Winding down the last RV trip of the year

Today marked our last day here in Santa Fe. We have all enjoyed New Mexico, especially the food, and some of us (human) have enjoyed the sights as well.

Mom is wanting to get into making her own (and others’) jewelry, so one day she dragged Dad to not one but TWO stores dedicated to making the stuff. We hear there’s a bag of her Christmas presents in the back of the car as we type. Ree says she wants some custom bling for her collar and harness. The boys just hope they don’t get victimized with the same thing.

We are very excited to report that we got to see our good friend Larry not once but TWICE this weekend! That’s the Larry who is working as a contractor at Los Alamos Lab. Larry’s home base is the same as ours, but he works for a company that has him away from home on projects for long periods of time. He’s dog people, which we really like (especially Ree when Larry’s fingers are sticky from the honey on sopapillas…) After agonizing research, the folks, our friend Larry, and our buds Jim and Charlene went to a local New Mexican restaurant called Castro’s for dinner. Lots of spicy stuff but the best we heard were the sopapillas and Ree says the honey was quite sweet and tasty.

Mom later found out you use the same recipe for sopapillas as you do for flour tortillas, and since she has one for the tortillas (having made them here in the RV this week), now she can make us sopapillas for dessert.

Today our bud Larry came back and snatched the folks away to go on the Turquoise Trail. They were gone a long time (by our standards), and still didn’t bring us a white box. Dad took lots of photos of the scenery and the little coal mining town they visited, Madrid, which is where some movie was filmed and has lots of galleries, a biker bar, and some other stuff. They ate at a restaurant of Mom’s choosing, with her criteria being little or no bikers and healthy stuff (their menu highlighted the vegetarian and vegan items). Fortunately for our bud Larry they had a green chile cheeseburger (which Dad also had), and Mom had the veggie spinach enchiladas. She also had a taste of Dad’s burger, which she proclaimed “outstanding”, although she says she regrets not asking for the chef’s red chile sauce recipe that was on her enchiladas.

Once stuffed with food, they apparently decided to challenge their collective fear of heights and drove up to Sandia Crest. Dad was the boldest, going outside the rock and iron pipe fencing. When he did this, it unnerved Mom and our bud Larry so much that they turned their backs and admired the trees.

We would have done more that “admire” the trees with Dad so close to the edge.