It seems a lot of our travels recently have started out with this sentence. What started as a 4 day trip to go to a medical appointment and get some meds refilled has turned in to an almost 3 week adventure. About a month ago we were camping in Oklahoma with Michael’s mom and pop when we decided that New Mexico in July sounded like a nice idea. I thought it was crazy until I started seeing the average temperatures for Ruidoso, New Mexico in July are in the mid-70’s (a much better average than in Austin for sure). So we decided that after our appointments in Oklahoma in July that we would head west to the mountains of New Mexico. I am not sure what it is about the mountains but I feel the most at home when I see the mountains. There’s a feeling of peace and calm that just seems to wash over me when they first come in to sight.
We left Oklahoma earlier this week, spent an overnight in Lubbock where our site was so close to the highway if I had any kind of aim and threw a rock I’d have hit a vehicle on the road. But, it was a long enough pull-through site we didn’t have to unhook the truck all we really needed since we were coming from another campground that had been full hookup was to plug in to the electric there. We were a few sites down from mom and pop and had dinner with them before everyone crashed for the night in preparation for an early morning departure to New Mexico.
We were up at the crack of dawn the next morning and headed off through some pretty remote parts of Texas and New Mexico before driving through Roswell – we went there last year so we didn’t make a point of stopping there. We arrived in Ruidoso at Slow Play RV Park just after their noon check in time and were able to unhook the truck from the camper and enjoy the cooler air outside. We had bad news on our drive that his mom and pop would need to return to Oklahoma for family so unfortunately we only had one night here in New Mexico with them. The campground here is quite nice, the owners a younger couple who bought the place last year and are slowly making it there own.
Ruidoso Downs is a neat little tourist town in the mountains near the Mescalero Reservation. The downtown has many different shops for souvenirs, a winery, a few breweries nearby, and some cool pottery places. We’ve spent time at the winery where we got a few bottles of different wines, window shopped at a pottery store and some souvenir shops, had some really not great barbecue and a great burger at a local bar with many local beers. Today has been stormy all afternoon we’ve had several waves of ongoing rumbling thunder and some lightning and a bit of hail even. It’s 59 degrees right now and we can have the windows open to listen to the raindrops. We’d like to go to Capitan tomorrow and may even look at a piece of property just out of curiosity. We’re finding we really like the area here. More to come soon on our adventures here in New Mexico and then as we head to Arizona.
GnomadicLife 