Roadtrip to Ruidoso, NM

For the past several years, Big Daddy and I have had good intentions of spending at least part of our Christmas vacation in the mountains of New Mexico.  Since we're down here in southern central Texas, we don't get much of the white Christmas that I love so much.

I grew up in the Panhandle of Texas where the wind blows more than in Chicago and the snows can fall up to 20 inches deep.  Some of my most favorite memories as a kid are those including fun times playing in the snow.  Nevermind that my extremities were numb and my lips were blue.  I loved it.

So this year I was determined to make it happen for us.  I mean, for crying out loud.  My kid is 7 years old and has yet to actually experience enough snow to make a snowball, much less snowboard or go sledding.  With that motivation in mind, we made our plans to travel to Ruidoso for the week between Christmas and New Years.

Despite the 9 hour long travel, we enjoyed every minute of it.  We only had one bad restaurant experience - the food sucked - and lots of fun activities.  We went sledding, snowboarding and tubing.  The Bear is a NATURAL on the snowboard.  I think he only fell over twice and once was because Big Daddy knocked him over by accident.  Big Daddy's snowboarding experience was not quite so positive.  But hey! He tried and I'm proud of that.  Me? I was running the camera.

We also went on a sleigh ride through the Upper Canyon.  The pair of big Persheron (?) Mules that pulled the sleigh were Judy and Jane.  Big sweet beautiful girls.  It was so very cool riding along with the only sound being their clop clop clopping hooves and the jingle of the bells on their harness.  Loved it!

But we did make the decision that we will travel the extra distance next Christmas to have our winter fun in Red River, NM.  It's our home away from home and we really like the way Red River is laid out.  It's very small and everything is within walking distance.  Literally.  Nothing is more than 10 blocks away.

Ruidoso is very spread out and despite our centrally located hotel, we had to travel by auto to almost every place we went.  Not to mention the ski area is about 16 miles outside of town.  We like to park our truck and not get back in it til time to pack up and come back to Texas.

Still. Mountains are mountains and they were beautiful and white and we had a wonderful time.