After spending Christmas 2017 with our kids in San Antonio, we all headed to an Airbnb in Ruidoso, New Mexico to hang out in the mountains and do some skiing. The party included the Keetons, the d Daytons, the McLaghlins and Liz & I. We drove from San Antonio to Ruidoso on Dec 27, arriving in the late afternoon and checked into our lodging.
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| Our "cabin"in Ruidoso (it was on the main street) |
The town was beautifully decorated for Christmas but unfortunately there was no snow! The weather had been so warm that the ski resort couldn't even make snow so the resort was effectively closed. So much for skiing.... We had to improvise. Near the resort was a tubing hill so we bundled up the kids and went tubing and had a good time.
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| Ski Apache Resort - no snow...no skiing |
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| Tubing hill near the ski resort |
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| Reayen and Meila dressed for tubing |
We also spent time exploring the town of Ruidoso and just hanging out and playing games in our cabin.
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| Playing cards at the cabin |
On the second day of our stay we decided to go to White Sands National Monument which is about an hour's drive from Ruidoso. It's an amazing expanse of white sand dunes with roads winding through. The roads must be plowed frequently to keep them open from the drifting sand.
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| White Sand Dunes |
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| d, Zhouyi and Meila at White Sands |
At the visitors center they rent plastic discs for sliding down the sand dunes. We rented several discs and went off to find some good dunes for sliding.
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| Sliding down a sand dune on a plastic saucer |
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| Elynn ready to go |
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| One of the better dunes for sliding |
In the end it felt more like a summer vacation than a winter vacation but we took it all in stride and came to appreciate the unexpected diversity. And as always, it was great just being together with the kids and grandkids in a beautiful setting. This trip gave us the idea of setting up an annual winter holiday for the family between Christmas and New Years. We decided to try it for the next 5 years on Dec 27 - 30 with each family taking a turn to pick the venue. We're kind of excited about it...we'll see how it works. Happy New Year!
