Ruidoso, New Mexico and Ski Apache

At Middle Earth's fall festival (that's our daycare...and yes, it's wonderfully nerdy!), the director auctioned off four days at her family cabin in Ruidoso, New Mexico (our daycare is a non-profit org, so they need to raise money). I immediately bid on it, because I thought "I love Ruidoso...it's right there on the border of Colorado and New Mexico, it's beautiful!" and we won! I was so excited! I figured I'd take my parents so they could watch John Milo while we skied, it would be great. Then my Dad said "Uh...you don't even know where you're going". Turns out Ruidoso is down by Alamogordo and white sands....oops! I've been there too a few times, and it is just as beautiful as Raton, which was where I thought we were going. HA! But it was a great trip,and John Milo loved the cabin a lot, he and Nana and Poppy even saw three dear come down the steps in front of the cabin. After that, every time he looked out the window he asked "deer?".
The cabin was located about one block from midtown, which was full of kitschy shops and lots of art. JM loved walking around down town and outside the cabin. Smokey Bear is from Capitan, a town about 30 minutes from Ruidoso, so downtown there were tons of wooden carved bears everywhere. *Every time* we saw one JM would look at us and point and growl. It was hilarious!
And on the way there, we stopped by the Big Texan Steakhouse. John Milo ate an entire nacho tray filled to the top with mac and cheese. Yum!

John and I went skiing at Ski Apache, which was fun, but also unfortunate as they had only received about 28" of snow. Much different than Lisa, who went skiing at Wolf Creek, and I'm pretty sure that they got 28" in one day while she was there. Ski Apache has the only gondola in New Mexico...and it was old and tiny! We knew we were in trouble when at the top it was only a little snow, and mostly rock. You could see White Sands (elev. 4100) from where the gondola drops you off at the peak, which is about 11,400'. They had snow making on one of the runs, and unlike my snow-making experiences in Iowa (mostly ice), this was really fun powder to ski on. Not a lot of terrain was open, but what was was really fun.

Ruidoso was a neat town, and I can't wait to bid on the cabin again next year. We stopped by Roswell (Bill's hometown) on the way home too. Very odd is how I would describe it, but I was also disappointed by the distinct lack of alien memorabilia.