Sick Day

Well we had a sick day rather than a ski day...poor Bill decided he'd rather spend the day being sick rather than head off to the slopes. Yesterday he kept saying it was "allergies" from all the dust created from the street sweepers. Mmmm, think not because by the evening he was down for the count.

Today he spent his day napping...kind of normal for him....while I spent the day taking a drive/walk around town taking pictures. The mission also included adding to our sticker collection. We've decided that our car top carrier needs some enhancing so we blend in around here. Now we have stickers from Sipapu & Taos Ski Valley ready to go on the carrier which needs a bit of cleaning first. I even took some time (yeah I know) to drop by the yarn shop to get just one more skein of yarn. Interesting to note that when I asked the owner about the lack of crowds I found out that it's normal for the end of January. Good to know that little detail.

Not much else happened so I'll leave you with some pictures of my day....oh and Bill seems a bit better tonight. Tomorrow we're heading out of here and on to Wyoming.

Date snowboarders allowed to ride at Taos Ski Valley

Chili peppers hang everywhere around here...Will would be in Heaven

Ice...enough said


The twisty winding road into Taos Ski Valley

Driving the Enchanted Circle

After 2 days of skiing we decided that our bodies could use a day to rest & recuperate. Hard as it was not to ski in such perfect conditions we made plans to drive the so called Enchanted Circle Scenic Byway around Taos.

Leaving dusty Taos we took a side trip out to see the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge that went across the 650 foot deep chasm...impressive & dizzy inducing! Even though there were pedestrian walkways on both sides of the bridge we only walked a short distance out...the trucks blasting past made the bridge shake more than either of us liked. After a few pictures we headed back to start our drive around the circle. As we drove around Wheeler Peak we found a few Big Horn sheep grazing on what looked to us to be dirt or maybe rocks. Not sure how they got to be that big by eating dirt & rocks , but it worked for them. We stopped for a coffee break at a small shop in the town of Red River. The town was kind of slow for a ski town...the lifts are right there in the "downtown" area. The streets reminded us a the "wild west" cowboy town...saloons included. As we headed out of town Cindi's favorite sign appeared with a new twist added...too bad we don't have the photo. If you substitute a rock for an upside down cow you'll get the picture!

There also is one more ski resort on the drive called Angel Fire which according to the locals was a great spot for snow boarding. We continued on and didn't stop to see if that was a true statement...maybe we should have because it wasn't long after that one of us developed "allergies" & ended up down for the count by sunset.

As always click any picture to enlarge.

Ski Taos

Today we headed out to Taos Ski Valley Resort for more skiing on big mountains. The ride out to the ski area was uneventful. We would have loved to have a few photos, but there was not enough space to pull off heading into the valley. Cool road although it has no guard rails where there really should be according to Cindi anyway...it was on her side coming back that really got her.

After we parked and got our gear on we headed off walking. Gotta tell you that walking uphill at 9000 feet elevation in ski boots & carrying your gear is NOT FUN! We really should have waited for the shuttle...actually it was a truck with chains pulling a wagon full of crazed skiers & boarders. It would drive through the lot and everyone would hop on...except us. The walk was a good warm up even though we both were short of breath by the time we hit the lift ticket window.


As we headed for the lifts what was the first thing we saw?...a sign saying not to panic & the steepest possible slope we'd seen in a long while...maybe ever! It didn't stop us though as we headed off to see what Taos Ski Valley had to offer. Thankfully we had some idea where to start thanks to the ticket window staff who was nice enough to point out which lifts would lead us to the greens & blues rather than the dreaded double diamond slopes. He even pointed out which run would lead us back at the end of the day from the far side of the resort. We had no idea just how large an area was available until we switched lifts and hit the top elevation served by the lifts at 11,000 plus feet! It was so awesome that words don''t do it justice for that matter not sure the pictures do either.

Man does it have some steep terrain and some crazy people who hike up the ridge line to ski/board down through the steeps & trees. Not sure why anyone would want to hike along a ridge to take the hard way down, but plenty of people seemed to be doing just that. Fun to watch...no way did either of us want to join them. Another thing we wondered about was why ski through a forest of trees when the slopes were clear of obstructions? Better yet, why ski on a trail that had a very large rock which had been kindly marked as a cliff by ski patrol...we saw people on the trail as we rode the lift overhead, but no one went off the cliff. Must say we were disappointed.


At the end of the day though we got braver & decided to try skiing the Hunziker Bowl...well one of us went first and dragged the other protesting for another go on our last run of the day. Who do you think was the guinea pig? Yep, it wasn't the girl. Must say that the bowl was the best part of our day on the mountain. A small hike up to a break that opened up into a very large bowl shaped area. So beautiful and quiet, except for the 2 Air Force jets that buzzed the area. Plenty of powder still on the slopes and we even beat the instructor & his students down through the moguls...whoohoo! What a perfect way to end our day.

Our First POWDER!

Yep, the title says it all. Our first truly powder day in over 15 years of skiing. Our original plan for today was to tour about the town of Taos. That all changed when we realized that the ski areas received about 10 inches of fresh snow overnight. Off we headed to Sipapu Ski Resort before we even ate our breakfast...couldn't find the McDonald's. After only 5 minutes of driving we were heading up into the mountains on the "High Road to Taos"...one of the many scenic roads we've found on this trip. Sadly no pictures of the drive up since the plows had not made enough room to safely pull off...didn't need any close encounters with one of those plows. Wow do they drive fast & furious!

The best part about skiing at Sipapu today...well other than the powder...was the lift ticket price. This place has the funniest and longest list of "freebie" lift tickets we have ever seen. How about skiing for free if you're 40...not 49 shooot! Our deal today was buy one get one for free...tomorrow is Car Load Wednesday. Everyone in the car skis for $50!

Not sure why people don't flock up to the place because today was dead...no lines and whole slopes to ourselves. Ten inches of powder and not a line in sight. WOW! The resort is pretty old, no upgraded lifts, or fancy food courts and pretty narrow runs so maybe that's it. The lift we rode did have one really weird feature...for us anyway...how about no safety bar? Narrow seats and no safety bar makes for a wee bit of nervousness as we rode up the lift.

At least the snow was soft and I should know....

Gearing up for Big Snow.....as always click any picture to enlarge!

Taos, NM

We drove to Taos today. Up until the last 20 miles it was pretty uninteresting with some mountains and a lot of desert. The road then follows the Rio Grande through a spectacular ginormous gorge for 10 mi. or so. The gorge is just wide enough for the river and the road and there are constant landslides that try to eliminate the road part. In fact, the road crew was out cleaning-up a slide today.

We also took a the 20 mi. drive up to Taos Ski Valley to check out the slopes. The drive was beautiful as the road followed a creek up a narrow Alpine valley. You can only see one slope from the parking lot, but it is straight up. It looked like a double black in my rating system, but it is rated single black according to Taos Ski Valley. Hmm, skiing out here could be a wee-bit different. We'll see how it goes. There are several smaller and less steep ski resorts in the area, so we might give them a try first as a warmup to the big boy slopes.

Editor note: Bill and Cindi did not follow protocol and did not take any pics today, even though the scenery was worthy. They will be docked a days pay.

Response to editor: Yeah the scenery was worthy, but we couldn't stop along the Rio Grande 'cause, as I said, there was barely enough room for the road. By the time we headed to Taos Ski Valley it was almost dark so the pics would not have come out anyway.

The 'Real West' at Last

Well we left San Antonio on 1/24 and headed out US 90 down to Del Rio on the Rio Grande and on to Alpine. As far as Del Rio it was just flat grassland except for this great sign coming into Hondo, TX.

From Del Rio on it was what Easterners like us expect 'the West' to look like just dry scrub along with canyons and mountains. The Pecos River's bridge is 273 feet above the river, but it looks like a mile when you're on it. It has a 'No Diving From Bridge' sign. Which struck us as funny because of the 273 ft. tall bridge and only about 2 ft. of water down below. I think they should just go ahead & let anyone who wants to take a dive. Think what it could do for the gene-pool.

In Sanderson, TX we stopped for gas and Cindi almost ran off with some real cowboys. They were hauling cows and horses in a couple of trailers along with a black lab in the truck bed and all had on spurs...(Cindi's side note tight jeans 'nough said). I had to push her back in the car and get her out of there before she ran off with them.

We drove past Alpine, through Marfa around the mountains west of Fort Davis and back to Alpine. We discovered that the movie Giant was filmed in Marfa...who knew.







The Marfa courthouse was pretty impressive.

As were the mountains west of Fort Davis.

Back in Alpine we ate at the Edelweiss Restaurant & Brewery. Good meal, but great dark German beer. Since we had so much food we were unable to drink a second beer...yes we did split a dinner between us or at least thought we had. Those cowboys must have huge appetites because we thought the waitress had messed up the order. The ticket proved she had in fact split the meal onto 2 plates...beer $2.25 each and a full plate of schnitzel, Bavarian potatoes, & onion rings for only $12.

We stayed at the Antelope Lodge in Alpine, TX for the night. It is a remodeled cottage-style motor lodge originally built in 1949. It was really quite nice and even had the original all-tile shower in turquoise and pink which was pretty cool as it was hokey.

We hit the road early today (Sunday) and headed out US 90 to Van Horn, TX and continued on north to the Guadalupe National Park on the NM border. The views from the road are great and the Guadalupe mountains are pretty impressive. Guadalupe Peak is the highest peak in Texas can be found here at over 8700 feet in elevation. We had no idea we'd find such large mountains in Texas. While inside the park we took a 5 mi. hike up into McKittrick canyon that was really pretty although rocky. We walked up to the Pratt Cabin which was built back in the 30's totally out of stone & heart of pine. The back porch chairs were the perfect spot for our lunch of apples & sun chips.

Sunrise between Alpine and Marfa, TX.

Yours truly and Cindi at Guadalupe peak in Guadalupe National Park. It was really windy and I had a bad hair day.

Pics from our hike on McKittrick Canyon trail

Pratts Cabin w/ hot model. Note the all stone roof. I have no idea how they keep it waterproof.











From there we headed through flat grassland to Roswell, NM. Through that stretch we ran across our first tumbleweed. When you hit them at 70 mph they pretty much explode. I was expecting Roswell to be just a crossroad with all kinds of UFO and alien stuff. It turned to be an actual city a couple of mile across, with a downtown, stoplights, car dealers and even several 8-10 story buildings. It was a big let-down, but we did see The International UFO Museum and Research Center. It was cleverly disguised (probably by aliens) as an old movie theater, but I'm pretty sure it was a crashed UFO.

We are spending the night in Ruidoso, NM. I'm not sure what it's claim-to-fame is or better yet was, but it looks like it's time has come and gone. Most of the town is old and somewhat rundown. A bunch of the older and unique businesses like the 'Burger Trolley' are closed. It certainly sounded better when reading about it online...it doesn't show well in person. Tomorrow we're heading up to Taos, NW for our first taste of Western Skiing.

Edit: Boy were we wrong about Ruidoso. We thought we had gone though town but we just went though an old part and there is a small area that doesn't have much which we thought was the end of town. When we left town the next morning we went further and found the real town. It is all new and growing. I think it is mainly based on skiing at Ski Apache, but unfortunately they have had almost no snow and it was 55F as were were leaving town early in the morning. Ski Apache is less than half open and the town is dead right now. I suspect it really gets crowded when it snows though.

Blog Catch-up (or is that Ketchup?)

On 1/19 we drove from Columbia, SC to Jackson, MS. Nothing to report on that drive except a long day.

But on 1/20, based on my brother's recommendation, we drove the Natchez Trace Parkway from Jackson to Natchez. That is one really pretty road very similar to the Blue Ridge Parkway, but through semi-swamp with lots of Spanish moss hanging down from the Live Oaks. It follows the original Natchez Trace which was a wilderness road back in the 1800's. There are a few short walking trails, but mostly just a really pretty drive. There are also a couple of Indian burial mounds right along side the road. I had heard about Indian mounds up in OH and IL but I didn't know they were also down in MS. I knew they were big, but when you're standing there and thinking about piling up all that dirt by hand and with stoneage tools they become really big.

We hit I-10 in Baton Rouge and took that all the way to San Antonio. The 20 mile-long bridge in LA is cool and Houson driving is insane. The rush-hour must be incredible, hopefully I will never see that.

We have spent the last few days in San Antonio with my brother and his wife. We haven't really done much and it's been a nice rest. We did go up to Austin to visit my niece & meet the newest members of the family, Hamilton (3 yrs) & Benjimin (2 1/2 months). We all headed off for dinner at a place called The Salt Lick for some real Texas Bar-B-Que. It was great...you could get a heapn' helpn' of all the saturated fat you should have in a month for just $12.

Tomorrow we head off to west TX for a day and on to Taos and our first western skiing ever.

What Would da Vinci Do?

On Saturday we were able to visit the South Carolina State Museum with my sister & brother-in-law. The museum is located in an old cotton textile mill dating back to 1893. What a great way to use such a magnificent building. The Museum was hosting a collection of Leonardo da Vinci's "Machine's in Motion". Machines designed by da Vinci were set about the exhibit for us to actually touch and set in motion. Models of his glider, olive press, printing press, bicycle & even a robot were on display for everyone to play with.

After we went through the exhibit it was time to go to the movie that originally appeared on PBS. We missed Part I, but were able to catch Part II. The basis of the movie was showing how two teams of engineers took da Vinci's designs and recreated them using his materials & methods. The first was a huge crossbow...ultimately the crossbow split before it's full power could be harnessed, but the team proved that it was possible to throw a cannon ball using it.

The second team fared somewhat better with da Vinci's glider. After some tweaks to satisfy the pilot's desire for a way to guide the glider it got off the ground & flew much like da Vinci described. All in all a good way to spend a cold day in South Carolina...who knew it could get to 15 degrees!

Board not Bored

Today was our first day on the boards this year. I boarded this morning and lasted 3 hours on greens and blues. A couple of falls, but nothing exciting. Meanwhile Cindi took a header on one of the big piles of snow under one of the snow guns while skiing. I didn't see the fall but she said it was really good and she did have snow on her helmet when I saw her.

After lunch and a nap Cindi took a whack at her board. Last year she made it all the way down on a blue but today she claimed she was 'tired' (I think it was that age thing) so she was only at it for a couple of hours and never got off the bunny slope.

Snow Daze

We got to Snowshoe yesterday.

I got a new pair of skis as a retirement gift to myself and this was the first time out. They are a lot stiffer and shorter (and slower) than the old ones. Actually, that works out OK since now I can follow the wifey without running over her ;-)

Today was Cindi's birthday and I didn't forget. I did forget it a few years back and it wasn't so pretty. I called from work and asked what was for dinner at which point she informed me that she didn't know since she doesn't cook on her birthday...oops!

The kids even made her a surprise birthday cake today. They bought all the stuff at the Snowshoe store and it cost about $20, but it was a really good surprise.

Cindi's turn...just a bit more elaboration on my cake from the kids since we "forgot" to get a picture before the cake was eaten. They made me a devil's food cake with what else but chocolate icing. Since Snowshoe didn't stock candles for my cake they also hit upon the grand plan of using M & M's to spell out "Happy B'day". The only problem arose when they had to buy the candy from the vending machines...how about over a $1/pack. I'm telling you it had to have been the most expensive cake I have ever had! Thanks go to Thomas, Rob, Amanda & Landon for the surprise & wonderful cake. Oh did I mention that I was able to get 2 pieces of cake? It seems Rob was concerned that we'd have to leave cake behind so he helped in the disposal by eating 5 pieces. Lesson learned...not to leave my cake in the kids condo.

We're Off in 6...5...4....hours

The journey starts in just a few hours. Let's hope nothing "important" has gotten left behind & we bring nothing broken on our return. See everyone in a few months!

Five Days

It's now only 5 days until we begin our travels. Our first stop will be Blacksburg and then we're off to Snowshoe for a few days of skiing with the kids. Let us hope that the weather will be cold & snowy which will be a marked improvement from our last ski trip. It will be our first ski resort of the 2009 Winter...it will not be the last.

Our plan is to keep everyone posted on where we are headed so stay tuned. Five more days...let the count down begin!

P. S. Thanks to Martin from Molins for the info that Capital Ale House in Midlothian has proper British bitter (yes, they actually have to pump it out). It's listed under 'Cask Conditioned Ale' on page one of the menu and the handles are all the way down at the far end of the bar all by themselves. Thankfully Cindi was DD when we went on Sunday since I had way too much. Man, that stuff is the nectur of the gods!

The New Mantra

I don't want to.

I don't have to.
You can't make me.

I'm Retired!"

Thanks go to Clare for my new "Mantra Pillow"!