New Assingments at City of Rocks

We have now been hosting at City of Rocks State Park in NM for two months. We have had NO rain during that time. The nights can get down to below freezing, but we have gorgeous sunrises and sunsets with daytime temps getting to the mid-sixties. We continue to enjoy our half-day assignments. Gloria is still the cheerful, welcoming vistor center hostess, and Jerry has graduated from trash collector and weed whacker to PowerPoint guru. The Campground Manager first asked him to develop a presentation on rattlesnakes. That turned out so well that he has been assigned two more slide shows: Mysteries of the Moon and The Desert Grocery Store.

To help prepare the rattlesnake slides, we visited the Rattlesnake Musuem last weekend in Albuquerque. Jerry got still another job. He will also prepare a PowerPoint presentation for the Museum in exchange for some information and assistance from the Museum Director. Ironically, Jerry loathes snakes, but his appreciation for them is growing. We took the scenic route along the Mimbres River, through the Black Range and over the Emory Pass. There are few if any businesses in the little villages along the way. We did "strike it rich" in Hillsboro, population 150. What a neat little town! Real cowboys hang out there, and we loved the General Store Cafe. The steak and eggs brunch and breakfast burrito were without equal. It's just a friendly little place with western antiques hanging on the wall and one waitress who is old enough to remember when the antiques had functional relevance. All this was set off buy a wonderful glowing open flame stove. They even have a 1916 newspaper highlighting Pancho Villas raid on Columbus, NM.

In Albuquerque, we stayed in VIP quarters at Kirtland Air Force Base, did some Christmas shopping and walked the River of Lights extravaganza one evening .