Month: January 2016

Alamogordo

Alamogordo

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We’d heard that there was going to be a snow storm the day we were supposed to drive down to Alamogordo, NM so we got started as early as we could and hoped for the best. We hadn’t driven but maybe an hour before we ran right smack dab into the front edge of a blizzard. Luckily, we kept just ahead of it the entire time we high-tailed it down to our RV park in Alamogordo. The people at the RV Park told us they’d heard the area would get 7 inches of snow that night. We had big plans for the next day so 7 inches of snow didn’t sound great. When we got up the next morning, we didn’t see any snow at all, but when we got out we quickly discovered all of the roads leading out of town were closed. Apparently, the rest of New Mexico was closed due to the blizzard. We went back to the RV and regrouped. We spent that first day at a Hastings where we checked out the movies, games, and books. It was kind of a nice relaxing day. Usually, our weekends are go, go, go.

We ended up eating lunch at Rockin’ BZ Burgers where we had the best green chili cheeseburger in New Mexico. This place is solidly at the top of our list for burgers. Nicholas got the fried pickles and they were surprisingly good! We ended up eating there twice…in one week!

The main reason we came to Alamogordo was to visit White Sands National Monument. In the photo above you can see the Sierra Blanca which is 67 miles away from WSNM.

The RV Park we stayed at had sleds we could borrow so we could go sand sledding! Yup, you read that right…sand sledding! If you don’t have your own sleds, the visitor center has them for $10 apiece. We had to find the highest sand dune we could to slide down and then we had a contest as to who slid the farthest.

When we got there, the visitor center was packed. It was so bad I had second thoughts about going into the park. I was afraid we’d just be waiting in line to go down the dune. You can see how crowded it was in the picture above. Ha! There was enough room for everyone to spread out and stay out of each other’s way. It was wonderful! There’s not much wildlife at this National Park, but we did see a few signs of birds and some tracks we thought were from a kit fox.

We had the best time at this National Park! There wasn’t a ton of trails to hike and the park isn’t the biggest one or the prettiest we’ve been to, but there were so many opportunities for fun here. I think we’ll be back for more!

We spent an entire day driving the Billy The Kid National Scenic Byway.

Our first stop on the scenic byway was the Lincoln Historic Site where we learned everything you could possibly want to know about Billy The Kid  and the Lincoln County War. I won’t give you an entire history lesson here…but I will tell you I didn’t know the whole story. In a time and place where the law wasn’t really the law, The Kid stood up for what he believed to be right and he paid for it with his life.

Many of the buildings that were around during the Lincoln County War are still standing. We got to see the Courthouse that Billy escaped from. And a hole in the wall that might have been from a bullet Billy fired as he was attempting his famous escape.

The boys earned probably the coolest badge so far at Lincoln Historic Site. It looks like a Sheriff’s badge!

After we left Lincoln, we stopped at Fort Stanton. We saw a short video about the Fort and walked around the grounds. The Fort opened in 1855 and was used for several different purposes through the years until it was designated as a state monument in 2007.

Our next stop on the scenic byway was at Capitan, NM and the Smokey Bear Historical Site. The boys had been looking forward to this for a long time. They both are Smokey Bear fans. We spent a couple of hours going through the museum and working on the Junior Ranger booklets. While there, we got to see where Smokey is buried. This was one of the hardest Junior Ranger booklets they’ve done, but they got some pretty cool S.W.A.G. for their effort!

 We were starving by the time we made it out of the Smokey Bear Historical Site so we headed for Ruidoso, NM and a burger joint called Hall Of Flame Burger. It was a super good burger, but I didn’t get any pictures. We were that hungry. We, of course, got the green chili cheese burgers, but we couldn’t really taste the green chilies. Beyond that, the burger was top notch. The place was small and packed and we were lucky to get seats.

I finally got a picture of a Roadrunner! They are so difficult to get a photo of! Fast little buggers.

It’s a pistachio. There were two different pistachio orchards right across the highway from where we stayed. We could see one from our RV and it was constantly busy. So, we thought we should probably check it out. We stopped at both, but our favorite was McGinn’s Pistachio Tree Ranch. You could go in and taste pistachios and pecans and…wine! The store smelled heavenly when we walked in and I was super excited to see that they had ice cream! It was a fun way to spend a few hours and we walked away with just a few purchases!

This was our last week in New Mexico and we started panicking about the prospect of no New Mexican chilies…so we stocked up. This isn’t all of what we ended up with, but it’s a good portion of it. And yes, we are already planning a return trip to The Land Of Enchantment…and chilies.

See y’all down the road!

#newmexicochiliaddict

Santa Fe, the City Different

Santa Fe, the City Different

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Santa Fe is the only Capital City in the United States that can claim both the oldest Capital City as well as one of the newest Capital Cities. Are you confused? How can it be the oldest and still be considered one of the newest?

The Palace of the Governors is the oldest capitol. It has been the seat of Spanish, Mexican and American governments over the last 405 years as of 2015. There’s a new Capitol Building and now the Palace of Governors is a museum. In the photo above you can see all of the local artists who gather around the building to sell their crafts. If you want to get an authentically made souvenir, this is the place to come.

This is the new State Capitol Building. Every SCB is different. You can get an idea of what’s really important to the city or state by what’s inside. The Santa Fe building has a gorgeous dome! I love the colors! Inside of the New Mexico Capitol Building you’ll find art. Which, might not surprise you when you consider there are over 250 art galleries in just a two-square-mile area in Santa Fe. One of our favorite pieces was this buffalo head you can see in the top right photo. It was made with all kinds of spare bits and pieces.

Before we get too far into this post…let me just go ahead and answer the question that several of you have asked me. Yes, there really are dried chilies hanging everywhere in Santa Fe. Everywhere. Doors, windows, porches, fences…if you can hang something from it, there’s probably chilies there. Inside and outside. Personally, I love it!

When I planned New Mexico…many, many months ago, I found out about the Loretto Chapel and its “miraculous staircase”. The Chapel is no longer a working Chapel, but you can pay to go inside and look around and take all the pictures you want.

You can see the “miraculous staircase” in the photo above. What makes it so miraculous? It has 33 steps in two full 360° turns. Still unimpressed? How about the fact that it doesn’t have a center support and it’s not held up by side supports either. You can’t actually go on the staircase or touch it. They have it roped off, but you can get close enough to appreciate the craftsmanship and the beauty of it.

Between the art, spicy food, and chocolate houses…there’s something for everyone in Santa Fe. I’ve never seen so many chocolate houses in one city! Notice the Green Chili Caramels? I told you they put chilies in everything!

We, of course, had to try several different restaurants in Santa Fe! The plate above is from Posa’s Tamale Factory. We headed there in search of a place to get our Christmas tamales. I got to try my first calabacitas (which turned out to be squash) here. Posa’s Tamale Factory has been pumping out tamales since the 1950s. They provide tamales to many of the restaurants and stores in Santa Fe. You can see the packaging area through the glass windows in the left photo above.

The Sopapilla Factory was right across the highway from where we stayed. They had some really good food that you can see in the top left photo! We kept hearing about Tomasita’s. The food was ok, but we did find the biggest, fluffiest sopapillas we’ve seen so far! You can see Alex with them in the right photo! Another place we kept hearing about is Santa Fe Bite for its green chili cheeseburger (bottom left photo). This would be a good time to mention that Santa Fe is the green chili cheeseburger capital of the world. The world. Confession:  Jerl is the only one of us that actually got a green chili cheeseburger here. You can see a pic of it in the photo above. He said it was a great burger, but he couldn’t really taste the green chilies. My advice…go to Blake’s Lottabuger (you can find Blake’s in all the bigger cities in New Mexico). It’s a better burger and is a third the cost and the green chilies are hard to miss on it!

We made it up to Los Alamos for an afternoon. If you don’t know Los Alamos, it’s where the Manhattan Project took place.

We spent several hours learning more about the Manhattan Project at the Bradbury Science Museum. This is a fantastic museum! We love a good hands-on museum. It was like spending the afternoon doing science experiments and brain teaser puzzles. My little nerds were in science heaven…all four of them! They had to kick us out of this museum too so they could close. We’re going to have to start going to these places earlier in the day!

There aren’t many original structures from the Manhattan Project left. There’s a small walking tour you can do, but it was getting dark so we didn’t have time to do it.

Taos wasn’t on our list, but we kept getting asked if we were going to go there. So, we thought maybe we should. Our visit to Taos took up an entire day. We drove The High Road to Taos then took The Low Road back. It made a nice big scenic loop.

We visited the San Francisco de Asis Church. We heard that this church is one of the most photographed and painted churches in the world. The outside was different from what we’d seen before. It was simply stunning inside. Unfortunately, photos aren’t allowed inside the church so I can’t show you. You’ll just have to go visit it yourself so you can see it!

Downtown Taos is pretty small. There’s a walking tour of it that we did. Taos kind of reminds me of a small ski village. Taos has an elevation of between 7,000 and 8,000 feet and there’s a ski resort not too far away. We walked around the Plaza that was originally a fortified shelter and marketplace. They had it decorated for Christmas!

It wouldn’t be a true day trip without sampling some local fare…we found ourselves at a place called Orlando’s. It was small and brightly decorated. Not only was Orlando’s the most authentic place we’ve eaten at, but it was also the second most expensive place we’ve eaten at on this trip. The food was amazing. We finally got to try posolé here and we learned about a third type of chili sauce…caribe! Caribe is totally different from the red and green chili we’ve been having. In the bottom left photo above, you can see all three chilies. Red, green, then caribe (on the right).

You are looking at the Rio Grande Gorge and Bridge. This is the second highest cantilever bridge in the U.S. Towering at 650 feet above the river, the bridge makes quite an impression. You can park at the rest stop and walk out on the bridge and look down into a canyon that would be deeper than the Grand Canyon if it wasn’t filled with so much silt.

One of the popular things to do in Taos is go to the pueblo. We went, but when we found out it’s $16 a piece to go walk around it…we passed on going in. I’m sure the pueblo is nice, but I’m not going to pay that much to just go walk around it and then have to pay more on top of that for the tour. Maybe if we hadn’t already been to so many other fabulous pueblos…maybe? We saw the teepee in the photo above on our way out of town while driving on The Low Road back to our home on wheels. I couldn’t pass up the chance to get a photo of it.

That’s all folks! That’s our time in the Santa Fe area! We will definitely be back to this area at some point!

See y’all down the road!

Santa Fe Area Hiking

Santa Fe Area Hiking

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Hey y’all! We stayed in the Santa Fe area for two weeks and managed to squeeze an amazing amount of adventure into our time there. I’m going to break this area up into two different posts. This first post will be about the hiking we did.

We spent an entire day at Bandelier National Monument! Bandelier is located in the Frijoles (free-HOH-lace) Canyon and the first evidence of habitation goes back 10,000 years.

We got to see Bandelier covered in snow and it was beautiful! Bandelier, NM is part of the Pajarito Plateau, which was formed by two separate eruptions of the Jemez (HAY-mess) Volcano more than one million years ago. Each of the two eruptions was six hundred times more powerful than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. Think about that for a minute. Can you imagine how destructive those eruptions were?

The boys had a great time playing in the snow while we explored Bandelier. It was perfect for snowballs!

 You’re looking at the village of Tyuonyi (QU-weh-nee). This is just one of several large pueblos located in Bandelier National Monument. This one would have been two stories tall, contained about 400 rooms and housed around 100 people. Access to this village was by a singular ground-level opening.

If you’ve been following us along on our journey, you know we’ve gone to quite a few different pueblos. Usually, we don’t get to climb into them. The boys were super excited that at Bandelier, not only do you get to climb the ladders, you get to go inside the pueblo rooms! I managed to get all three kiddos to stop climbing around long enough to snap a picture. The calm didn’t last long before they were off exploring again. Ha!

When we got to the park that day we were told the trail to the Alcove House was closed due to icy conditions. We hung out in the Visitor Center while the boys did their Junior Ranger booklets and I asked a couple different Ranger’s about the trail. Before we headed out, we were told we could go ahead and do the Alcove Trail, but to be aware of the ice. The Alcove Trail led us through the woods and across several bridges. It was a wonderful hike through the quiet snowy forest. We loved it!

We made it to the Alcove House without trouble and checked out the ladders. They had some ice, but they were in good shape so we climbed up the few very long ladders to ascend 140 ft to the top. At the top is this Kiva (KEE-vah), which was excavated in 1908. They found almost perfectly preserved specimens of red corn and matting. It was all closed up when we got there so we didn’t get to see inside, but it looks like there are times when you can view the inside of it.

There’s a separate section of Bandelier National Monument you have to drive to. On our way there we stopped at the Whiterock Canyon scenic overlook. The view was stellar! I managed to get a photo of all five of us in front  of it! It’s rare to get a photo with all of us in it!

The Tsankawi (sank-ah-WEE) unit of the Bandelier National Monument is just as good as the main unit. It’s a loop trail that takes you up a couple of ladders to a lower and upper cliff. Tsankawi is located on the Pajarito (pa-ha-REE-toe) Plateau and was home to the Ancestral Tewa Pueblo people during the 1400s. When the Jemez Volcano erupted over a million years ago, this land was covered in thick layers of volcanic ash. Over the years, the ash was compacted and formed rock known as tuff. Tuff is a soft stone so it was perfect for the ancient peoples to carve out their homes in. The softness of the rock is also what caused the paths to be worn down. In the left photo above, you can see the path we followed while in Tsankawi. These paths weren’t’ carved out, they were worn down by the 1000s of times people walked the same path.

The view from the upper cliff was fantastic. We took a minute to appreciate it then headed on since we were losing the light.

You can see where people have placed their feet over the years to get back down the ladder.

 The village of Tsankawi contains about 275 rooms. Some of the structures here were two story. The cave rooms, like the one in the right photo above, is called a cavate (CAVE-eight). These rooms were usually plastered in some kind of mud mixture and painted while the ceilings were blackened by smoke. Smoking the ceilings hardened the volcanic tuff and made the tuff less crumbly. We were climbing down the last ladder as the sun started to disappear. It was a long full day. We highly recommend Bandelier National Monument to anyone who will be in the Santa Fe area!

We also had a fantastic day exploring the Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument. While it’s designated a National Monument, the National Park Service doesn’t take care of this park. It’s managed by the Bureau of Land Management. When we started our trip back in May of this year (2015), I would have probably hated this hike. I preferred the nice neat paths. Oh, how times have changed. I’ve come to realize that if you want the big scenic payoff, you have to be willing to work for it. Now, our favorite trails are the ones that are more…primitive…with some scrambling.

We scrambled over, through, around, and under while we made our way along the trail…it was awesome!

This trail takes you a mile and a half through a slot canyon made out of volcanic tuff and carved from flash floods over the years.

At the end of the slot canyon, the trail climbs a steep 630 feet up to the mesa top. In the photo above, you can see part of the steep climb up…notice it’s covered in snow and ice. It made for a very interesting, very slippery trek.

The Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument was designated in 2001 to protect the unique geological landscape known for its light colored, cone shaped tent rock formations that are the result of the big volcanic eruptions we talked about earlier in this post. The tuff, ash, and pumice from the eruptions were over 1,000 feet thick. Here’s the view from the top.

Kasha-Katuwe means “white cliffs” in the traditional Keresan language. You can see in the picture above how they look white.

We had a wonderful time doing a few of the many hikes in the area. We were bummed we didn’t have time to fit more in, but that just gives us a reason to come back to the Santa Fe area again! I think I can safely say that we’ll be back!

See y’all down the road!

Pizza Roundup Back Road Pizza

Pizza Roundup Back Road Pizza

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Back Road Pizza is a super tasty pizza place in Santa Fe, New Mexico!

You can get sandwiches, salads, calzones, and pizza.

The décor was cool! The staff designed and painted the pizza pans (I think that makes it even better).

There were pool tables upstairs you could play.

Being in New Mexico, you can even get green chilies on your pizza and I highly recommend it! The New Mexican pizza is definitely my favorite!

The bathrooms are clean and the staff were all really nice. Back Road Pizza totally gets a 5 star review!

I liked it so much I had to get a shirt from there. The shirt is too big, but that’s OK because I can wear it over my sweatshirt!

                           See you next time on

                          Pizza Street!