Monday, October 28, 2024
Because we covered four of the scenic byways in the Ruidoso area, we only have one of our scenic drives today and it's a short one. We took advantage of that and slept in and had a leisurely morning. We had a late breakfast in the hotel around 10:30 and had a very interesting talk with the Apache waiter. He was very proud of his culture and talked with us at length about the history of the Mescalero Apache Tribe and reservation. Our breakfast ended up taking over an hour, but we really enjoyed talking to him and learned a lot.
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| Only one our scenic drives to do today, Scenic Byway #28. |
After breakfast it was time to hit the road for a drive up to the 10,200-foot-high Ski Apache Area, our last scenic drive in Ruidoso. We had already driven this road back in 2017 when we had our annual Geezer Gathering in Ruidoso. While at the gathering in 2017 Val and I and our friend Jack wanted to try the mile long zip line they had up there so that was our purpose then and it was a very exciting and scary adventure.
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| We start our climb to the top. |
There was a terrible fire here two years ago that, on top of a fire in the same area the year before, was devastating to the area and as we drove up it was very evident. Most of the trees were either gone or just skeletons standing on a barren land. What was forested land is now barren land. A large section of the drive up was washed out by the subsequent floods, but the road is now open, but it looks like some construction is still going on.
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| Although we could see burn areas all the way up the drive, it was very evident as we neared the top. |
Even with the scars and damage from the fire, the drive was still very scenic, and the views were amazing. The Ski Apache ski area and zip line remain closed but they hope to open next year and hopefully the reservation can recover from the financial loss caused by its closure. We hope so as it was a very nice ski area, and the zip line was a lot of fun.
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| The end of the road, Ski Apache is closed. |
After reaching the closed ski area, we started back down to Ruidoso and the wind was very strong, but we didn’t know how strong it was until we stopped at a scenic viewpoint. When I opened the door, it almost ripped the door out of my hands and any loose items in the front seat area were sucked out and blown over the edge. I scrambled to collect what I could find and got everything that was important, but Val said she saw a few things go over the edge, but I didn’t miss anything so hopefully they were nothing important.
Val and I staggered over to the viewpoint walking against the blowing wind to the viewpoint edge and after taking a couple of pictures we hurried back to the car. After Val got in the car, I had to have her turn it around so I could get in without a repeat of what happened when I got out. We later learned that the wind was blowing up to 60 mph in the mountains and I believe it as neither of us had experienced that strong of a wind before.
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| You can see from Val's hair how windy it was. |
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| You can see from the GPS screen how twisty this road was, it's quite a climb |
After that we didn’t stop again and drove back to Ruidoso. Ruidoso has a Hatch Chile shop and Val wanted to stop there so we spent some time looking around the shop. She didn’t find what she was looking for, but did find some things for Christmas gifts.
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| Back to Ruidoso. |
We arrived back at the Inn of the Mountain Gods in early afternoon and decided to spend a little time in the casino. This turned out to be a fortuitous decision for both of us and particularly for me as we won a bit and made up some of what I’d lost over the last two nights.
We had eaten a late breakfast, so we weren’t hungry for lunch and returned to the room and relaxed for a while. I downloaded the pictures and wrote a little for the blog and then went outside to take a few pictures of the grounds.
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| The lake side of the Inn of the Mountain Gods. |
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| Val is out on our balcony. |
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| Those teepees weren't there yesterday, we don't know what they're for. |
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| This is the center of the hotel with a wing going off to each side. Inside there is the lobby, restaurants, meeting rooms and the casino. |
We relaxed until early evening and then returned to the casino where our luck kind of continued. We didn’t really win a lot, but did get to play for a while. We started to get hungry do decided to see what was available in the food court. It turned out to be a pretty good food court and I got a sweet and sour bowl and Val got a Navajo Taco. A Navajo Taco is one of our favorite foods in the Southwest and is like a tostada except instead of a tortilla the use fry bread and is quite good.
After dinner we went back to the casino, but didn’t stay long as tomorrow is a travel day. We will be heading over to Socorro where we’ll be spending two nights and of course, exploring several more scenic byways.
Scenic Drives Completed: 21 of 35
Since today is our last day in Ruidoso, we are adding two more missed scenic drives. They are in the Carlsbad Caverns area and just too far out of the way of our loop. We would have had to add four more days to our trip to complete them. One of them near Carlsbad we have already done, but the other one we haven't done and it looked pretty interesting so maybe we'll do it on another trip.
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| We added five more scenic drives during our stay in Ruidoso, and we did add Scenic Byways 29 and 30 to our list of missed one. |
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