which was our sister crew. We beat our sister crew by a burro's length, and the other crew didn't cross the line until after we'd put our burro away! Root beer to the victors. The guys went to the cantina to relish their victory, and John, Matt, and I went back to the campsite. On the way back, a young doe was next to the trail, and followed us for a bit.

Well, it threatened rain all afternoon, but it never materialized.

Tomorrow, we climb up and over Urraca Mesa, and do challenge events. 3 more days on the trail.

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