A couple of years ago, when I first saw the mighty Rio Grande River, I was quite surprised to see that it was a dry riverbed. For the majority of the year, the river through El Paso is dry, filling with water through the summer months only. Typically, June is the month that they open the damn in Elephant Butte, NM to flow downstream as that reservoir fills from Winter Snows and Spring rains in the New Mexico mountains.
With that said, however, I have grown to love the river area even if it doesn’t contain water most of the time. Actually, if it contained water—it would also contain mosquitoes, so it is not that bad after all. Alongside the river floodplain, the city, county, and state built a recreational sidewalk that parallels the river. The design of the walkway is interesting as it winds around trees and over drainage areas. They also have included rest areas along the way.
I have spent many hours running along that walkway. On the south side of the river there is about 9 miles of walkway, so it provided me a great place to train for the El Paso marathon in 2014. I also spent time training for three half marathons along that trail. Most of that time was spent in the early morning hours in the cool part of the year, so the trail has truly meant much to me.
While the river may not be filled with water, it certainly is filled with many memories of my time here in El Paso.