Making the best of a trip to WalMart

When I head out to town, town = Belen, New Mexico, population 7,000. It has all the necessities: gas station, feed store, post office, tire store. And of course, it has the ubiquitous WalMart. It used to have a real grocery store, which went out of business when Wally came to town. Belen's claim to fame is as the third largest train depot in the U.S.

For me, the cool part of Belen is smack dab across the street from the WalMart. So on Saturday, Smooch and I left WalMart with our truckload of groceries and headed right on over to the Valencia County Sheriff's Posse grounds. There's always something going on that involves horses or cows or both, and this day it was a team roping.



We got the perfect parking spot right at the rail so that Smooch wouldn't miss a thing.



See, Smooch? That dog has a job, too. She keeps the cattle moving through the chute.



No, thanks. I like my job as co-pilot and chief truck security officer.



No cows were harmed in the making of this team roping. They all wore these cute little horn protectors.


I wasn't much interested in the actual roping because these two horses were far more entertaining. See the Palomino on the left, with the nicely coiled lariat on his saddle? Now watch the Paint on the right throw a loop over his head.





I think the Palomino realizes he's going to get in big trouble for getting his rope all tangled and decides turnabout is fair play. He grabs onto the Paint's lead rope and decides to untie her.


Note the hand-crafted lead rope, braided with loving care out of baling twine. Us country folk are all about recycling.

About this time, my co-pilot reminded me that we needed to get the groceries home, and thus ended our adventure to town.