New Mexico

For Spring Break this year we decided to go to New Mexico.  Our friend's family owns a cabin resort amongst 250 acres of pine trees up in Weed, NM called Camp of the Tall Pines.  We went with my friend Laura and her three boys.  We squeezed all 8 of us in our van and went on a wonderful road trip.  Here is our adventure.

One of the first things we did when we got to the camp was horseback riding.  The camp had 8 beautiful horses.  The kids loved feeding them and petting them.  The horse trainer, Derlene, was so funny and good to our kids.  Emerson had a blast riding her favorite horse named Reno. Atticus was too chicken to ride the horse but he loved feeding them hay and going up to the horses and having them sniff his neck.  He thought this was so funny.

Another one of our favorite things we did was going riding on the quads.  All the adults rode on the 4-wheels for a couple of hours exploring the mountains and the kids rode on the "Mule" an off roading golf cart looking vehicle.  They loved the Mule.

We also took a day to see the amazing Carlsbad Caverns.  We walked for over an hour to get down to 750 feet to the bottom of the caverns.   It was so cool to see all the stalagmites.

Emerson and the boys became bonafide Jr. Rangers.  They had to read about the desert and how to take care of nature and identify different desert cacti and they were sworn in and became Jr. Ranger.  They even got a badge.  They thought it was pretty cool.

But our favorite part of our trip has to be sledding down the dunes in White Sands.  The sand is so white it looks like hills of snow.  Atticus woke up from his nap in the car and  saw the sand and said "Snow"!  As soon as he got out of the car, climbed up and laid on the sand and started making a snow angel.  Emerson must have taught him how to do that because the kids never seen snow before.

Everybody agreed sledding down the sand was their favorite part of the trip.  Atticus, our little sporty kid, even stood up on his saucer to sled down like he was snowboarding.  I think we're going to have to take him next winter to learn how to do that in the real snow.

We had a wonderful time.  The couple who manage the camp, Pam and Steve, were great!  This was the kind of camping I liked.  The kids could run around and explore and be free.  They would play for hours in their clubhouse they discovered and play frisbee golf that was set up at the camp.  They got dirty but they could come back at the end of the day and take a hot shower and eat.  It reminded me of my childhood up in Wyoming  at my Grandparents house.  We are definitely going back and doing it all again!