We toured Santa Fe yesterday, but did no birding. Today we headed out north to Bandelier National Monument to visit the Pueblo ruins and, yes, do some birding. We concentrated on the ruins on our first go through, though we still carried our bins. The last stop on the tourist trail is Alcove House, which you get to by climbing a series of long ladders. They warn you it’s not for everyone, and since Pole is acrophobic, she decided to sit it out. I bravely went up the first ladder on my own, but it was pretty spooky; the ladders are long and crooked. I hate to admit it, but I chickened out and went back down, which was even scarier than going up. Most humiliating of all were the little kids who passed me up. A birder, you say, afraid of death? Go figure.

We headed back to the car after viewing the ruins. It had started to rain, but once it let up, we decided to give the birding another try, this time with the scope. We first headed to our respective washrooms, agreeing to meet up at a promising tree we had spotted near the first ruin. I got there first and waited a long time before Pole showed up. She arrived late and very excited because she had seen a RED-NAPED SAPSUCKER. It was a lifer for her and would have been for me, too. I did see a woodpecker near where she saw hers, but it was just a Hairy. I swear.

Hanging out at the tree, we saw a few more birds — like the Mountain Chickadee — but the only new lifers were some WHITE-THROATED SWIFTS. There were plenty of them flying high above us, but it took a long time to ID them. We also saw some Turkey Vultures, which look at home flying above the golden cliffs. Along a nearby path, we saw an Abert’s (or Tassel-eared) Squirrel. Pretty damn cute.

We rented a car for this trip because — unlike all of our trips to date — we actually flew down from Chicago. As we didn’t know the area, I also rented a GPS receiver. It was a Garmin and the kind that has a voice — Bitchin’ Betty, as they call her — who gives you directions on when to turn, etc. So after we were finished with Bandelier, we fired her up and asked her for directions back to ABQ. She gave us a different route than we expected, and we hadn’t been driving it long before Pole wanted to turn around. First of all, the route was on small roads that wouldn’t be as quick as the highway. And second, these were winding mountain roads that made her acrophobia kick in. So we just followed an old-fashioned map, which in the end, was probably quicker. That’s the problem with the Garmin. As with Google Maps and MapQuest, the algorithm doesn’t always pick the best route.

Pole isn’t crazy about Betty. She complains that by following her directions blindly, we never have a sense of where we are. True enough, but I told her she’s welcome to follow along on a paper map if that makes her feel any better. Speaking as the driver, the Garmin is a great convenience. And when I miss a turn, Betty will just say “recalculating” instead of calling me an idiot. Recalculating. I like that. That’s what my brain said to me at the top of the Pueblo ladder.

One entertaining thing the Garmin lets you do is change the voice. There’s male or female, and American, British, or Australian. We tried the Aussie male once just for kicks, but he’s not as competent as Betty. When you turn the machine on and she’s on duty, she always starts with “Fasten seat belts.” The Aussie, however, has a little trouble with this and instead opens with “Dollar sign.” That must be some kind of variable that wasn’t properly assigned. It’s like the garbled text you get when a computer crashes, but in this case, the computer speaks it aloud. It made us laugh a lot, especially since it was spoken in this hokey Crocodile Dundee accent. It’s now the running joke of the trip.