WE ARE ON OUR WAY

Well, off we go. We left Montrose on Monday, the 13th. We drove to Ignacio and stayed at the new hotel there. It is connected to the new casino (Sky Ute Casino). We spent 2 nites there so Duane could relax and recover from Easter and Arleen could play.

We left on Wednesday and drove to Albuquerque and made our way to our first couch surfing stop. Jim met us at the door and was very welcoming and informative about couch surfing protocol. He told us that often he would check a person's id to make sure they were who they said they were. He trusted us and we enjoyed spending the first evening talking with him.

The next day, we went to the Petroglyph National Monument at the outskirts of ALB. We walked about 3 miles looking at tons of glyphs on lava boulders. Around home the glyphs are usually found on sandstone cliffs. This was very different. I will post some pictures on the next post. Then we drove to a different part of the park, the volcanoes. There are 5 of them. I have never seen such small volcanoes. The trail went up 3 of them, but we only had time to climb 2. They are very old, so there wasn't much trace of its active period. We did find a vent, where the lava came out, on one of the hills. That added another mile or so to our talley that day. It felt great to walk after spending hours in the car. We sort of got a little lost going back to Jim's house and ended up at another casino, Sandia, where Arleen actually won some money. More importantly, she had fun.

Today we left ALB for Roswell. It snowed..... I understand it snowed in Colorado, but we are in New Mexico, and not even Northern New Mexico. We were very surprised. It really wasn't much. We made it as far as Ruidoso, where the racecourse is. On the way we rode thru beautiful mountains, with lush pine forests. We stopped at the Inn of the Mountain Gods. And yes, they have a casino. It is a beautiful place, reminisent of the Peaks at Mountain Village in Telluride. The casino was awful. We didn't stay long. The rooms were very expensive. So we drove on to Ruidoso. I had heard of it, Ruidoso Downs Racetrack. So we stayed across the street from the racetrack and the Billy the Kid Casino. And Arleen did very well there. We may make this a habbit.

Anyway, tomorrow we head out to Roswell, to look for aliens and then on the Carlsbad to see the caverns and the bats. More later.