Southern Snow

Our run of good weather has finally come to an end and we are holed up in Alamogordo, New Mexico waiting out a winter storm. The first signs of cooler weather arrived just after our last blog entry, when we drove up to Fort Davis and stayed at a Texan ranch. We awoke in the morning with ice inside the van! However, it was such a great place that we stayed two nights, pottering around the old frontier town, visiting the McDonald Observatory and taking the girls horse riding.

On Thanksgiving Day, we drove across more desert to the Guadalupe National Park, a chain of mountains that rise high above the desert and hold Texas’s highest point, at nearly 9,000ft. The stupendous views inspired us to set off on the long walk to the summit the next morning, not knowing whether the girls would manage the 8.5 miles and 3000ft ascent. Happily, stubborn determination, multiple snacks and the promise of ice cream got everyone to the top, making for a memorable day out. Francesca and Liberty were rightly proud of themselves and are forming plans to explore the world on horseback, conquering mountains as they go.

From the top of Texas we took a trip into the depths of New Mexico – the Carlsbad Caverns. These amazing caves, and their rock formations, totally surpassed our expectations with chambers that could swallow cathedrals.

Late in the day, we arrived in Carlsbad, a rather drab town, expecting a brief, functional overnight stay. First things first, we found a decent ice-cream parlour to fulfill our promise. The friendly staff directed us to “Christmas on the Pecos”, an annual tradition of boat rides to view the riverside holiday lights. We duly acquiesced to the children’s pleading and took a premature dose of American Christmas cheer!

The next day saw us heading across the Sacramento Mountains towards White Sands. We stopped off at the Living Desert Zoo, the only visitors in the unusually chill air. We set off along the obvious route, naively unaware that the road climbed to 8,600ft – even the name of the only village on the map, Cloudcroft, didn’t click! We climbed higher, the clouds sank lower and soon it started snowing. Contingency plans for were formed for a roadside stopover, but thankfully the snowploughs were out in force and the pass proved passable!