Sunday in Ruidoso

Sunday, August 14 - Dave and Mazie were driving over to Carrizozo to visit friends, so Joe and I went off on our own.  I suggested shopping, Joe suggested going for a drive.  Guess who won.  So we drove up to Ski Apache , which was a 12-mile, uphill drive, but on a good road.  The scenery all the way up was beautiful.

When we got to the top, which was about 11,400, we were surprised to find out they had a gondola running to the top of the ski lift, so we took a ride.

We crossed over a little creek, and the view all the way up and down was breath-taking.

At the top, we could see for miles.  In fact, we could even see the White Sands in the far distance.  The elevation at the top was 11,400, and the temperature was a crisp, breezy 53 -- we figure that's just about half of Phoenix's temperature today.   Fortunately, I had a sweater in the car, and it felt pretty good up here!  The gondola ride itself was about 15 minutes each way, so it was a nice, easy ride, with a great view both coming and going.  Interestingly, there was a "lightning meter" up here, which told how far away the lightning was.  Fortunately, today it was not registering anything (yet), but I didn't even know such a thing existed.

In the car we reached an elevation of just over 10,000 ft. 

From the top, we could see a couple of campgrounds and lakes, so we decided to check them out.  At the first one, which was part of the National Forest, we came upon two turkeys (who had a little bit to say about our interrupting their lunch).

At the second campground, which was on the reservation, we could see wild horses grazing up on the side of the mountain in the distance.  This photo is really fuzzy because they were so far away, but there were 7 of them on the mountainside.

There were also lots of bluejays in this campground, for some reason.  Their colors were very bright in the sunshine. 

This campground had some great views, and we were told they see a lot of wildlife here -- deer, elk, bear, and the wild horses even come through sometimes.  There was a small fishing lake here, as well, so this place definitely has some possibilities for future visits -- although a little manual labor could go a long way to making this a really nice campground.

We drove down a few side roads (dirt) checking out other spots to camp.  As we neared civilization, we came upon some deer - 5 in all.

We drove into town for lunch, then we came back out to the road to check out the Eagle Creek RV Resort, which was a nice campground, also for future reference.  We stopped at the casino for an hour, waiting for Dave and Mazie to get back in town.  They called us from Jim and Rita's, so we went back to their cabin to say our goodbyes.  They are a really nice, fun group, and we are fortunate they included us in all their activities this weekend.  I told Lauren about Bridgette's power shoes, so she modeled hers for us.

We visited for a while, then Mazie and I made our final visit to the casino -- this time, we went to a different one which is only about a mile from our campground.  Someone had told Mazie it paid better than the other one, but I could not verify that.  At all! 

Monday morning is our departure day.  Dave had hoped to be on the road about 7:00, so we got up early to tell them goodbye.  It was 54 degrees at 6:30 when I got up, and Joe even got up 10 minutes later.  But we didn't see the Johnsons until after 7:00, so they are running a little behind this morning.  Ar'gent had a rough night -- broke out in pink welts, so they are all a little tired this morning.  As I write (7:15 a.m.), Joe is outside washing our windows, then we will de-camp and hit the road -- heading to Arizona's heat (and our grandchildren!).