Road Trip to Ruidoso, NM

Instead of spending the entire two weeks of Cam's Block Leave doing Home Improvement activities (see later post) and hanging around sweltering El Paso, we decided to escape town for a few days. We headed north to the southern/central New Mexico town of Ruidoso. We had been promised, by several of our local friends, that the Ruidoso area would be the cure for all our tree-withdrawal symptoms. So, we packed up the truck, grabbed the dog and made the two and a half hour drive north.

Ruidoso did not disappoint. Its rolling mountains and hills were covered with Ponderosa Pines, various deciduous trees and green grass! There were streams and lakes, cute little "yuppie" and ski shops to peruse, and many, many, many cabins to stay in. (Too bad we chose one over the internet that turned out to be so "quaint" that it had newspaper taped to cracks in the windows...)

During our three days in town, we went for a nice, leisurely hike in the Lincoln Forest. It was glorious to be in the woods again and hear the stream babbling away as we walked. We also found out that despite her lack of enthusiasm for sprinklers, kiddie-pools and baths, Athena IS a true water dog. She happily went splashing through the creek we had to cross over/through several times, stopping only to bite at the rushing water. She also loved being able to find all kinds of new plants to sniff and even found a little garter snake to chase.

While out in the Lincoln National Forest, we stopped at the Monjeau Lookout, an active Forest Service fire lookout tower. It was completed in 1940, sits at 9640 feet in elevation and provides a gorgeous 360 degree view of 160 square miles of forest land.

We spent the rest of our "vacation" window shopping, trying new restaurants in town and just relaxing. We also took a walk in a local park where Athena found her first official stick ... from a tree!

It was a lovely short getaway and reintroduced a little green into our rather dull, brown desert lives!